House Price Crash Discussion Thread

WTF?_2

chriseast wrote: »

The frankly silly house prices we have all been paying for the last few years are only sustainable if there is confidence in the housing market. As soon as that goes all hell will break loose, just like at the end of the 80's for those of us who lived through it.

The more the media report on problems, the more real those problems will become. The price reductions I posted about in the other thread are only being offered to me because the owner has seen the media reports and is thinking that he would rather reduce the price a bit now, rather than being forced to in the medium term.

Irrespective of the effects of sentiment there are very real underlying problems which point towards a slump in prices:

Debt is finally being repriced to include risk (bad news for speculators and investors).

The spectre of increased inflation is threatening to precipitate higher interest rates (bad news for anyone taking on debt or in debt).

FTBs are long since priced out of the market (bad news for the market generally since they hold it up from the bottom end).



However, a change in sentiment will also do quite nicely as much of the market is built on an irrational belief that prices will continue to rocket ad infinitum.

Lotus-eater

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/07/23/cmbuytolet23.xml

Interesting article, I'm not in BTL, so can't comment really. But it does sound like the new build flats in some areas are taking a beating.

hgllgh

Curv wrote: »

They have the right to prevent their 'presentation' of the data from being used in a manner they aren't happy with. The same information is available from other sources, albeit in a less-easy-to-interpret format.

By removing their contribution to Property Snake, Rightmove aren't censoring anything, they are just making it harder to get the same information.

This still seems wrong to me. The data doesn't 'belong' to Rightmove. It doesn't belong to anyone. If a seller decides to reduce an asking price it's just an event, a public fact thats in the public domian. People have a right to that information. That would be the same as a shares website not reporting a reduction in share prices. Investors have a right to know.

mystic_trev

The credit crunch has had a dramatic effect on the availability of mortgages with the number of mortgage products falling by 40% over the past three months as lenders reduce their product ranges.

http://www.citywire.co.uk/News/NewsArticle.aspx?VersionID=97670&re=1921&ea=5946

hgllgh

This is now front page and homepage news

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/

tr3mor

hgllgh wrote: »

This still seems wrong to me. The data doesn't 'belong' to Rightmove. It doesn't belong to anyone. If a seller decides to reduce an asking price it's just an event, a public fact thats in the public domian. People have a right to that information. That would be the same as a shares website not reporting a reduction in share prices. Investors have a right to know.

If Rightmove have collated and collected the data then it is up to them who they allow to look at it and it what ways they use it. The asking price of a property is not public knowledge. No-one has a right to know.

Shares and houses are not the same.

Curv

hgllgh wrote: »

If a seller decides to reduce an asking price it's just an event, a public fact thats in the public domian. People have a right to that information.

People can get the information... it's still in the public domain; the EA selling will advertise the new (reduced) price.

All it means is that rather than having all the price reductions presented neatly on one web site, anyone interested in keeping track of price drops will need to trawl individual EA sites. Whilst it's undoubtedly harder work to get the information, it's all still accessible to people who are prepared to look for it.

I don't think there are any laws protecting an individual's right to an easy life in respect of monitoring house price data...

WTF?_2

Curv wrote: »

People can get the information... it's still in the public domain; the EA selling will advertise the new (reduced) price.

All it means is that rather than having all the price reductions presented neatly on one web site, anyone interested in keeping track of price drops will need to trawl individual EA sites. Whilst it's undoubtedly harder work to get the information, it's all still accessible to people who are prepared to look for it.

I don't think there are any laws protecting an individual's right to an easy life in respect of monitoring house price data...

True - but it would be great to have something like an unbiased source of the true state of the market. Most of the stats are published by vested interests and designed to pump demand.

At least PropertySnake gave an indicator of how asking prices were falling. Not perfect, but a good anecdotal measure of sentiment.

Romani_Ite_Domum

hgllgh wrote: »

This still seems wrong to me. The data doesn't 'belong' to Rightmove. It doesn't belong to anyone.

Although I hear what you're saying, the whole internet intellectual property thing is a very grey area.

If RM add the data to the website, it could be argued that the data is theirs.
If another site has a script which scrapes RM to obtain the data to post on their own site then I would also say that this was wrong to some extent.

Gorgeous_George

It's like arguing that because a record has been played on the radio everyone should be allowed to download it for free. It's theft - just like mugging some old lady of her pension.

GG