Is it too late to sell a house in Northern Ireland???

talksalot81

IvanOpinion wrote: »

I can see the point you are trying to make but given past performance it is unlikely that house price drops will last for that length of time .. in 5 years time surely it is more likely that any particular house will cost more than it does today which in real terms means by not buying at a perceived market bottom could negate any benefit.

Ivan

Well 5 years was chosen as being more than reasonable, look at the early 90s crash, that was the timescale from top to bottom...

tara747

kgrant, thanks for the update. Good luck with whatever you decide.

talksalot, good points as usual.

jetboy

Historical figures on housing suggest annual price increases on housing overall in the region of 5-8%. Yes the market here has overheated in the last few months and a correction is taking place but it is highly unlikely that house prices in 5 years time will be cheaper than they are now. I would still be of the opinion that if you've found the house you want and can afford it (after factoring another 1-2% rise in rates) then go for it. Supply will now exceed demand for a while as the 'landlords' dump apartments that no longer look attractive as buy-to-let.

chunter

Look, the banks are running scared and are not giving out anything like the quantity / amounts of mortgages like they were gifting in the last few years.

So we're into a negative equity situation. What the banks lent is not what the banks will get back if they repossess and sell on.

All those Northern Ireland / UK subprime (5-10 times salary) mortgages are still out there, and will eventually cause something similiar to what's happened in the US here.

The building trade is literally collapsing week on week at the minute.
You ask your brickies and joiners and plumbers and kitchen fitters.
The less work there is, the more competition there is, the less wage coming in.
Ever decreasing circles.
The next sign you'll see to how the economy is progressing is the unemployment figures.
If the building sector grinds to a halt, we're all in trouble.

There's no 'out' either, construction work is drying up around Dublin, the Poles have London and England sorted. Olympic Village excluded.

Where's the money coming from to buy all these houses?
Maybe the people who made the money at the start, but the smart money won't go near property because nobody knows where the bottom is.

Sorry for being so gloomy, but people need to shaken and told to accept the truth.

I think at one stage last year Northern Ireland was the third most expensive place to buy a house in the UK after London and the South East.
We have a long way to drop before we get a bit of reality.

If there is a small upside, there's about a year left the PPS14 ruling really kicks in.
I think those with OPP have 2 years from passing to build. So there should be an absolute raft of sites being sold and houses being built in the Northern Ireland at the turn of 2008-2009.

NAR

Overall the housing market has been extremely strong over the last 12 months. Sure the sub prime market has rightly caused an adjustment over the last two months. Personally I believe that adjustment is now complete and a further cut in the interest rates (probably February) will see confidence grow in the local housing market again.
There is still considerable growth in new businesses being opened, especially in Belfast, which means there will be bodies needing houses.

jamesey07

i can understand why some people who wouldn't want to rent, i guess it depends on how much landlords charge, me myself the reason i say i would rather rent is because it only costs £52.12 a week for a 2 bed flat, it's in a very quite area were most houses r now bought and the same 2 bed apartment across the street went recently for £140000, i rent ot of the Housing executive, they at least don't charge rip of prices to there tenants, and also if anything ever goes wrong they would fix it, if i was paying about £600 for somewhere i would rather have it bought instead of paying of someone else's mortgage, i still think though that the price of houses are to expensive, i mean near 600-1000 a month every month, i would rather live and go on holidays etc than pay that out

leftieM

NAR wrote: »

Overall the housing market has been extremely strong over the last 12 months. Sure the sub prime market has rightly caused an adjustment over the last two months. Personally I believe that adjustment is now complete and a further cut in the interest rates (probably February) will see confidence grow in the local housing market again.
There is still considerable growth in new businesses being opened, especially in Belfast, which means there will be bodies needing houses.

For the record the boom here ended in the late spring (April/May) and the sub-prime crisis wasn't felt until August/September.

IvanOpinion

leftieM wrote: »

For the record the boom here ended in the late spring (April/May) and the sub-prime crisis wasn't felt until August/September.

i would disagree with you leftie, there was very much a correlation between the two

ivan

leftieM

I have to prove myself
Here's an article from July reporting that the RICS saw the third month of a marked slowdown in the market.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/jul/16/housingmarket.houseprices

Here's an article from when the Northern Rock crisis blew up. The credit crisis in the US began in August AFAIK and this was when it was felt in the UK (i.e. when it became relevant to us.)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6997765.stm

The market started to move again in September.

I watched Templeton Robinson daily for a long time, as I saw my chances of affording to move house ebb away. Around Easter time it just stopped - no bidding wars, houses sitting without offers for days, then weeks, then months. Houses that were sale agreed started to fall through more regularly.

People have a belief about housing that is often detached from the facts. Has anyone else noticed this? I know that I have this tendency which I fight against.

IvanOpinion

leftieM wrote: »

I watched Templeton Robinson daily for a long time, as I saw my chances of affording to move house ebb away. Around Easter time it just stopped - no bidding wars, houses sitting without offers for days, then weeks, then months. Houses that were sale agreed started to fall through more regularly.

well I had a bidding war on one of my houses going on at the end of july. I put it on sale in May (I think, thereabouts) and it went for almost 10% over the asking price. April/May/June were very bouyant for some estate agents. July/August was the turning point when all this started to brew, there were stories of more interest rate hikes and people were starting to get worried ... I am not sure when the credit crunch actually came to the fore in America (I defintiely knew about it towards the beginning of August) but one can reasonablty expect that our media paid little interest in it for several weeks .. it was only when they realised that many European banks were heavily exposed that it started to be reported.

Ivan