So come on then, who had house price discussions over the Xmas dinner table

mystic_trev

dolce_vita wrote: »

All I hope for now is mrs vita comes back a bit frisky and I get my leg over.

You haven't told us if Mrs Vita was frisky on her return home last night?

dolce_vita

mystic_trev wrote: »

You haven't told us if Mrs Vita was frisky on her return home last night?

She was...............until she saw what i had written on here then she went right off.

bl00dy women - no sense of humour.

gingin_2

My mother "B***** has had her house on the market for 2 years"

Me "Mum, surely if she lowered her price she'd get a sale"

Mother " Oh no, there are doubts about planning permission for a piece of land opposite the house, it's been denied 3 times but there are still doubts"

Me " Yes Mum, surely if they lowered the price they'd get a sale"

Took the kids to the Panto on Christmas Eve, there was even a joke about Northern Rock.

tr3mor

Not around the table but while we were walking off eating too much Turkey my mum advised me not to buy at the moment!

poppy10_2

I got the traditional lecture from the in--laws about how I was throwing away money by renting, just paying off someone else's mortgage, it's much better to get on the property ladder, house prices always go up, look at us, our house has tripled in value etc etc etc.

I've given up trying to explain, I just smile and nod. Better things to do at Xmas.

Biggles

poppy10 wrote: »

I was throwing away money by renting, just paying off someone else's mortgage, it's much better to get on the property ladder, house prices always go up, look at us, our house has tripled in value etc etc etc.

A bit of commonsense at last. It doesn't matter how much your house increases (or even decreases) in value in the short-medium term, the point is that, in 25 years time, you will find that you are no longer paying rent for the rest of your life. I have never seen a difficulty with that concept.

$$$_12

Biggles wrote: »

A bit of commonsense at last. It doesn't matter how much your house increases (or even decreases) in value in the short-medium term, the point is that, in 25 years time, you will find that you are no longer paying rent for the rest of your life. I have never seen a difficulty with that concept.

I don't think anyone - except those who need to move a lot maybe - disagrees with that as an idea. But there are surely better times to buy than others - with rents in comparison to house prices so low and the possibility of a correction apparently imminent it is not necessarily dead money to rent and see what happens for a short while. You could save yourself a lot more than a year's rent if house prices do decrease at anything like the rate which they've increased over the last few years...

Timing is everything.

wii_man1

Ian_W wrote: »

We had smoked salmon parcels stuffed with prawn mouse for starters served with a rather nice Chardonay and the conversation was mainly about the run on Northern Rock, whether Branson will get it or will it be nationalised.

The main course was M&S organic turkey and locally sourced pork shoulder with all the trimmings and a bottle of Sancerre and the conversation turned to whether India and China have "de-coupled" from the US and whether there really is a resources super-cycle.

With the Christmas pud and a slightly over sweet [IMO] dessert wine we'd moved on to the banks rebuilding their balance sheets in the first quarter.

After that we had the usual parlour games like pass the CDO and chase the mortgage but, NO - now you mention it house prices didn't crop up.

How strange!

can i come round yours next christmas the conversation sounds riverting :rotfl:

beingjdc

Biggles wrote: »

A bit of commonsense at last. It doesn't matter how much your house increases (or even decreases) in value in the short-medium term, the point is that, in 25 years time, you will find that you are no longer paying rent for the rest of your life. I have never seen a difficulty with that concept.

Then you need to do some maths!

If you buy and pay off a mortgage, the interest only reduces if you pay extra on top of that interest. If you have that extra, you would have it anyway. You could put it in a bank account after you've paid rent, and then buy a house cheap for cash, probably after less than 25 years.

Or you can build up an amount of cash sufficient that the interest on the money is equal to the rental cost of a house (that's effectively what you do in mathematical terms, when you pay off a mortgage). A mortgage is just a compulsory tax-free savings account.

If you buy a house at the peak of a cycle (say now for 200k) when it would be available at 150k at the trough of the cycle, you don't pay an extra 50k, you pay up to an extra 150k over the life of the mortgage.

If (looking at the house I live in as an example) a 100% repayment mortgage would be £1800 a month, of which £1600 or so would be interest, whereas rent is £1200 a month, then after the first two years, the buyer has £4800 in equity, whereas the renter has £15000 in cash.

If prices have fallen 2% in that time (a conservative estimate), then the buyer is in negative equity, whereas the renter is well on the way to a 10% cash deposit on the new price.

Biggles

beingjdc wrote: »

If (looking at the house I live in as an example) a 100% repayment mortgage would be £1800 a month, of which £1600 or so would be interest, whereas rent is £1200 a month, then after the first two years, the buyer has £4800 in equity, whereas the renter has £15000 in cash.

If prices have fallen 2% in that time (a conservative estimate), then the buyer is in negative equity, whereas the renter is well on the way to a 10% cash deposit on the new price.

You obviously have the advantage over me, with your crystal ball ;-)

Deliberately delaying a purchase (be it houses, shares or whatever) till the price is right is a dangerous tactic and no-one buys 'at the bottom' except by pure chance. But if that's your choice, good luck to you.