December Rightmove Figures - London 6.8%, Nationally 3.2%

jonewer

ds1980 wrote: »

im not saying there not coming down however a trend is over time it is not a snapshot.

Maybe you should go away and look at the trend in that case! :rolleyes:

July .3
August .6
Sept. -2.6
Oct 2.7
Nov -.7
Dec -3.2

gingin_2

ds1980 wrote: »

Prices won't fall back to reasonable levels. Wage increases will be the way that houses will become more affordable not through "missed the boater's" hoping and praying.

What is you reasoning behind saying this please?

hgllgh

BettiePage wrote: »

I really don't see how Hips are to blame as £2-400 in the grand scheme of a £200k+ property is a minuscule amount.

I agree. Most HIP's are actually between £250 and £299 now anyway as HIP providers compete against each other. The time between the government announcement that HIPs would be needed for 1 and 2 beds and the 14 Dec deadline was a few weeks so it would probably not have swayed enough potential sellers in time to put their property up for sale, after all, its a big decision.

If that's the case then I think this price drop is more significant than the usual December downturn

Rover

Tut.
Don't worry house price's only ever go up, thanks to those nice people who give you multiple times your predicted earnings over the next thirty years.
Trust in the Council of Mortgage Lenders, Northern Rock and Tarquin from the EA's.
In any case London will be completely unaffected - different universe and all that.

SquatNow

Look you've all been told about this before.

HOUSE PRICES ONLY GO UP.

You all know the rules... you are NOT allowed to dicuss house prices falling on MSE. Acceptable topics include "how much more my house is worth than when I bought it" and "How you can become a squillionaire through BTL".

Now this is your final warning. If you keep talking about "house price falls" or "house prices crashes" were going to send the boys round.

MODS: Please delete this thread and cancel the accounts of anyone whos commented on it, read it, or thought about reading it.

Now everyone repeat after me:
House prices only go UP.
House prices only go UP.
House prices only go UP.

tristan727

BettiePage wrote: »

I really don't see how Hips are to blame as £2-400 in the grand scheme of a £200k+ property is a minuscule amount.

So why does no-one question that a straw can break a camel's back?

Obviously it's only a part of it - but it's a completely un-necessary & avoidable part...it wasn't brought on by the sub-prime crisis across the ocean, or other macro-economic forces...it's been imposed by our clueless, spend-happy labour party, who simply couldn't resist the £millions to be spent on administering it.

Aiko_2

BettiePage wrote: »

I really don't see how Hips are to blame as £2-400 in the grand scheme of a £200k+ property is a minuscule amount.

I also don't think Hips are to blame but of course it would have made a difference in the rush to market.

Why would I just give away a few hundred quid if I didn't have to?

And this would have been the big one for me - why would I not to try to avoid an intrusive survey that could say something bad about my property?

firsttimetom

Prices won't fall back to reasonable levels. Wage increases will be the way that houses will become more affordable not through "missed the boater's" hoping and praying.

There is so much wrong with this statement its unreal. If people aren't pending, where is the money for these wage rises going to come from. And if you're thinking 'I don't work in retail, so it doesn't affect me', then you are wrong because it does.

Secondly, I hate it when People say that we 'Missed the boat'. I take it by your user name you were born in 1980, 4 years before me. I'm just 23, I started looking for a house about this time last year, when I was 22. Had I have been born in 1980, I have no doubt that I would have bought 4 years earlier in 2002.

Its not the fact that I missed the boat that you have a property and I don't, it's because you were born at the right time.

boinging_2

ds1980 wrote: »

im not saying there not coming down however a trend is over time it is not a snapshot.

I still wonder where they get these figures from. We bought our house about 1 year ago. According to the house prices in the area it has gone up 10% or so.

So simple maths says that it is now worth £264k.

It is on the market for £340k 2 houses very nearby are on at £360k each and one as mentioned went under offer at £375k last week so i think we're priced relatively well. All 3 bed semi's.

If we sell at £340k then thats 40% increase in a year. £300k thats 25%.


If you can't afford a house now get a better job and save some money until you can. Don't wait on monthly figures! If its a home then what does it matter.

Your maths are simple.... I take it you bought your house for 245k? But I can't tell cause all the %'s come to a different starting price. Anyway, have you done any work to the house?

You may not be seeing it, but trust me house prices are falling. I have now received an email from an estate agent with houses that have been repriced "due to market conditions".

