House prices rose 7.3% this year, average now almost £250k

Status
Not open for further replies.
Psycho Sonny said:
You have said many times it was easy for my grandad.
Click to expand...
I'm going to stop you right there because that's not actually what I said.

In fact I'm not even going to bother reading the rest. I have a good idea what it will be.

You'll talk about the hard times your Grandad faced and how it was a strange land full of racism and whatnot.

That's neither here nor there. What I said was that the housing market in your Grandad's day was nothing alike to the housing market today. Which is true.

All the other hardships your Grandad faced are frankly off-topic. Whether he overcame prejudice is a great story for another thread.

e: Similarly, whether Empire screwed up India via partition is another topic for another thread. Only mentioning that since you've already brought it up as a reason British FTB should be screwed over. Karma, I believe? Conveniently and wilfully ignoring that many current prospective FTB are themselves descended from immigrants and had nothing to do with partition.

Even those that are directly descended from Empire officers have nothing to do with the events their ancestors partook in. The whole racism slant you've put on things in 100% uncalled for.
 
Last edited:
Martynt74 said:
Surely if prices drop then people just don't sell due to negative equity and so there's no liquidity and no houses for people to buy, landlords are also more likely to keep renting/buy up more cheap housing because yields will be much higher.
Click to expand...
You're assuming the majority of people will be hitting negative equity due to a price drop? I don't think that's the case at all, but I'm sure as hell not going to bother doing the maths. I'd imagine if you've had a mortgage for 5+ years with a 15%+ deposit you'll probably lose your 'gain' from recent price rises but you're not going to be hitting negative equity at all. Sure, those people might not want to sell but then again if prices are going down across the board then it stands to reason that more expensive houses will drop more and thus be tempting. You also ignored my point about whatever houses coming up for sale will be more affordable to those renting, so there will be an exodus of sorts from the rental market, pushing rents down, yields for BTLers down, which as I explained might start a permanent cycle. I'm seeing a lot more houses and flats for sale around here that were clearly rented previously.

builder22 said:
I’d be interested to know the percentage of people renting who are actually looking to buy vs those who just want to rent with no interest in buying
Click to expand...
I would to. Mainly because I don't know a single person in this country that chooses to rent rather than buying! It's rather forced upon people when it's not possible to buy.

FoxEye said:
Residential property should be for domestic consumption only, as already seen in other countries.
Click to expand...
Agreed.
 
Scam said:
You also ignored my point about whatever houses coming up for sale will be more affordable to those renting, so there will be an exodus of sorts from the rental market, pushing rents down, yields for BTLers down, which as I explained might start a permanent cycle.
Click to expand...

Or it might just balance itself out. Lower house prices mean they are more affordable to landlords too. Even if what you say about rental yields going down is true, the mortgage costs will also go down so overall profit might not be changed much.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
The real issue is wages. Okay so house prices have went up. They have to with supply and demand. You cannot simply build enough homes and will never be able to.
Click to expand...

I'm going to respond to this part only, because you talk a lot of guff and I have to deal with one point at a time :p

Housing demand has a set minimum that cannot change. Minimum housing demand is set by every person in the country needing a place to live in (singular, with minimal exceptions).

Demand can be a lot higher than that baseline, as it is currently, due to lack of controls on who can own/invest in property, for speculation and profit.

But that baseline demand exists completely independently of wages. If wages go up, that baseline demand is unaffected. Every person needs a place to live in.

So what is the current situation? A lot of people on lower incomes need help to pay the rent. They get housing benefits, etc. One of our largest social expenditures is - you guessed it - housing benefit, paid in many cases to private landlords.

What will happen if wages go up? If they go up across the board prices simply inflate (across the board).

If wage rise for the lowest paid, either a) rents go up proportionately and housing benefit is still needed or b) housing benefit is reduced but nobody is better off, bar the saved treasury costs of housing benefit. (B) is the least likely to happen. The most likely is that rents will simply increase.

The lowest paid are already locked out of home ownership (you can't stick a family in a one-bedroom flat). They already pay rents that can greatly exceed what a mortgage might cost them on the same property (they can't get a mortgage).

Increasing wages will do absolutely nothing at all, except allow rents (and house prices) to rise further. Or cause general inflation.
 
Scam said:
Sure, those people might not want to sell but then again if prices are going down across the board then it stands to reason that more expensive houses will drop more and thus be tempting.
Click to expand...

Slightly going off the main raging argument, but I'm always surprised how many people I know have the attitude of absolute delight as their perceived house price is sky rocketing without comprehending that if relative price differences remain the same to trade up then the absolute amount required is growing and so your resultant mortgage when you trade up will be bigger than if they weren't increasing. If you want to climb the property ladder in the conventional way your perfect situation is for prices to not rise until you're in your forever home and then see them increase at a rate of knots.
 
