zip106

... oh yes!


Denial Still Rife *sigh* - House Price Crash forum

NotoriousREV

Jesus, that forum is only one step away from having "what's the best way to kill myself" section.

Henrik, if you want a house with a garage go and bloody find one, get a mortgage you can afford and enjoy living in your home. The only time a housing price crash makes any difference is if you're selling or expect to sell short term.

Stop sitting in a darkened room willing the prices down, just get out there and make some silly offers. It's a buyers market now

jjones

and as he has been a memeber there for nearly 4 years it cannot be healthy obsessing over such things.

Henrik

iTrader: (5)

Oh noes, I've been outed However, I'm not paying 1500-2000 / month for a house with a garage, so no, I'll stick to my guns for now, if it's all the same to you.

And so what if I've been a member for four years? I've learnt more about economics there than I have from NSR.

Wanting a fairly priced house is not doom merchanting - wanting people to pay too much for 25 years is

MJW

Have you posted pictures of lots of 'for sale' signs in the really handy 'House Price Crash Photo Gallery' forum ?

Henrik

iTrader: (5)

I'll suggest to web master that we create one

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

LOL and I thought ths place was bad for doom mongering. What a sad bunch, makes you realise we are only playing at it in NSR

Timwinner

iTrader: (3)

This is now my new news channel

Happy News

NotoriousREV

OK, see you in 5 years when you'll have to pay £2000 - £2500

BTW, I only pay £800 for a 4 bed with double garage and I bought at the top of the market. London sucks

al4x1

yep those who talk doom are the same ones who have been waiting for this crash for 10 years, when they could have bought at a sensible price, now their mortgage would have got cheaper and they could have paid off at least 40% of the mortgage so have an asset. But instead they're still there now hoping the prices will drop to twice what they were 10 years ago so they can have another go. In the meantime they've paid someone elses buy to let mortgage for 10 years and have nothing to show for it. My advice would be to grow a pair and look for a good deal you can afford. They are out there and if you pick a house you will be able to stay in long term even the most pesimistic shouldn't feel they will loose out. Mortgages are cheaper than they have been for ages you can fix for 10 years if you are really risk averse. However you could sit back and wait for prices to fall to what you feel are realistic and still be sitting paying someone elses mortgage in another 10 years.

Henrik

iTrader: (5)

Whoa! Where do I start?

1. I have not been waiting for the crash for 10 years. I haven't even been in a position to buy until a couple of years back. Don't forget that I'm an immigrant and came here with essentially nothing (apart from some computer skills and an unfinished education) when I was 21, so it's taken me some time to actually:

A) figure out that I want to stay in England (buying otherwise would be madness)

B) Do lots of other stuff I wanted - e.g. buy a new subaru, travel a bit, save some money etc

C) support my wife through education (She's British before you all start).

D) Various other reasons for not buying earlier (e.g. we weren't sure where-abouts we wanted to live anyway, and we're still not 100% sure)

To me, as a Scandinavian Johnny F, this British urge to own a house looks like complete madness "You paid *what*?!!? For *this*?!?")


2. Thanks for your advice on growing a pair. In my opinion I had a pair when I refused to be scared into buying some unsuitable ****box at whatever cost because "otherwise I'd miss the boat and never be able to afford anything". It takes courage and conviction in your own beliefs to not do something (almost) everyone tells you is wrong (when deep inside you know that you're right).

3. With regards to paying someone else's mortgage... My rent is less than an interest only mortgage would be at the moment (for the same house), even if I could get a 4% deal. This does not include maintenance and buildings insurance etc.

4. Having paid someone else's mortgage for the last couple of years has enabled us to save up a nice deposit. Yes really, I haven't spunked it all on cars although my wife has to reign me in at times to prevent me doing it. At the moment, we have a big enough deposit to move into what could be our "final home" - no 100% mortgages anymore, remember, so you'll need one of these! So, in a way, we already own a big chunk of our future home, we just haven't moved in.

5. Your advice of "look for a good deal you can afford" is an oxymoron. There are no good deals at the moment (or very few, and none of them look attractive).

6. Mortgages may be cheaper than they have been in the past, but they now require a big deposit. Not many FTB's have a big enough deposit (after paying solicitors costs, moving costs etc) to move into even a starter home.

7. "buy long term you can't lose": If I was to buy now and pay say 250k pounds, and the house prices dropped down to even only 200k (50k is more than a years work for me after tax), I would have lost out because I could have bought the house for 50k less and had to work *two* years less to pay it off due to the extra interest I'd have to pay on the 50k.

8. Why would I want to fix for 10 years anyway? The problem isn't the affordability of the mortgage, it's the principal sum. I don't care if I have to pay 2000 or 1500 or 1000 a month as long as the principal is small so that I can pay it off quicker.
If my mortgage was 20k but I had to pay an interest rate of 100% (making the repayment 1667 pounds per month), that would be preferable to borrowing 200k at 8% (1561 pounds per month), even though the monthly cost is lower for the second example.

9. California is down more than 50% since the peak (http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogsp...-january.html). Yeah, California is not the UK, but it shows that house prices do fall fast and hard in places.

10. "In ten years time I could still be paying someone elses mortgage". I'll take my chances, thanks. If we get back to a situation of 100% mortgages with money being freely given out to anyone with a pulse, I'll reconsider, but before that I'm holding off.


My whinge over at housepricecrash.co.uk is more to do with my frustration of the speed of the collapse rather than it actually happening at all (I'm sure house prices are going down and I can point to multiple sources of information that confirm this). It's frustrating to wait, but deep inside I know that it'd be wrong for me and my wife to jump in now, even if we could (have deposit and everything else that's needed to get a big mortgage)

We could afford to buy, but we're not prepared to do it at the current prices. If we were to lose our jobs, I want to be able to pay the mortgage with a shelf stacking job if required.

Henrik

iTrader: (5)

so there!

555_STI

Its a gamble either way in my opinion. Either you gamble on buying a house and risk it goes down and you lose money, or you gamble on NOT buying a house and they just keep on increasing.

Getting a giant mortgage now just because the interest rate is low, is probably not a good idea if you can just about afford it now. Simple reason being that the interest rates wont stay so low

Best thing to do is make a decision based on your finances and stick to it. I decided to buy a house 3 years ago and yes I have probably lost a fair bit of money on it if you look at it right this minute. I just figured that I wanted a place to live and eventually it will be mine I do think however the house prices around where Henrik lives are extremely overinflated. The government is simply trying to keep them there so as to not lose face (hence the cut in rates)

The sick thing is that people like Henrik who dont have a house are funding the economy (via tax money that Brown is giving to the banks to pay bonuss?!??!) and the loss in taxes, to keep the prices high Also meaning that they cant afford to get into a house (think of all those young first time buyers!) Talk about fecked up.

Why bankers leave a bitter taste | The Sun |News|Columnists

Could have been worse, I could have saved money in an airtight insitution like a bank or bought stocks and shares, invested in Iceland etc :P I read about a guy who bought 200K's worth of swedbank shares that are now down to a value of around 25K. They might go up, they might not. At least I can live in my house

Having to pay those withdrawal fees AND getting no interest PLUS paying all kinds of hideous charges here and there, I reckon put the money in a mattress, it will probably be a better investment