Steve vRS

I'm in a similar position to you Loz having had to buy close to the peak of the market in 2005 due to a need to relocate from Cumbria to Cheshire. However, I'm overpaying the mortgage, haven't got any loans since kicking the Impreza habit and at the end of the day, my house is a home first, asset second. So, with 2 small kids, one who attends the local (very good) primary school and a cat, I'm not going to sell up and move into a rented house in order to ride any, highly unpredictable and unquantifiable house price change.

Steve

PeteBrant

If you have no requirement to move, then you don't need to worry anyway. It always amuses me when people sell up the second they sniff danger that thier property price is going to fall. It's all relative - Even if the value falls 30-40% it will come back and then some eventally. So if you have no need to move, why play the game? Stay put and things will come good for you again.

GOLDMAN 555

20% of all new mortgages written last year were either “subprime” or were “made to a homebuyer who offered no proof of income” reports the FT.
Hmm. And the pundits are still trying to argue that the UK has no subprime problem?

The data comes from the Intermediary Mortgages Lenders Association (which represents mortgage brokers who sell such mortgages). The group’s executive director, Peter Williams, acknowledges that “we didn’t really have a mortgage market for the credit-damaged in the 1980s”. That’s not all. Last time there was a house price crash we had far fewer self-employed people with ‘self-cert’ loans (which are no different to the ‘liar loans’ we keep slating the Americans for). And then of course, there were also far fewer buy-to-letters.

As the FT points out: “The likely fate of these borrowers has not been tested in a recession.”

This is not going to be pretty...

Dream Weaver

Must be true if its in a newspaper then

Sarah Beenie was asked about house price drops on Something for the weekend - she said they may drop slightly this year, but in reality nobody knows, and that includes all the "housing experts" on SN.

Prices may fall, but it will be across the board and most people who actually have a house as their home won't be too worried.

GOLDMAN 555

Excellent comparison……….

The Financial Times taking data from some of the best economists in the world.

Sarah Beeny ia a blonde bird of the television with big baps. I wonder why she isn't quoted in the Financial Times or the Economist very often.



You can just hear the CEOs of the major banks in Canary Wharf talking right now....

"We have heard from the Federal reserve, the Bank of England and the European Central bank. But hold what about that top-heavy bird from the telly"

Sarah what do you think about the downward pressure on the pound caused impending burst of the housing bubble caused by 15 years very cheap money excessive growth in the buy to let market??



Sarah Beeny: I don't know?? but look at the coathangers on these bad boys... oh and you've gone well over budget on your bathroom!!

Dream Weaver

LOL, I'd rather listen to the bird with big baps (that runs a huge development firm) than the geeks from the finance places that have been going on about house price crashes for 5 years now

The FT could still be bull****ting though

They mention self cert mortgages being similar to the Liar loans in the US, but that is plainly wrong so why cant the rest be wrong?

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

there will be a crash. it will happen in the UK. the effect will be houses are worth less for a while. It will happen before i get my pension

there, now please pay me my big fat cheque

MikeCardiff

iTrader: (2)

Bird with big baps who co-runs a development firm that havent bought any properties in the last couple of years because they were so overpriced they didnt see a profit in them ( they make most of their money from renting out properties they bought cheap years ago - when they were cheap apparently).

She often said on Property Ladder that she looked for a 10% return on a property investment, which doesnt leave much margin if prices drop a bit in the couple of months it takes you to do the place up.

It does amuse me though when people mention property prices falling, and all these people seem to be convinced this will never happen, and back it up with statistics, often from some source that has a vested interest in tying to make people believe that prices will only ever go up.

Lets face the facts - price rose steadily for a number of years, as is normal, then suddenly shot up over the past 5 years, a lot of it fuelled by easy lending with no questions asked - so why believe they couldnt fall back to an equivalent level to they would have been had this sudden increase not happened ?

I think the people who refuse to believe prices can ever drop are those who fell for the 'release your equity' con and spunked it all on Plasma TV's, 3 holidays a year and a new BMW, and now have no equity left on a mortgage they couldnt afford in the first place.

PeteBrant

BBC NEWS | Business | UK house price slowdown continues

Brendan Hughes

Yes Pete, but we all know that the BBC is a New Labour government propaganda mouthpiece that talks up house price rises in order to artificially support a flailing economy that Brown single-handedly ruined over the past 10 years, so we can immediately ignore that report.


