musehead

My area, Balham/Tooting (zone 3 south London), as an example from my block - A 2 bed flat sold for £490k in 2016, and two sales of similar properties are going through at the moment for £470k and £480k. So prices have dipped slightly in nominal terms (more so if you consider inflation) since 2016. However there was a big price inflation in the years leading up to 2016, so anyone who bought before that are probably not selling at a loss nominally. Anyone who bought before about 2014 are probably not making a loss in real terms either.

This one is down to £650k now. It seems to have been relisted over the summer so the full price history as above is not showing. It's also listed with a local agent, KFH. 3 bedroom terraced house for sale in Byrne Road, Balham, SW12 (rightmove.co.uk) Price Change History 13/10/2021 Price changed from £675,000 to £650,000 06/10/2021 Price changed from £700,000 to £675,000 16/09/2021 Price changed from £725,000 to £700,000 18/08/2021 Price changed from £775,000 to £725,000 09/07/2021 Initial entry found: £775,000

Really interesting looking back at this thread as someone who is thinking of buying a 3/4 bed house in Balham (potentially Hyde Farm although would prefer Wandsworth). I wonder if @Steppenpig decided to buy something - in the OP it says considering buying in 10 years. About 11 years has passed since then. I'm seeing the nicely done up and extended 1500-1800 sqft houses around Hyde Farm, Ormeley Road, Laitwood Road etc going for around £1.2m-£1.4m at the moment. At the other end of the scale for houses, there's a 3 bed for sale on Cambray Road, recently reduced to £950k which looks in pretty bad shape and needs a lot of work: 3 bedroom house for sale in Cambray Road, Balham, London, SW12 (rightmove.co.uk) Looking back at this thread, it seems that prices for houses in this area have increased quite a lot over the past 10 years, but prices of flats have not increased by quite so much.

I feel compelled to drag my account here back out of retirement to defend my home a little bit - I've lived quite happily in this "slave box" with my girlfriend for the past 7 years 😅

Last bid was £300k at auction, did not reach reserve so went unsold.

Streatham has an ugly high street (a busy dual carriageway) and is pretty rough around the edges, a friend bought a reasonable 2 bed flat there very close to the station for £216k a year ago though so it's much cheaper than nearby Balham etc. It's close to Tooting Bec Common, not that far from the Northern line in Tooting, easy to Brixton on the bus. I wouldn't like to live in Streatham personally, I managed to find somewhere in between Tooting Bec and Balham.

I'm just a casual/occasional reader here. But i've already noticed that according to many posters on this site, a crash is just around the corner. It was supposed to happen after the last election, then it was supposed to happen after the Olympics. I believed all this back then, now i'm sceptical.

You could probably find somewhere alright in Streatham (not ex-council) for that kind of money. A friend bought a reasonable new-ish build 2 bed flat very close to Streatham station this time last year for £216k. Some of the roads towards Tooting Bec common are quite nice, but get more expensive the closer you get to Tooting and Balham.

Why are they expecting them to get back to 2007 in real terms at all? That wouldn't be a recovery, it would be another massive bubble surely.

Rents don't seem to be decreasing in Balham at all (Zone 3 SW London) They are pretty much the same as they were nominally 2 years ago though.

Thanks, great post. It seems a lot of people are not fully aware of the differences, and especially that NW/Halifax/LR don't reflect actual selling prices (rather, standardised to a figure which is a lot less than actual selling prices). The delusion index thread is full of people saying how it proves how crazy the housing market and asking prices have become, but the raw data from the LR that you used for your RIT index shows there is not much delusion at all.

I've been reading about house prices today, and considering the amount of reading i've done over the last few years i'm surprised i've never realised this: http://www.miac-acadametrics.co.uk/userfiles/file/MIACAcadametricsWebsiteHousePriceArticle.pdf According to this, the actual mean of houses sold in Q2 2012 was £230k while the Halifax and NW indices were £167-169k due to a complicated "standardised" house calculation, which while showing house price inflation over time very accurately, does not accurately reflect actual selling prices. The same being true of the Land Registry figure - it does not reflect actual selling prices but rather the amount of house price inflation. I've often seen it asked why the "delusion index" (the difference between Halifax/Nationwide and Rightmove) is so great, but surely this explains it? The actual difference between Rightmove asking prices and the mean selling prices are not that great at all. Perhaps these methodologies are well known, in which case I apologise!

The problem is, people always say wait another year, and nothing happens. I've been seriously considering buying since early 2009, but held off on the collective advice of this forum, and all that has happened in the area i'm looking (SW London) is that houses have become more expensive. If I'd bought in 2009 I'd be much better off now, and would still be better off even after a decent sized nominal crash!

A friend bought a 1-bed in colliers wood last year for £130k, another friend bought a reasonable size 2-bed in a fairly new build block for £204k in Streatham, very close to the station. Not great areas, but not too far out and hardly Baghdad.

In fact, you can book at £30/night which is cheaper than a 1-bed, more like the cost of a shoddy studio.