Its official UK house prices are on the slide - Trevor MacDonald says so

Aye, they do. But only at specialist schools. They're called comprehensives.

Reply to
Ronald Raygun
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Are you sure about those dates. I recall prices in the north-west rising upto 89/90 then falling rapidly (about 30/35% or more) for 2 or

3 years then bumping along the bottom before starting to pick up slowly around 95/96. They really took off in 2002/3 but are slipping back now (particularly with drops in sales volumes between 30 and 70%) and I expect to see them back at pre-2002 levels eventually.
Reply to
Crowley

In message , Crowley writes

Reasonably - try

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and put M16 as the postcode. The property graphs only go back to 1995, from where they were bumping along the bottom to early 99.

Reply to
Richard Faulkner

Ah the 'appeal to authority' argument. As it happens such people have no more knowledge than anyone else, including your cat, what will happen in the future*. Some will be right, but thats simply because there is a span of people forecasting all outcomes, so retrospectively someone always gets it right.

Example; On the 1st Sep UBS (big company, lots of money to do financial research) downgraded a particular companies stock, Sandisk. This is a relatively small company, with known profits, in a defined market with essentially just one product. I can only assume that UBS used its own research and clever analysts (rather than your cat) to perform the analysis and decide to downgrade the stock. On the 8th Sep another analyst firm subsequently issued a downgrade. Since 8th Sep the stock has risen about

10%, and other analysts have issued upgrades today, and expect it to rise another 10-20% at least.

So, if people cant agree or get right what will happen in a confined market space to a single company with a single product, then to use a technical phrase, how the f*ck would anyone have a clue what will happen to the much wider housing market, subject as it is to orders of magnitude more complications?

Reply to
Tumbleweed

The UK is using the same game the U.S. has used for 2 centuries. If the economy or housing slows down - flood the country with immigrants. Another option is have a war. I support Bush more on the war than his and Clintons open-border policy.

Reply to
Acton Cuthbert

They did in August and July, as I posted about a week ago. At least according to the Halifax Bank and the Deputy Prime Minister's Office.

So we have spring blip plus summer blip.

Reply to
davidof

Comprehend what? - it's not exactly a Wittgenstein's Tractatus you've laid out there. Reading instead between the lines there's a strong scent of bias - sorry if I got it wrong.

Reply to
curiosity

I know the guy who wrote part of the piece for the Economist. He sold up his house and moved into rental accommodation four years ago. Go figure.

Reply to
davidof

You're 100% correct - of course nobody knows. But in fairness your OP says he "..expects..." and "...as forecast by.." so this is no more outspoken here than all those vested interests which breezily trot out all sorts of nosense about X% rises over the next Y years yet I doubt the positive spin would get you so hot under the collar.

Reply to
curiosity

I think Crowley is more accurante, maybe Manchester was different - it certainly had a poor reputation until some of the gang problems were tackled in the 90s which may have kept a lid on prices, but the surrounding villages have always been quite sought after.

In the S/E prices dropped rapidly after the dual Miras benefit stopped in 89, I figured they had bottomed around 1993 - at that time the landlord of a flat I was renting in Bayswater begged me to take it off his hands for 110K (twice my annual salary at the time). I was paying

210UKP per week in rent then. The landlord - an accountant - had got badly burned on BTLs. At the same time a four bedroom house in Bournemouth could be picked up for around 50K and a house in Walton on Thames for less than 100K.

Prices then flatlined for a couple of years as people in -ve equity unwound and everyone thought it was the end of the world. I remember they started picking up in 1999 - I bought a 2 bed house in the Oxford area for 49K and sold it for 72K just over 12 months later.

Just some data points. Over the last 12 months I have been looking to move in my home town of Bournemouth and whatever anyone claims negotiated prices for good properties have gone up over that time.

I would love to see a 30-40% fall but over the last 10 years there has been a net inflow of over 1 million people to the south-east so don't think it is going to happen, yet.

The Economist had been calling the previous HPC (the 1989-1992) one for at least two years prior. Based on rental returns and applying the same kind of P/E valuations used on shares they are quite right but booms always overshoot and crashes usually undershoot - fear and greed.

The Economist was also taken in by the lightweight economy and crazy P/E ratios and wrote glowing articles about Enron and Marconi so I don't really think they are that expert.

In other words you are predicting that prices will remain relatively unaffordable?

Reply to
davidof

doesn't that depend on where you put the trend line?

I think quite a few areas were slow to catch on and may still have been reasonable value then.

Reply to
curiosity

You seem to assume a whole lot, and as usual you are incorrect!

GSV replies 'crap' when you say there is a crash, and you 'assume' that he means he *wants* prices to rise, I reply similarily that I doubt there is a crash, and you 'assume' I *want* the same, prices to rise.

Since you really do seem to have problems with comprehension, lets do this very clearly;

The fact that someone states your predictions are crap (but says nothing else), does not, in any way, shape, or fashion, imply that they either

*believe* the opposite of your predictions is correct, or imply that they *desire* the opposite of your predictions to occur. It simply means they believe your predictions of a crash are crap.

