I am on the road at the moment, so no time to chart the latest Nationwide price index. However, come the weekend, and I have time, this latest number will make for a very pretty picture. Prices are coming down; liberation is at hand....
House prices fell by 1.8% in February as confidence in the UK property market failed to pick up, according to the Nationwide building society. The lender said that the average UK property had fallen in value by 17.6% over the past 12 months, to £147,746.
Although cuts in interest rates have made mortgage repayments cheaper for some, this has yet to be seen in increased sales, it said. But it added that "curiosity" in the market was growing.
On the road! Alice; are you a rockstar by day, blogger by night?
ReplyDeleteYup. Down by 21% since October 2007, I'm going to sit out the next year and a half and then think about buying again.
ReplyDeletePlease don't be so negative.
ReplyDeleteHouse affordability is rising!
Hi Alice - do you remember those discussions about when an annual drop of twenty per cent would appear? Add in inflation and here we are...
ReplyDeleteB. in C.
Those figures do not reflect the effects of accelerating unemployment.
ReplyDeleteI expect the 20% drop we have seen so far, will pale into insignificance by the time we hit the bottom.
Anyone buying now deserves to get shafted !
I purchased my house in 1994. I bought somewhere to live, not an investment. I've watched the prices rise, I'm happy to watch them fall. I really couldn't give a tuppeny about prices dropping, in fact I think it's a good thing. The houses in my street are two bed terraced. They should be worth 40K so anyone in their 20s could buy one and start a family or whatever. At one insane point they were going for 300K..utter nonsense. Not everyone with a mortgage looked on their purchase as an investment...well, not me anyway.
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm not so sure about are the statistics from people like Nationwide.
ReplyDeleteIn some towns the prices 'in the window' havent changed so much...perhaps there is a little bit of media driven bottom fishing to try and bait the market.
At some point prices will suddenly switch to the new paradigm...window prices I guess are the estate agents last bastion.
I personally consider NW figures to be the most reliable out of a bad bunch.
ReplyDeleteAs to 'estate agents' windows', clearly they are pitching them too high as sales are down by well over half their long run averag. NW figures are at least based on actual agreed prices.
Obviously there are regional differences but yeah, it's a bloody good thing. I'd kinda guess that the irony is that the people who are in -ve equity are ones which needed to move due to expanding families, jobs or first time buyers i.e people who are more likely to stimulate the curve.
ReplyDeleteEstate agents' offices round here (Hampshire) are almost like the Marie Celeste. One negotiator in each, tops, and maybe a girl to answer the phone and mind the shop when he takes an extended lunch-break to peruse the sits vac at the Job Centre.
ReplyDeletePrices are still falling, and anecdotally lots of houses just can't be sold and get taken off the market after a few months.
I live in London and have seen no change in house prices. They haven't budged down at all. Have lots of money (£50,000 deposit) but couldn't afford a closet around here.
ReplyDeleteAgreed with posts above...Nationwide are quite accurate so it seems.
ReplyDeleteHere in Strasbourg prices have dropped but I think people are trying to hold out, thinking that the same will happen as when the euro rate was dropped down to 2% to get Germany out of recession in the early 00's, causing house prices to easily double in 5years. I think it might be a little different this time!
To quote Niall Ferguson from his article 'There Will Be Blood' also..
“One possibility is that policy makers are lying in order to encourage people and prevent depression from become a self-fulfilling psychological conditions. That's why it's called a depression … Maybe they don't really believe this, but they're saying it in order to cheer people up, and if they're sufficiently consistent, perhaps people will start to believe it, and then it will magically happen.”