Soldato
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Was it Huddersfield or Liverpool where a whole street of terraced houses was for sale for just a few grand?
house prices + Brexit
- Thread starter SammJ
- Start date
Yes I live in place where houses are very expensiveYawn. We get it, you live somewhere expensive
Could get two of my house for that.
And no it is not great living in a very expensive place like you may think when you cannot afford to own your own house like myself and have to pay crazy rent prices...
You can buy a 4 bed house in Birmingham for £150k
Where I live an OK 4 bed currently goes for over 200K and that has come down a bit a year ago you'd have got little if any change from 300K. 150K currently is bare minimum to get an OK 2-3 bedroom mid-terrace that isn't in a bad area.
£1 each
Doubt it's a house/area most people would like to live in.You can buy a 4 bed house in Birmingham for £150k
Ive been looking for a 4 bed in warwick/stratford/leamington/Shirley and tends to be 4 to 500ish for a nice one. Id rather buy a crap one and gut it tho
Caporegime
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You can buy a 4 bed house in Birmingham for £150k
Near me a 4 bed in a semi decent area where you still have quite a few undesirables a 4 bed is easy 230-270k for a cheap one the more modern ones are 300-350k.
However you can get a massive 5 bedroom house in a very good area for 420k where there is only decent people and a top school.
I'm in Glasgow.
There are dumps though where I'm sure you can get a 4 bed flat or terrace for like 60k if you really want to live amongst people who are complete filth. They sell 1 bed flats there for 15k.
Cheap houses usually means terrible area. It seems these days it takes minimum 250k to get into a decent area and that will only get you a 1 or 2 bed apartment. This is in Glasgow.
But the more cash you have you get a lot more for your money. As in it's a buyers market for rich people who want fancy houses. The average person will pay 100-300k for a house. It's after that barrier you tend to get a lot more value for money as then the average person around here won't or cannot pay that much.
Or it's cheap because it's in the middle of nowhere. As in I've seen massive 5 bed houses cheap as chips 250k because it's a 45 minute drive into Glasgow.
Location matters so much I could show you the exact same house 1-2 miles apart and one is worth double the other.
If you can find a cheap house for sale in the UK the location won't be a nice one guaranteed you get what you pay for with a house.
London is a different story and tbh I don't understand why people don't just move. The place is literally my idea of hell.
Pollution, constant traffic jams, can't park anywhere, stupidly high prices for everything from insurance, taxis, food, houses and parking, etc. The list goes on forever.
People in London who do the same job as me earn £6k more a year. However they will never have a nice car or a large detached home or the spare time I do.
I see a lot of jobs now moving away from London because less are willing to put up with all that for the modest increase.
The only ones who can enjoy London are those earning minimum £60k a year that is both partners in a relationship so household income of minimum £100k+ a year. I dont see how all the rest wouldn't be happier elsewhere.
I actually really enjoy living and working in London... in short bursts - living there long term would be hell.
I've seen some of the bigger houses around here carved up rather than sold - my Grandparents former house was on the market for mid 600K IIRC and wasn't selling but someone bought it and turned it into 4x ~300K dwellings and they all sold pretty much instantly. Same happening to the pub down the road - being redone as 6 flats and a developer has bought mine and the neighbours house and plans on putting IIRC 10 dwellings on the land - probably around 200-300K each and they will sell at that price
Caporegime
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I actually really enjoy living and working in London... in short bursts - living there long term would be hell.
I've seen some of the bigger houses around here carved up rather than sold - my Grandparents former house was on the market for mid 600K IIRC and wasn't selling but someone bought it and turned it into 4x ~300K dwellings and they all sold pretty much instantly. Same happening to the pub down the road - being redone as 6 flats and a developer has bought mine and the neighbours house and plans on putting IIRC 10 dwellings on the land - probably around 200-300K each and they will sell at that price
Same thing happening all over the world. Like in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Nobody can afford what is known as a single family dwelling/plot.
It's all multi family dwellings being made on sites you would normally have had a single family plot.