So in the case of a crash, no I dont believe there has been a "crash" (falls of a few percent dont qualify as a crash in my book), nor do I believe there is anything authoritative regarding predictions of a forthcoming crash. Maybe there will be, maybe there wont, but those quoting that there will be, appear to have the zeal of Islamic fundamentalists and are as equally unlikely to get their 72-virgin equivalent in house price falls. As someone else posted, the guy from the Economist has already been waiting 4 years for his.

Reply to
Tumbleweed

"curiosity" wrote

Let's look back :-

Hmmm. What is the question "Why?" meant to be asking? - Is it: "Why do you wish for price rises"? If so, then that **IS** assuming that GSV wishes for price rises.

If not, then there is no indication of what you are asking the question "Why?" about!!

Reply to
Tim

curiosity wrote:e them back at pre-2002 levels eventually.

in the North that would probably be the case

Reply to
davidof

Another day another bearish article in the papers or on TV . The increasing talk about falling house prices, negative equity etc in the media must be having an effect on the all-important sentiment. Heres an extract from a centre page spread in todays Daily Mail.............

To buy or not to buy James Coney, Money mail

14 September 2005

BUYING your first home is always fraught, even at the best of times. But with house prices in some regions falling, would it be better to put off that purchase for a few months? James Coney weighs the data to help you tackle this tricky problem.

IT'S NOT easy being a first-time home buyer, and the number entering the property market has dropped to a record low.

Prices are sky-high, with the average first-time buyer paying £157,000, according to Nationwide, and the amount needed for the average deposit rocketing to £17,000.

Go into any bank, building society or estate agent and you will be told: 'It's a buyers' market.' They may insist that renting a property is just flushing your money down the drain.

But this is not always the case. Sometimes renting can save you money and leave you better placed to enter the housing market at a later date.

In a recent survey by the Association of Residential Letting Agents, two out of three renters said that they could not afford to buy a house, while one in three said they were waiting for prices to fall.

This is because they want to avoid negative equity, where the value of the house falls so far that it is worth less than the outstanding mortgage.

Making sense of all the house price data is tricky. Opinions range from those who say the housing market is stable and that there will be no crash, to those who suggest that prices of some properties could fall by one-fifth........continues

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Reply to
Crowley

Even prices down 30% (in real terms) over 3 years only amounts to ~6%/year after inflation is backed out (maybe even less if inflation takes off) .. that doesn't make 'crash' in my books.

Heck, it'd take 2 years of 6%/year before it was even crystal clear they were going down, given the error bars on the price of a house (Watch 'location location' & note how many times houses sell for 10% less, or occasionally 10% more, than 'THE price').

50% in a year - that's a crash, or 90% in . 10% or even 30% is just a correction (OK, 30% is a BIG correction, but still not a crash).
Reply to
GSV Three Minds in a Can

Bitstring , from the wonderful person curiosity said

How do you read between the lines of a one word reply? Gosh, you're failing basic geometry as well as English language.

Let me restate - all the evidence is that house prices are going about sideways .. probably down a bit (based on asking prices) but sideways based on selling prices. This is not 'continue to rise', nor is it 'a crash'. Of course 'going sideways' makes lousy headlines, so (some) idiots feel the need to dress it up one way or the other. Facts, after all, shouldn't interfere with fanaticism.

I personally don't give a hoot what house prices do, I've got one, I live in it, I don't plan to sell it anytime soon, probably never. I can see that further inflation is a problem for many people, and a rapid crash would be a problem for some other people. Doubtless both will come to pass, if you wait long enough, although I'd not hazard a guess at the order.

Reply to
GSV Three Minds in a Can

The YOY figure on most indices (Halifax, N/wide, etc) was showing a rise of around 20% or more a year ago. YOY now is down to +2% or thereabouts (and about -3.5% acccording to Hometrack) so prices have been falling for months and YOY only remains in positive territory because it includes rises from a year ago. When those rises drop out in the next 3 or 4 months the YOY figure will go negative.

Now what effect will that have on sentiment when its reported in the papers alongside job losses, fuel price rises, council tax increases etc.

Reply to
Crowley

Bitstring , from the wonderful person Crowley said

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Or let me help you, since comprehension seems in short supply around here ..

quote:

0 July. This was the biggest monthly gain since September 2004. Prices have increased by only 2.1% in the first eight months of this year compared with a 12.5% rise in the same period of 2004.

0 significant downward trend in underlying house price inflation over the past year from an annual rate of 21.3% in August 2004.

...

Note - in the last 12 months they are up only 2.5% (which I count as sideways, given the error bars). However up 2.5% is NOT, repeat NOT 'down' and they haven't been 'falling for months' if they are up 2.1 % since the start of the year.

Reply to
GSV Three Minds in a Can

"Crowley" wrote

Mail.............

So the worst that will happen is a 20% fall? What's happened to "the crash"??

Reply to
Tim

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