Also I'd cut out the attitude regarding peoples earning power. It's not cool to start telling people to get a better job (what if all the police / nurses / fireman etc went and got "better paid jobs")... I'm waiting for the right time to buy, which trust me isn't now.

fc123

merlinthehappypig wrote: »

I've put this as a link on the HPC thread, but that thread seems to have got swamped by one poster at present so I've been avoiding it.

Full text here from todays FT for those who don't subscribe (and well written and interesting it is too):

This has been the year when many deeply held beliefs have been challenged. One such belief was that central banks have the toolkit to sort out any conceivable economic or financial crisis.
Last week’s co-ordinated liquidity action by five central banks taught us that this is not the case. The idea was that a co-ordinated response would reassure the markets, but it had the opposite effect. It turned out that market participants are not infinitely stupid. They know by now that this is not a liquidity crisis at its core. If it had been, it would be over by now.

It is a fully fledged solvency crisis that has arisen because two giant and interlinked bubbles burst simultaneously – one in property, one in credit – leaving banks and investors on the brink of bankruptcy, some hanging on by their fingertips. Yet there is nothing the central banks are offering at this stage to alleviate a solvency crisis.

So the message from last week is that central banks have no game plan. Expect continued stress in financial markets for most of next year and possibly beyond. Expect also further declines in property prices in the US and the UK and spill-overs to the real economy.

As the European Central Bank correctly noted in last week’s financial stability report, the crisis is not going to be over until and unless there is a turnround in the property sector. But we are not going to see this for quite some time, not even in the US where the property market downturn began in 2006. In the UK, property prices have only recently started to fall.

I looked at the Nationwide house price index for the UK, which goes back to the early 1950s. After adjusting for inflation, the result is a line with two interesting characteristics. The first is that there is a surprisingly stable linear trend, with only a moderate upward shift. Real prices go up over time but not by much, and any deviations from the line are followed by a return to trend. The second is that past bubbles were relatively symmetric – both in extent and in time.

In the UK the latest upward movement has lasted 10 years and on my calculation prices started to rise above the trend line somewhere between 2000 and 2002. That would suggest that the downturn phase is going to last as long – possibly longer since downward moves often undershoot the trend line. Unless there has been some structural shift, there is going to be one of the most serious housing downturns ever.

Homeowners and mortgage lenders are always clinging to the hope that there may have been a structural shift. But even then, it is not at all clear whether such a shift would necessarily raise the position or the slope of the trend line. For example, an increase in housing supply or some regulatory restriction on credit may well lower it.

In an environment in which central banks target a low rate of inflation, the lion’s share of the adjustment will have to come from falling nominal house prices. That was different in the 1970s, when high inflation took care of the real price adjustment. But an inflation-targeting central bank cannot allow that to happen.

This raises the question of whether central banks, or governments, should consider raising their inflation targets. That would be a huge mistake, in my view, but I expect such a debate to hit us next year. Higher inflation would make it easier for indebted mortgage holders to cope with a multi-annual fall in real house prices.

Here is the basic arithmetic. Let us assume that the housing downturn is going to last eight years. A 2 per cent annual inflation rate – the target of many central banks today – adds up to 17 per cent inflation for the entire period; and a 4 per cent annual rate adds up to 37 per cent. So if UK house prices have to fall 40 per cent in real terms – which is not exaggerated given the extent of the bubble – an annual inflation rate of about 4 per cent would take care of the problem. Nominal houses prices would then not have to fall.
This is an experiment I would dearly love to watch, though preferably from outer space. A hypothetical increase in inflation targets would, I think, turn the current episode of turmoil into an uncontrolled financial crisis. Bonds would become the next asset class to crash and we could also expect violent adjustments in global exchange rates.

I suspect that central banks would dearly love to choose the semi-soft option – to allow a temporary overshoot in inflation targets and pray that people do not raise their inflation expectations. But that option has already been over-stretched, given that inflation expectations are already rising everywhere.

The bottom line is that inflation-targeting central banks will end up doing little more than swamp the financial markets with liquidity, and defend themselves against accusations that they had anything to do with this mess.

The above feature is why I visit this forum (despite the fierce and, sometimes, scary posters who lurk! ).

Thanks! I have printed it off to read V.SLOWLY later on and, so, educate myself on the bigger picture................

Will pop on-line later as did a bit of trend stuff for Elle yesterday (yeah, yeah fashion and stuff but trend moods run parallel to all sorts of things including the state of the economy) and if Miss average shopper decrees that "thriffft" iis the new way forward, then Mr Chainstore in the shopping centre and Mr China who supplies him are all in for a tough time.

Thanks merlin whatsit :T