House Price Crash Discussion Thread

MissMoneypenny

Interesting post, number 479 on this forum

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=526748&page=32

bootalishus

just wondered how people think if the 2012 olympic's will give us a boost. Surely trades will be having to be put on to olympic sites to ensure we are ready and I heard any country that had the Olympic's would see a large increase in its economy that year - surely this will give us a boost in the not too distant future.

Mary_Hartnell

Boost to inflation perhaps?
No tax money to pay for it and pound already on the skids relative to oil economies, Euroland etc.
Might stave off repossessions in East London.

I wonder if UK Plc will make a profit on the Olympics, is it just a bit of "grandstanding", like the dome turned out to be.

baby_boomer

I have a moan with the HCP website.

Obviously they are onto a good story

But you can't find on HPC a graph of average UK house prices over the years. This is a basic statistic for anyone interested in the subject.

They only provide a graph of UK house prices with inflation taken into account, because it embellishes their story.

Why not do one graph by actual prices and one graph by inflation adjusted prices?

It would provide a better public service.

Californication

baby_boomer wrote: »

Why not do one graph by actual prices and one graph by inflation adjusted prices?

Because to look at a historical time series in nominal terms is a complete waste of time?

Ringo_Smith

ebonylight wrote: »

i dont really understand negetive equity??

Funny as it sounds...
Have a look at housepricecrash.co.uk:cool:

marcusrapid

Does anyone have any experience of the house price situation in Swindon - I am ready to buy now with good deposit but am nervous that prices will continue to fall?! I am curently renting so am in no hurry to move

cheers

baby_boomer

Californication wrote: »

Because to look at a historical time series in nominal terms is a complete waste of time?

What if you want to compare returns on housing with other investments including cash, equities, gold or fixed interest.

The historical figures for these, on other financial sites, are invariably in nominal terms.

HPC figures therefore make long term comparisons very difficult.

codger

marcusrapid wrote: »

Does anyone have any experience of the house price situation in Swindon - I am ready to buy now with good deposit but am nervous that prices will continue to fall?! I am curently renting so am in no hurry to move cheers

Hi Marcus: the answer to your question has been given plenty of times on here. If you're not in a hurry to buy bricks and mortar, then don't buy bricks and mortar. Ends.

Rather than thinking about entering "a market" or getting on "a ladder", view a property purchase today as stepping off the river bank into a rowing boat. Not long ago the waters were relatively calm with a single current which persuaded many buyers that all they needed to do was sit back, stare at the blue sky, and not even bother with the oars: the river would carry them to profits beyond the ken of mortal man.

Now the sky is murky, the waters are choppy and getting choppier, and undercurrents which were actually always there have -- as they were bound to do -- come to the surface, ready to sweep the unwary towards the rocks of financial misfortune no matter how hard they paddle.

Geography has no bearing on this: when EDF announced, with immediate effect, 22% hikes in gas and electricity prices, it didn't say "except for people living in Swindon". Nor will such an exception be made by all the other energy providers that follow EDF's lead.

The purses of every household in every city, town and village in the UK are vulnerable to the workings of an economy under stress as elements too long taken for granted -- food costs, transport costs, mortgage repayment costs, heating and lighting costs -- have ceased to be constancies.

A house purchase was always an issue of affordability; now that there are so many other issues of affordability, no wonder (a) prospective purchasers are realising their incomes cannot stretch far enough and (b) an increasing number of existing purchasers are facing a short-term future where repossession is anything but a remote possibility.

That the UK is in this mess because of a supine Bank of England and a Labour government within which the chief qualification for high office was and still is crass stupidity almost goes without saying. What is making everything much, much worse though is that the remorseless, inevitable bursting of the housing market bubble has coincided with a wholly unforeseen explosive cost of living increase that even the 1989-1993 market collapse never witnessed.

Just one more thought. Not for the first time is there talk on this thread of "the media" doing this and doing that. Bizarrely enough, that's true -- providing it's remembered that whereas newspapers, radio and TV were the media of the last market collapse, they ain't the media of this one.

What we now have is not media but a medium: the Internet.

And it's through the Internet, and superb forums like MSE, that we're all able -- at last -- to treat the self-serving drivel of everything from an advertisement-dependent local Press to ratings-chasing Phil and Kirstys with the contempt they deserve. Reality is no longer filtered by third parties; the spreading and the sharing of knowledge, of experience, is no longer constrained by a newspaper's publication schedule or the timing of a TV or radio news bulletin.

This is the first housing crash of the Internet era.

The significance of that, I suspect, is still woefully under-estimated.

marcusrapid

thanks for the reply - i think!?!? I was under the impression house price falls are regional - eg houses falling more in northern towns etc?