It's the future of the world as land is getting more and more expensive the closer you are to a main city.
I'm Vancouver some areas a detached home is $12million. Richmond starting prices are $1m and average decent house in a fishing village is like $5m.
People earning a normal wage can only dream of buying a house there.
Sums up everything wrong with the housing market. They're places to live, not a damn investment opportunity.
Soldato
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While I agree, employment mobility is an important consideration. In a recession imagine being stuck in negative equity after losing your job. You could be tied to a property in an area with limited job prospects.
A client of mine just bought a row of 21 terraced houses in Accrington for £100k. Easy profit.
OP if I were you I'd just get a fixed rate mortgage for the next ten years and stop worrying.
He didn't say he wanted it as an investment opportunity, just to not lose money. Who wants to end up in negative equity? It's not unreasonable to ask if now is a wise time to buy.
People always seem to forget that if you're on the housing market ladder and not buying your final home, rising house prices end up costing you more than if prices stay flat (generally speaking).
Now is a good time to be a buyer. We've viewed 10+ houses over the past year or so and we've seen a combo of (some) nervous sellers and good mortgage rates. I suspect the noise around Brexit will outweigh any actual impact so we're looking to buy sooner rather than later before interest rates go up.
I want to get our current house paid off as much as possible before moving somewhere else in the next 5 or so years as I've just fixed my mortgage for 5 years again.
Hopefully it works out for me and Brexit doesn't balls it all up.
Hopefully it works out for me and Brexit doesn't balls it all up.
Caporegime
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There is only 4 detached houses for sale in my area. It's a sign that either people aren't selling as much or people are desperate to buy.
2 of the above houses have been up for sale for over a year (overpriced) 1 of which has been up for 2 years (extremely overpriced).
So there is a real shortage of homes up for sale. If I needed to buy I'd be trying to do so asap. Prices are going to go up in a shortage.
We put ours on the market recently - had 7 groups of people view it over ~30 hours the first weekend after putting it up for sale. Probably helped we priced it keenly as we wanted to get the ball rolling but even then a lot of people were struggling to offer at that price (not just trying to negotiate down).
Where we are moving to, which is double the price we are selling at, they've been struggling to find a buyer for ages but as the previous occupants are going their separate ways they have no choice but to sell.
Caporegime
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So you reckon people can no longer afford to buy and we have peaked in terms of house prices and brexit will bring a crash?
I reckon since the house you are buying is out of most people's budgets is why its struggling to sell you are in a strong position to negotiate.
In terms of your own him that you are selling you should be able to sell for a good price when the right buyer comes along.
Plenty of detached houses have been coming up in the areas we've been looking at. We've made a few low-ball offers and had one accepted which we were surprised about. I think a lot of people realise there's a gap between buyer/seller expectations currently so where there's a need to sell prices are being cut or lower than nornal offers being accepted.
Not really sure on a bigger scale but definitely around here people have been pushed closed to breaking point and prices seem to have peaked for now - no idea what will happen come Brexit though.
The only real criteria I'd suggest for buying a house is to make sure it's somewhere you'll expect to be for the next 5-10 years at least. If you can, and have the income/savings to do it, then it's probably always a good time to buy.
Regarding a house price crash it seems unlikely. If it does happen expect the BoE to fire up the printing presses and inflation to spike again (should mean wages also rise)! Banks are basically kept solvent by mortgage debt so a price crash will be avoided at all costs!
As far as I can see house prices peaked about 10 years ago and haven't really changed much since then. Based on that now doesn't feel like a bad time to buy IMO.
But yeah, nobody can predict the future and anything can happen!
Regarding a house price crash it seems unlikely. If it does happen expect the BoE to fire up the printing presses and inflation to spike again (should mean wages also rise)! Banks are basically kept solvent by mortgage debt so a price crash will be avoided at all costs!
As far as I can see house prices peaked about 10 years ago and haven't really changed much since then. Based on that now doesn't feel like a bad time to buy IMO.
But yeah, nobody can predict the future and anything can happen!
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