HPC thread of the week

caronoel

TheeMaskedTurnip wrote: »

That said I am wonder if you have no valid BCR calculated at what point will you know that enough is enough money wasted and will buy a home to move on with your life.

Why do that?

His rent in his bedsit has been frozen for the past 43 years, dontchya know?

westernpromise

ruggedtoast wrote: »

There is nothing lucky about the younger generations being shackled to a lifetime of mortgage debt and renting misery in service of rentier kleptocrats.

As has been repeatedly shown, there is little difference between buying a house now and buying one 20 or 30 years ago, except that you pay the principal down a lot faster today.

mwpt

westernpromise wrote: »

As has been repeatedly shown, there is little difference between buying a house now and buying one 20 or 30 years ago, except that you pay the principal down a lot faster today.

Nonsense. I showed you why that was untrue already.

TheeMaskedTurnip

It's slowly dawning on the HPC loons that their BCR is now their undoing:

"Seriously, I think a "crash" would simply take us back to a still-too-high-to-buy level. Prices would need to drop 70%+ to get back to 1990s affordability."

http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/index.php?/topic/208525-land-reg-jan-2016-whopping-increase/page-2

westernpromise

I imagine whoever has been tactless enough to voice such a heresy can look forward to a tsunami of bile.

You'd need around a 75% fall in London to get back to the prices of 20 years ago - but of course the HPC crowd thought those prices were too high at the time as well. Even with a 75% price drop, though, if you add in all the money you've squandered on rent these last 20 years, 75% isn't enough. You'd need about 150%. Basically, buying in London now after renting for 20 years would only be smarter than buying 20 years ago if 1/ you bought the house for nothing and 2/ you found £200,000 cash under the floorboards.

I particularly like the assertions that nobody will be able to buy at these prices, which rather misses the fact that, er, these are prices at which people have.

TheeMaskedTurnip

Indeed, each month they hold off buying is yet another month of rental payment and house price inflation. From a purely psychological perspective the HPC specimens and their vile website would make a fantastic study into group thinking and confirmation bias, along with sheer bloody stubborn stupidity and financial illiteracy. Fascinating stuff.

Anyway another BCR reality check here (I pity the loons partner):

"Made a decision over the weekend (having tried hard to persuade my other half) to carry on renting for another year or so as the madness seems to continue. My one issue is even if prices drop 50+% they are still way too overpriced..."

http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/index.php?/topic/208525-land-reg-jan-2016-whopping-increase/page-7

wotsthat

House prices in the mid-nineties were bargain basement, dirt cheap bargains of a generation.

Nothing wrong with wanting to pay that much for a house today but delaying a purchase until they reach that level again is very likely to lead to a long time renting. It's like waiting until your luck changes - not much of a plan.

If prices ever get that low again there will still be an HPC gang, naysayers and the usual suspects moaning about deluded sellers not selling their houses for the 'correct' price.

mwpt

wotsthat wrote: »

House prices in the mid-nineties were bargain basement, dirt cheap bargains of a generation.

Nothing wrong with wanting to pay that much for a house today but delaying a purchase until they reach that level again is very likely to lead to a long time renting. It's like waiting until your luck changes - not much of a plan.

If prices ever get that low again there will still be an HPC gang, naysayers and the usual suspects moaning about deluded sellers not selling their houses for the 'correct' price.

There is almost zero chance that prices will ever go down to the mid-nineties level (I realise you're not saying that). The best that anyone waiting to buy could hope for might be a return to something like normal income multiples, but I think they should examine the mechanisms by which this could happen, how likely they are, and whether they'd actually be helpful to them buying (for example, incomes could rise dramatically).

There would be scenarios that led to me being in a better situation waiting instead of buying (I am not) but those scenarios just seemed more and more unlikely, particularly with the government openly showing it is underwriting the housing market with 40% interest free non-recourse loans on London property. If ever there was a sign that they'll step in to protect the market, surely that is it?

I really do feel for new buyers though because despite the common meme on here that it is no harder to buy now than at any point in the past, that is simply untrue. I know from first hand experience that it is untrue because I watched properties slip out of my affordability zone until I finally just accepted it and bought outside my preferred area, and because I have multiple friends buying or looking to buy who are priced out of the areas their friends bought in just several years ago (never mind 10 years ago).

westernpromise

wotsthat wrote: »

House prices in the mid-nineties were bargain basement, dirt cheap bargains of a generation.

Nothing wrong with wanting to pay that much for a house today but delaying a purchase until they reach that level again is very likely to lead to a long time renting. It's like waiting until your luck changes - not much of a plan.

If prices ever get that low again there will still be an HPC gang, naysayers and the usual suspects moaning about deluded sellers not selling their houses for the 'correct' price.

Yes, and if you look at the old newsgroup uk.finance, it was HPC avant la lettre. In 1996 there were people insisting that 6 months of Halifax price rises proved nothing and that prices still had further to fall.

Even if there were some financial cataclysm that took prices back 20 years the HPC crowd would miss out all over again because they'd insist houses weren't cheap enough. Of course in any such cataclysm they'd be the first to lose their own jobs.

cells

wotsthat wrote: »

House prices in the mid-nineties were bargain basement, dirt cheap bargains of a generation.

that goes double for London and triple for inner London.

Prices in my market of Hackney were so low that you could buy a flat in or near council estates for about the price it costs to get a nice loft conversion.

expecting the price of a house to fall to the price of a loft is just silly.
Of course it could happen, if London lost 2 million people and built 500,000 private homes and 500,000 social homes over the next 25 years then London would be cheap again where you could buy the lower end for less than a loft conversion. but the chances of that happening are nil