Housing market collapse.

This is how it was in the SE in the '80s. 100% mortgages were impossible to get (due to lending best practice) and you had to save a deposit of at least

10% to buy a house. In the SE, prices were such that it was many years before you had the money. People got by, they rented smaller properties than they desired, shared houses (lived on boats!) etc. I'm a (relatively) high earning graduate and I was 27 before I could afford to buy, the idea that 21 year olds should expect to buy a house is just silly IMHO.

Oh and the idea that once they are married with kids, people should be able to afford three foreign holidays and a new wide screen TV each year is also silly (and I know you didn't say that).

tim

Who needs a loan?

The home they downsize to will cost less, the net effect will be pretty megligible.

They are likely to buy a house with the proceeds, which means a cheaper house for them to buy.

Though shit!!!! They can always sell up and stop exploiting people who can't afford to buy.

Rubbish there is already a houseing shortage,

They have been making vast fortunes, it's about time.

The last serious bout of deflation in the UK housing market was in the late 80s. Maybe not actually a crash as such, but then again we haven't yet had a crash this time either.

There's no sense in being obliged to fund your future geriatric care with the value of your house, you may as well spend it. Are they still doing equity-release schemes?

Ie rob the people who have saved to bale out the reckless speculators and spenders? What whill happen when he has robbed all the senible peoples money and gave it to the idiots to spend?

Very reasonable assumption given peoples mindsets regarding house prices.

As in the hand of God????????????

Over what time period ? Cut in half over 20-30 years I can see happening but not overnight unless the whole economy goes into meltdown and that doesn't appear to be happening even in the US (and lets not forget that is where most of the sub-prime nonsense occurred)

Maybe we'll get lucky :-)

Cheers,

John

Plenty of people. Life can sometime throw wobblies.

Rubish. Downsizing from a £200K house to a £100K house will gain you £100K. If house prises halved across the board, that would mean downsizing from a £100K house to a £50K house - IOW your profit is cut by the same amount as the % housing price drop.

Why use the word insane? When there is so much iinsanity in markets using the word insane is meaning less, it depends whether you are sane or insane and it also depends on whether I am insane, so it really is insane to use that word.

1989 was the standard UK 18 year housing cycle. This time it really is different because the whole credit cycle since 1929 is ending. That's why it doesn't need high interest rates or unemployment to cause a bust now.

FoFP

So what, that's why people have saving, to get through the wobbles, anyone relying on a loan to do so needs their head tested.

House prices have gone down by 2.5% so you have lost 1.15% of your pensions fund, assuming that is you were stupid enough to put all you eggs in one basket and leave them in risky investment as retirement approached.

Did I really say "cut"???? I meant hike of course. Yes though, the plan now will be to take the money of the savers to bale out the reckless.

The same that would happen anyway, but our money will go down the drain too.

FoFP

Timing is impossible in credit bubbles, else I'd be posting from my yacht. My thinking is a four or five year bust if the government stays out of it but a long grinding 16-18 year bust a la 1930s if it doesn't.

The latter looks more likely eh?

This isn't just subprime. That's just where the first puncture appeared.

FoFP

Liver damage, but apart from that?

The words of a known sex offender are always listening and *cynic* never fails to lie thru his teeth as usual...he makes it all sound minor. But the plain truth is that pensions funds have lent shares to hedge funds to short, hedge funds that borrowed shares from pension funds have not only seen there share in value go down but will now see the returns on those shares (divis) go down as well.

Pension funds have bore the brunt of the sub prime payback

House prices in my home town are already inflated unreasonably and now they are going to bomb worse than most places. It is not just the credit crunch we have to consider but the number of folks already into negative equity especially those who bought on the waterfront. These folks will be looking for a way out and I feel they will try to get out by citing unreasonable cheating when their properties were described to them. The whole waterfront development is in trouble already as it has been built without taking notice of the Ipswich Docks Acts which forbid anything being within 30 foot of the water around the dock and 40 foot on each side of the New Cut. These spaces are actually highways that are protected by the Ipswich Dock Acts. On top of all this there is no Definitive Map of Public Rights of Way for Ipswich and many houses haved been built upon PRoW. There are numerous houses that haved PRoW running through them and once this becomes known about by mortgage companies they will not be lending anything on an Ipswich property until they know where the PRoW are. It is going to be a blood bath and some new developments will not even be completed:-( pete

There's the Hawkwind collection. You really have no idea how expensive that's getting after 37 years...

FoFP

Patchouli oil poisoning