grandmaster

So the Greeks have voted against the bailout that primarily aids French banks. In the meantime, the French have just voted for a bloke who wants to spend tons more money the country cannot afford. GBP has already surged in recent weeks. Looks like it will again tomorrow as the Euro implodes.

And remember, this is in spite of the continued borrowing of untold billions effectively being injected into the economy.

I agree. When I bought my first house in 1994, I bought it as a home and it was reasonably priced as such. I also remember getting a fixed rate mortgage of 7.5% (!) at the time. These days homes are seen as an "investment" and people would rather not sell as opposed to losing shedloads of money or worse still "not get what it is worth". And when older mortgages are running with non-existent interest rates and where getting a new mortgage would see you paying at least 4% it's no wonder that there's no volume and hence no seismic shifts in pricing that reflect the times we live in.

It's going to take a 2008 style "event" to make any difference as far as I can see. Since that drop we've seen volumes in house sales stagnate resulting in small to middling drops. Personally, I have been surprised at how resilient the market has been bearing in mind the complete calamity that has befallen the country. I'm also rather surprised that the value of the GBP hasn't plummeted further - instead it seems to have perked up a bit as hilariously it's seen as a much safer bet than the cluster that is the Euro. I guess at the end of the day, if you're paying interest of 1.5% on your mortgage (as I am on the £500 I have remaining of it), why bother selling up and losing a fortune? I'm currently looking for a house to buy. Easy to spot the repos (no carpets, taped up sinks/toilets etc) but even these are going for relatively good prices (Rightmove helpfully posts public notices of the offers).

I eagerly lapped up the pessimism of this forum when I noticed that houses in the village I want to live in just weren't selling, with most being taken off the market with no buyers - maybe I could snap up a bargain, so I've made several cash offers. All have failed suggesting to me there is no desperation on the part of sellers. Now, some months on, properties are selling at asking prices I thought 10-20 per cent over the odds and the ones sticking are not selling for obvious reasons, mostly related to the condition of the property. Weirdly, nothing sold in the spring and summer, but winter seems to have seen a marked improvement. It's making me rethink my strategy of offering 10 per cent below asking, put it that way, and I'm not sure about asking prices being so delusional any more. Waiting to see the next round of LR data with much interest to see how low my offers actually were.

Just had a look at the place on Street View and it's right next to a very busy dual carriageway (the main artery into the city) and a Tesco. I know the area rather well and wouldn't pay anything like £200k for that dump in that area.

Woah can someone explain in simple terms just WTF happened?

The issue I have with this is that there's so little actual volume in the market that the Halifax/Nationwide figures are basically meaningless. We have a market being propped up by absurdly low interest rates which means that if people can't sell their homes at stupid prices, they simply stay put in them - no sales, little volume, not much to glean from what data there is. Price rises and drops on a month by month basis are just "noise" in my opinion and I fail to see how this can translate into anything meaningful when tied into internet searches along the lines of the OP's theory. I guess the thing to do is to come back in six months - but even then, the prediction that prices will fall is hardly surprising bearing in mind the current tumult.

In the area I am looking at (40 miles NE of London, village location), prices are finally tumbling. The pattern thus far has been unrealistically high prices - 25 properties on the market, 8 taken off the market and 4 - yes, just 4 - sales. This is in 2011 at least. A five bed "link" detached went up at £325k, dropped to £290k, dropped again to £270k and it looks like it has an offer at £260k. A house that came on the market yesterday is up at £250k, whereas identical properties all previously went up at £280k to £285k (though one did drop to £275k). Particularly as we move into the winter it look as though reality is finally starting to set in.

I think it's a superb new feature - well done Rightmove. They even use photos for homes that didn't sell and were removed from the market. So much better than the other Land Registry sites. You can attach value to the home based on its appearance, position on the street, level of maintenance etc. Superb.

The way I see it, if the agent is treating cash buyers this way in the current climate, he's not going to be an agent for that much longer.

Recently I offered £280k on an "offers over £300k" property and the agent didn't even bother replying. Amazing.

The VAT rise will be factored out of the figures soon, right? So while I reckon that there is a plan to inflate debt away, I can't see it going that much higher.

Er, the government has stepped in and given us cheap mortgages, thanks in no small part to a 0.50% base rate.

Well to be fair, when I make a fair offer on a house and it is rejected you do feel a little bitter and want to vent about it. The difference these days is that because of the stupidly low interest rates, vendors are in the position simply to stay put and are so leveraged many of them physically can't lower the price.