BigT said:
Slightly going off the main raging argument, but I'm always surprised how many people I know have the attitude of absolute delight as their perceived house price is sky rocketing without comprehending that if relative price differences remain the same to trade up then the absolute amount required is growing and so your resultant mortgage when you trade up will be bigger than if they weren't increasing. If you want to climb the property ladder in the conventional way your perfect situation is for prices to not rise until you're in your forever home and then see them increase at a rate of knots.
Click to expand...

Or to be happy about relative price rises, like I was very happy when my London apartment increased in price quite rapidly, I'm not so happy about it stagnating recently and there is a decent chance it will probably fall a bit in the near future, meanwhile, houses in commuter towns outside London are gaining and have likely gained a bit over the course of the pandemic.

I guess one option is to go down the DIY route in a couple of year, bit more risk potentially but it seems there is a bit of a discount to be had that way which might more than compensate for any relative drop or lack of growth in the price of my current place compared with some area I might want to move to.
 
eddiemcgarrigle said:
Now, back on topic. The sooner they bring in rent controls the better. Several SNP MSPs are pushing this through Holyrood in order to curb runaway rent increases in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Click to expand...

FoxEye said:
I'd rather not rely on luck. I'd rather we legislated against things like foreign ownership, have proper rent controls, etc.

And that the govt should stop doing everything in its power to stop the market correcting. Propping it up at every opportunity.

"Communism," as the other chap said :p

(When the govt uses our money to inflate the housing bubble you don't hear them complaining)
Click to expand...

Rent controls are frankly, a terrible idea. They're one of the few things that economists of all flavours agree on not doing. This is a decent starter to their problems https://mises.org/wire/rent-control-history-failure

If we want more reasonably priced housing, and I think we all should want that, they solution is always to build more homes.
This idea I read the other day seems like a good way to encourage that

https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/strong-suburbs/
 
Judgeneo said:
Rent controls are frankly, a terrible idea. They're one of the few things that economists of all flavours agree on not doing. This is a decent starter to their problems https://mises.org/wire/rent-control-history-failure

If we want more reasonably priced housing, and I think we all should want that, they solution is always to build more homes.
This idea I read the other day seems like a good way to encourage that

https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/strong-suburbs/
Click to expand...
I see your link and raise you my own.

German rent control works for both landlords and tenants | Financial Times (ft.com)
 
moon man said:
Up country renters chucking down a full years rent and making a bad situation worse again its took a pandemic for people to see what dire areas they live in, and tragic lifestyles they have doesn't effect me too much apart from watching my own place shoot up in value
https://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/19095373.cornwall-housing-crisis-demand-rental-property-soars/
Click to expand...
Makes for very sad reading.

Local people are being forced to move away, and indeed of my own circle of friends/acquaintances, a lot are questioning if they should even remain in the UK. Some have already left, and those that have are much happier.

The UK is not all it's cracked up to be.

A lot of people in Cornwall are pretty much living a life of economic slavery. Before anyone screams "hyperbole", realise that Cornwall is one of the most deprived areas in the whole of Europe, including former Soviet bloc countries :p (The Tories don't care - Cornwall is just a big beach, right?)
 
BigT said:
Slightly going off the main raging argument, but I'm always surprised how many people I know have the attitude of absolute delight as their perceived house price is sky rocketing without comprehending that if relative price differences remain the same to trade up then the absolute amount required is growing and so your resultant mortgage when you trade up will be bigger than if they weren't increasing. If you want to climb the property ladder in the conventional way your perfect situation is for prices to not rise until you're in your forever home and then see them increase at a rate of knots.
Click to expand...
Indeed. Although if you're in your 'forever' home what good does it do you for it's value to increase? It always makes me think of this quote: "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist" but to put into context here: "The greatest trick successive governments ever pulled was to convince the general public that ever-increasing house prices is a good thing". Not got the same ring to it, mind :p

Simon said:
Move somewhere else then where you can afford a house. Easy
Click to expand...
And what happens when everyone moves to that magic land and it becomes unaffordable? :rolleyes:
 
Judgeneo said:
Paywalled, care to provide a summary on how this is rent control experiment has turned out differently from all others? Which Berlin rent laws does it focus on as well, I believe the law tightened in the last year or two.
Click to expand...
Eh? I was able to read it just fine. Wasn't paywalled for me?
 
FT is paywalled just occasionally lets you read an article or 2 for free - you can sometimes work around it with private browsing, following links from Google or using various adblock/tracking blocking tools but sometimes it just prevents you anyhow due to correctly or incorrectly detecting you as trying to work around its paywall.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom