A clear, rational analysis of the future of housing prices

EdInvestor

Generali wrote: »

You seem to be very clued up EdInvestor. What's your take on prices? Do you think they're sustainable at this level in real (or nominal) terms or could they rise further? .

They were certainly due for a protracted standstill last summer, particularly in parts of London. But there's massive variations in price movements over the country - some places hit their realistic limit vis a vis local and/or investor spending power at the time of the last protracted standstill in 2004/5, and have barely moved since. It seems unlikely these places need to fall by much, as they are already down quite a bit in real terms.

IMHO the market is so distorted by the credit crunch/mortgage famine at present that it's not giving a true picture of genuine supply or demand.Asking prices are also being distorted by people making silly offers, so real prices on non-distressed sales are hard to determine. The LR is less distorted than most IMHO, showing fairly mild corrections in mainly overheated places.Of course it also showed a weaker boom as well.

Things won't really become clear until the lenders get their houses in order IMHO. That looks like Q4 at the absolute earliest..

lostinrates

EdInvestor wrote: »

.....As mentioned, all property is local. The best way of studying your own market is probably to get to know a few estate agents and chat to them regularly about what's going on in terms of sales, prices etc. (They don't have much else to do at the moment!)

Not for everyone - there are oddities We have a number of options we are considering with what we look to buy and are flexible in location for most of those options. To get friendly with agents in ALL of our locations would be impossible, its hard enough keeping tabs through the major property portals is pretty all consuming as it is for such a variety of options.:o I read some economic press and try and look at the market as a whole. I am no terribly economically astute though, and tryig to translate the effects of a wider market to what we are interested in is very hard.

Conrad

housepricecrash.co.uk had some visionary posters who wrote threads with titles such as 'The Comming Credit Crunch' as lonmg ago as late 2004!

Dr Bubb and Financial Planner were 2 of the lead visionaries, indeed FP is often interviewed by the Beeb now.

I started a thread there in 2006 talking about bad lending contagion. The bulls all told me UK lending was far more prudent than US, however as I'm on the frontline I knew otherwise.

Makes me laugh that all of a sudden everyone is saying "it was alwasy goona crash"!! Ah, hindsight.

Ray Boulger and others argued against finnancial planners view on air last year claiming he was ott and a crash out of the question.

WTF?_2

Conrad wrote: »

housepricecrash.co.uk had some visionary posters who wrote threads with titles such as 'The Comming Credit Crunch' as lonmg ago as late 2004!

Dr Bubb and Financial Planner were 2 of the lead visionaries, indeed FP is often interviewed by the Beeb now.

I started a thread there in 2006 talking about bad lending contagion. The bulls all told me UK lending was far more prudent than US, however as I'm on the frontline I knew otherwise.

Makes me laugh that all of a sudden everyone is saying "it was alwasy goona crash"!! Ah, hindsight.

Ray Boulger and others argued against finnancial planners view on air last year claiming he was ott and a crash out of the question.

Also, last year there was no such thing as sub-prime in the UK. News reports stressed that it was purely an American phenomenon.

Watching Panorama on Monday the panel of financial/mortgage experts were openly talking about UK sub-prime which is now acknowledged to be about 5% of the market, though I reckon it's much higher.