House prices fall 2.5 per cent!

nutmegman

Olivia2008 wrote: »

BAD FOR OWNERS - GREAT FOR BUYERS!:T

So what about people who have a house to sell and wish to buy?

Kez100

I have a feeling once the market bottoms out the 95% mortgages will come back - you may have towait though. At the moment the lenders can see prices plummetting and don't want to lend more than they have to as they want to try and retain as much value as possible. If they think prices are a more affordable level they *may* start to give better LTVs.

We still have a long way to go IMO. The credit crunch has hit big time but only time will see some major problems establish themselves - affordability, when remortgages are required or the effect of rising daily costs. That is when people are forced to sell or reposessions hit the markets and the real drops start. Selling a 'normal' house is going to be very difficult, I feel.

Kez100

nutmegman wrote: »

So what about people who have a house to sell and wish to buy?

Moving upmarket - better off (apart from the hassle of a very long wait for a buyer and finding a home that is prepared to drop to a realistic level)

Moving downmarket - worse off but, if downsizing, you have probably been around a while so have massive unrealised equity anyway and, because everyone knows no profit is a profit until actaully sold, who cares?

EdInvestor

It would be interesting to see the figures minus Northern Ireland - down 13.6%. Way out of line with everyehere else.

Generali

EdInvestor wrote: »

It would be interesting to see the figures minus Northern Ireland - down 13.6%. Way out of line with everyehere else.

As of the last census, the population of Northern Ireland was 1,685,267 (link) and that of the UK as a whole was 58,789,194 (link). Thus NI's population is about 3% of the UK's as a whole.

Assuming all parts of the country bear equal weight in the index and that it is proportionate to population, a fall of 13.6% in house prices in NI and them remaining constant elsewhere would lead to the index moving from 100 to 99.54.

I think that implies that UK ex-NI has fallen ~2.0%. I don't create indices for a living though!

SquatNow

EdInvestor wrote: »

It would be interesting to see the figures minus Northern Ireland - down 13.6%. Way out of line with everyehere else.

Shouldn't skew it too much... volumes in NI are virtually zero at the moment.

confused31_2

Kez100 wrote: »

Moving upmarket - better off (apart from the hassle of a very long wait for a buyer and finding a home that is prepared to drop to a realistic level)

Moving downmarket - worse off but, if downsizing, you have probably been around a while so have massive unrealised equity anyway and, because everyone knows no profit is a profit until actaully sold, who cares?

Thats the situation im in, i was looking to buy an house 200,000 and i have got mine up for sale at 160,000, i bought it 8 years ago 70,000.

We now owe about 50,000 on our mortgage and i was going to have an addtional 40,000 mortgage to upgrade.

Now if my house drops 50% to 80,000 and the one i was looking at drops 50% to 100,000 it will mean me only borrowing an extra 20,000.

Im just going to wait and see, ive just had the estate agent on the phone telling me there seems to be a lot of interest in our house from second time buyers who have got there houses up for sale in the first time buyer bracket.

But he also said a lot of people will not view until they have sold their property and there are not many first time buyers out there.

To be honest that is how the wife and i have done it, we viewed one house back in november and then decided it was pointless viewing without selling our own house.

A lot of people view houses and fall in love with them without being able to buy as they havnt sold their own house, i would be really gutted if i was in that situation so thats why i havnt put myself in it,i think a lot of other people are thinking the same.

confused

Tozer

SquatNow wrote: »

Shouldn't skew it too much... volumes in NI are virtually zero at the moment.

Agreed. I think the "national average" is always skewed by regional volumes.

I can't see this being a 2.5% per month fall in a straight line. A lot of people who have had their houses on the market for a while are dropping the price to try and attract buyers. Not very many properties are coming onto the market thereby creating a false drop. Who would voluntarily try and sell now???

I suspect it will ease off so that it will be up to 1% per month. But on very limited volumes.

m00m00

rampant london hpi was allowed the skew the index upwards without a single squeak from the hpi cheerleaders

there's been tinkering with the seasonal adjustments this month too, the SA drop should be about 3.2% if they applied the same methodology they applied last May.

declining sales volumes are always a key part of any housing 'crash' or 'correction'

Generali

m00m00 wrote: »

rampant london hpi was allowed the skew the index upwards without a single squeak from the hpi cheerleaders

there's been tinkering with the seasonal adjustments this month too, the SA drop should be about 3.2% if they applied the same methodology they applied last May.

declining sales volumes are always a key part of any housing 'crash' or 'correction'

Do you know what changes were made? I don't see any reference to this in their methodology bit.