Home buyers: be very careful!

globalds

What I'm still seeing here is the question does this activity at the edge of the market have enough enrgy to destabalise the whole thing .
I keep seeing threads stating some proof or other of the begining of the end ...Only to state that it will be an opportunity to buy cheap or that the margins for buy to let will reapear.
That desire to still dip into the market is my reason at present to say that a crash looks far less likely than a boring slump.I am happy to say my mind is not fixed on this and there are many variables that could turn either one into the other .

Jason74

Must admit that I looked at something similar from another auctioneer (Barnard Marcus I think from memory), and on a very rough and ready analysis, I think that there might be something starting.

Not only are sales percentages down, but on a broad scale, the price paid per SOLD lot has decreased gradually since May on an overall trend basis. Of course this could be nothing more than different types of property coming to auction in these sales (I hven't gone through the catalogues lot by lot, and the actual lots offered are clearly a huge factor in prices acheived)

In addition to the above, I have seen a couple of places near me (around the Anerley / Penge / Norwood areas of London) go for auction, and fail to sell with a much lower top bid than I would have expected to see based on EA window prices for apparently similar properties.

None of this of course says that the market will crash tomorrow, but it does give an indication that things could be on the turn. While most of the unsold properties seemed to miss reserve by a very small margin, if this is happening to lots of properties, it suggests that it MAY (and the emphasis is very much on may given the basic anaylsis of limited data) be the case that lots of properties are "worth" just a little less than the vendors expect, and are also "worth" just a little less than they were a couple of Months back ?

This could be of course simply a sign of a slowing market, or even just a "trick" of the data. It is however worth considering, although of course if a property is first and foremost your home, are you really going to worry about it's value changing 5 or even 10% either way ?.

Even a full blown crash (By which I mean 20% plus) should not cause any material difficulties if you've owned property (and not necesarilly your current one) for more than 4-5 years and not used MEW for "consumer" expenditure, although of course for recent FTBs it could be a bigger problem.

smousie

Re BTL landlords selling up - my landlord is currently trying to sell the flat I'm living in, I think he got scared when the interest rate went up! However the flat has been on the market for months and hasn't sold, and has only had 2 viewings, so he can't sell even though he wants to because buyers won't pay his asking price. Perhaps buyers are unwilling to buy an ex-rental property, or maybe they don't want the hassle of the tenant having to be evicted so they can move in? Would you be willing to buy a property with a tenant still living there?

macaque_2

mr.broderick wrote: »

Macaque do you have any other interests or is it just your intention to post as many threads as possible concerning a possible house price crash?
Is there a reason you want prices to tumble?

You are as bad as the tabloids for inventing things. If you would care to check, I have only started 3 threads. One contained developments in auction results, one was a poll to understand how property investors plan to manage downside risk, and one related to equity investments.

I don't own a house and I am not looking to buy one. Whilst I am not inclined to name the well from which I would'nt drink, a large fall in house prices would not encourage me to buy. Renting suits my needs better than ownership.

mr.broderick

macaque wrote: »

You are as bad as the tabloids for inventing things. If you would care to check, I have only started 3 threads. One contained developments in auction results, one was a poll to understand how property investors plan to manage downside risk, and one related to equity investments.

I don't own a house and I am not looking to buy one. Whilst I am not inclined to name the well from which I would'nt drink, a large fall in house prices would not encourage me to buy. Renting suits my needs better than ownership.

Fair enough