House Price Crash Discussion Thread

HammersFan

Land registry data has a bit of a 'time lag', but interesting nonetheless. Also shows that in many regions price growth has been at modest levels for some time.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7169426.stm

lauraw78

My boyfriend wants to buy a house, we live in Liverpool, he's on average wages and wants to buy a house for around £150,000, after reading all of this though, Im guessing now is not the time to buy, but Im wondering, is there really going to be a considerable drop for the kind of property we want, ie, 3 bed terraced 150,000?
Also, due to our circumstances, we are thinking about including his parents income to up our chances of getting a good mortgage, does anyone know how this works? His mum is also going to help us with a deposit, what kind of amount should we be looking at for a person whos on low-average wages?
:rolleyes:

m00m00

lauraw78 wrote: »

My boyfriend wants to buy a house, we live in Liverpool, he's on average wages and wants to buy a house for around £150,000, after reading all of this though, Im guessing now is not the time to buy, but Im wondering, is there really going to be a considerable drop for the kind of property we want, ie, 3 bed terraced 150,000?
Also, due to our circumstances, we are thinking about including his parents income to up our chances of getting a good mortgage, does anyone know how this works? His mum is also going to help us with a deposit, what kind of amount should we be looking at for a person whos on low-average wages?
:rolleyes:

have a look on nethouseprices etc and see what the historical prices on the areas you've been looking at is. There is nothing to suggest prices will go down to match those prices, but if an area has had a massive rise in the past 2-3 years, these are most likely to be hit in any downturn

Generali

This might be of interest to those interested in the financial side:

Link

It looks like the market for MBSs might be starting to go again. It'll be interesting to see how it goes. After Goldmans made £2,000,000,000 shorting them last year, it'd be a brave analyst that suggested buying them without some very careful checking.

siren13577

lauraw78 wrote: »

My boyfriend wants to buy a house, we live in Liverpool, he's on average wages and wants to buy a house for around £150,000, after reading all of this though, Im guessing now is not the time to buy, but Im wondering, is there really going to be a considerable drop for the kind of property we want, ie, 3 bed terraced 150,000?
Also, due to our circumstances, we are thinking about including his parents income to up our chances of getting a good mortgage, does anyone know how this works? His mum is also going to help us with a deposit, what kind of amount should we be looking at for a person whos on low-average wages?
:rolleyes:

I don't know much about mortgages, I would advise you to try and speak to a financial advisor, I there are some around on MSE, be sure about the area you want to buy in. Narrow it down so there are a few choices and not to be nasty but don't rely on peoples' opinions, go and check the areas out yourselves and at different times of the day, school time, late evening, morning etc. Check the facilities nearby, I live in L4 by the Asda Walton and it's not too bad here, in fact there are some house for sale in my street. See if you can check out exclusion zone/designated areas, this is either a bad thing or a good thing depending on how you look at it. Try upmystreet.com and use the post office postcode finder for more specific information such as house prices: http://postcode.postoffice.co.uk/portal/po/postcodefinder?catId=20700386

I hope you get somewhere you really like and all your house hunting/buying goes smoothly.

Good Luck.

WTF?_2

Generali wrote: »

This might be of interest to those interested in the financial side:

Link

It looks like the market for MBSs might be starting to go again. It'll be interesting to see how it goes. After Goldmans made £2,000,000,000 shorting them last year, it'd be a brave analyst that suggested buying them without some very careful checking.

MBSes clearly have a value - it's just likely to be a lot less than that ascribed to them by the institutions that hold them. As a result, many of the holders are keeping them off the market for as long as they can to avoid taking the hit, and that's the problem.

hgllgh

Generali wrote: »

This might be of interest to those interested in the financial side:

Link

It looks like the market for MBSs might be starting to go again. It'll be interesting to see how it goes. After Goldmans made £2,000,000,000 shorting them last year, it'd be a brave analyst that suggested buying them without some very careful checking.

Do you think the ECB injection of $500 billion into the banking system will just set asset prices spiralling again? I think there was a similar stunt pulled by the Fed some time ago when they printed unprecedented amounts of money and this ocean of cash had to end up somewhere, much of which just ended up in asset prices (real estate). I'm not a financial genious but surely this is false economy? Wealth has to be earned? Or can it just be created for nothing off a printing press ?

jamtart6

Haven't paid much attention to the "credit crunch" thing until now. Hoping to buy a house by the end of 2008 (FTB) and on the news it said prices would come down (not crash) and interest rates would also go down - is this a good year to buy?? I have zero expertise in this area so sorry if this is a stupid question

cafenervosa_2

jamtart6 wrote: »

Haven't paid much attention to the "credit crunch" thing until now. Hoping to buy a house by the end of 2008 (FTB) and on the news it said prices would come down (not crash) and interest rates would also go down - is this a good year to buy?? I have zero expertise in this area so sorry if this is a stupid question

None of us has a crystal ball but I think its pretty clear that the credit crunch is going to have an impact over the next few years at least. I would advise on seeing how things go this year before you set in stone that you are going to buy. Since 2002-2003 house prices have risen so fast its got to a point that it can't carry on, all the evidence of the past leads to the direction of a housing crash for the next few years at least. If the US market is anything to go by then there could be a big crash on the way here too. It's all down to credit and how easy or difficult the banks make it for us to borrow the money, this could have a major impact on prices of the future.

ManAtHome

hgllgh wrote: »

Do you think the ECB injection of $500 billion into the banking system will just set asset prices spiralling again?

Nope - I think the banks will just hoover up the cheap dosh to buy back their dodgy loans - another few trillion of invented dosh and they might see their way clear to throwing a few crumbs around. I'd guess the commercial banks have larger cojones than central "indepenent" (lol) £ankers...