Oh, wait a sec...

PeteBrant

Petem95

I always find comments like this amusing! So the experts predict house prices will crash in 2005 - they don't due to various factors such as the ever-increasing availability of cheap credit, and people think "the deadline has passed!" - they didnt (so now wont) crash!!

The housing market is like someone who is going to go bankrupt sooner or later - they're behind with all their payments as they cant afford them, but then they get accepted for ANOTHER loan, so it keeps them going a bit longer... but sooner or later they'll go bust, and the longer it goes on, the bigger the bust.

Why should the UK housing market be any different to those in the US, Ireland, Japan, Spain? It's not - sooner or later its going to go pop (IMO the crash began a few months ago, and will gather pace). You can make an educated 'guess' as to when, or like Terminator X etc you can kid yourself that somehow prices will rise forever and ever and ever and you'll become rich beyond your wildest dreams!

john banks

Deep, your and my PM are full LOL.

I don't think you've missed it any more than I have. The delay for me (I wanted to invest in November) has been working out what form to buy it in.

Goldmoney looked good but after I signed up it needed complex ID verification which was a PITA. Physical gold is a pain with transport, assays, insurance, dealing costs etc.

In the end I opened a trading account with selftrade. The fee is £12.50 per trade. It takes a few days to get your passwords back when you firts sign up for selftrade.

ETFS is a company that sells exchange traded funds. There are better definitions of ETF through google than I could give you. Barclays ishares are another. They have no stamp duty, and the bid-offer spreads are very tight. I am looking at PHGP (gold in sterling) and PHAG (silver in dollars). You just deposit money from your switch card and then can live trade. The gains are subject to capital gains tax.

If you have secure storage, then gold sovereigns (because they are sterling) should not be susceptible to CGT.

Dream Weaver

But you and the other "SN experts", which are woefully different to the real experts, have been spouting this same old clap trap on here since 2000 - "ooh, house price crash is coming next year" and so far there has been nothing, so do you blame us all for laughing at it every single year when this same post arrives.

Yes, house prices may drop slightly but I'll eat my hator my house if there is any sort of significant house price crash in the next few years, and I'm talking big percentages, not just these sily 0.9% fall figures that people talk about.

The SN doom mongers are trying to make out that house price will fall this year by 50% and we'll all be homeless and have to live on the streets because we've all lost out on some money, when the truth is that 99% of us won't be affected by any house price monements AT ALL, in the short of long term.

Even if prices fall 20% across the board, and any of us are thinking of moving, the next house we go to has been affected by the rise/fall so its all relative.

The only people affected by any so called crash are investors, and regardless of what all the wannabe property developers reckon on SN, there are very few people that will be affected here.

Terminator X

iTrader: (7)

I've NEVER said that prices will rise forever! You & your cronies have been posting for years about a drop (see Lewis's post back in 2004) & it has yet to happen. No doubt it will do one day (& my millions will turn to dust) however that doesn't prove you right as you got it wrong 5 years ago & have just been posting the same thing every week or so. I can say without any doubt that the sun will implode at some point ... the trick is to get the prediction right rather than repeat it week after week

TX.

pslewis

Morning UncleBuck.

A crash was predicted by me a few years back and it is about to happen this year, or next

If I said in 2005 house prices were too high then they were too high IMO - that means, simply, that the fall will be much bigger the longer this goes on.

Slowdown is all around, Labour no longer has a leader worth his salt, the Tories couldn't run a coffee shop IMO, the writing is on the wall.

What I can say is that some of us have the courage to put our heads above the parapet now and again ...... so you can take cheap shots at us .......... carry on

fast bloke

Pete - You said in 2002 that there was going to be a crash...... fair enough putting you head above the parapet now and again, but do you not think it would be a good idea to duck after you take the bullet a couple of dozen times

Do you honestly believe that we will ever see house prices return to 2002 levels, or 2005 levels

GOLDMAN 555

Markets always overshoot too far on the upside and downside.

Many people predicted the crash a few years ago however the governments around the world pumped in billions of dollars of liquidity into the system to stop a recession. This is a fact.

They can't really do the same thing this time.

You shouldn't be having a go at the people who are predicting a crash you should be having a go at the Government-BBC, Channel 4 with their you never had it so good and property **** shows. Causing people to seriously leverage their houses.

What would happen if interest rates went to 10%???? Believe you me with inflation like it is 10% is not a wild fantasy is becoming more and more likely over the next few years.

When Sarah Beeney was jumping around with her puppies in sacks those other **** jockeys location location location telling everyone how great property was there was no mention that 10% might be a reality in the future.

Brendan Hughes

Dream Weaver

But just because house prices are high, doesn't mean we are all mortgaged to the hilt does it?

We have a very low mortgage, and plenty of savings so a 10% interest rate would do us a lot of good, personally speaking.

I can't imagine there are many people that are over stretched, maybe down in London, but certainly nobody I know is over stretched up here. Oh, and house prices are still rising up here even though this massive "crash" is coming

lozgti

I know its only my view but I think totally the opposite.A nation living on credit using credit cards to pay bills and juggling everything around.

I think the people who have sat tight,not been swept along by the easy credit times,re mortgaging,getting new cars on finance are few and far between.

One IFA I know has only been doing re -mortgages this year so far.I know we are only 2 weeks into the new year and property is quiet but everyone I deal with is saying exactly the same thing.Everyone is worried

kingofturds

iTrader: (1)

1.4 trillion of consumer debt, i'd say that is a fair stretch

Dream Weaver

I could be wrong then

I personally owe nothing except the mortgage, so I just assumed most folk would be the same as I know most of my mates are the same.

Mind you I don't waste money on cars, gadgets etc and tend to live with an eye on "what ifs", and have plans for any failings, job losses, money issues, disasters etc.

Dream Weaver

Your last line interests me - everyone is worried about what? And why is doing re-mortgages a bad thing, are you assuming they are all because people are skint?

We re-mortgage every 2 years to get a better deal and to reduce our term, nothing to do with needing extra cash.

Terminator X

iTrader: (7)

It's not a cheap shot ... you were wrong!

TX.

lozgti

Building societies/Banks got wise to the 'rate tarts' or whatever they called them.

New deals aren't so good or you pay large arrangement fees for most to secure one.

One big problem raised was people coming off good fixed rate deals and being faced with big increases in repayments.The b of E rate might be 5 ish % but most mortgages seem to be about 7+ %.

Don't know why they are remortgaging.Release more equity to pay Christmas off?

Bottom line is in the housing market ,conveyancers,estate agents,IFA's,they all seem to be concerned at the moment

Chris L

Dream Weaver - you are part of a sensible minority. Unfortunately this isn't the case for a lot of people. Yes, it may be concentrated in the South East, but it will hit. There are a number of circumstances that haven't been tested as yet and we've never had a mortgage market made up of so many people who can't prove their income and the massive increase in buy-to-let coupled with falling rental returns.

You also have to consider that housing / mortgages is only part of the problem. What we're not seeing yet is the effect of the consumer credit debt mountain - the first signs are there - full on profits warning from Amex and a couple of others. It's the combination of people who are max'd to the hilt on both mortgage and consumer debt that will be hit.

There is also the first signs of a general slow down in the economy (look up the comments of Stuart Rose of M&S, who normally acts as a pretty good barometer of the UK economy).

Economies and housing prices work in cycles, so it is natural that housing prices will come down at some point - by how much? Who knows? I doubt the doom mongers 50%, but 10% this year is certainly possible - that will push a lot of people into negative equity and fuels panic.

As regards mortgage interest rates - the BoE primary concern is to control inflation and not to make the lives of mortgage payers easier. They have very little room to move at the moment and mortgage rates will continue to be largely dictated by inter bank lending (which is high, as the banks aren't lending to each other at the moment). Also remember that we have a very large trade deficit which means Gordon can't spend his way out of this either.

This is also why gold and other precious metals are doing so well at the moment - in times of economic uncertainty, metals are the safe haven and their values will increase dramatically (some analysts predict that gold could hit $1100 by the end of the year).

If anyone wants to read some well informed and well written articles on the economy - have a look at Investing, Investment Advice and Financial News - Money Week - I've followed them for ages and they have been very accurate in their forecasts. Most of their stuff is very well researched and well written.

Steve vRS

Why would I want "well informed" opinion when I have Scoobynet to refer to! I believe that it's the fault of the Muslims and a way for the government to raise taxes....



Steve

Dream Weaver

That must depend where you live then, or which banks you deal with - we've just done a re-mortgage with C&G to a better rate and it cost £200

[Davey]

Be interesting to hear the original posters opinions in 6 months time