Will prices of house in Liverpool go down after 2008 City of Culture? Any thoughts or views. What was the experience of Glasgow?

Glasgow was so long ago I can't remember. I would look for an area that is a dump now but is going to be regenerated as part of the city of culture programme and buy there cheap if you can.

How cheap are the cheapest houses in parts which will be regenerated?

You could get a mid-terrace crack den in Kensington for 50-60K but what I can't figure out is why anyone would want to. Liverpool's housing market is, in my opinion, more wobbly than most and at present is sustained by false hope about the supposed magic effect of Capital of Culture. The effects on HPI at the moment are real of course, but there is no real substance to it. The areas of Glasgow that were a dump pre-1990 are still the same, albeit some are a bit better but not because of the City of Culture year. You now have a nicer city centre and better shops. In Liverpool I think the effect will be the same - superficial regeneration in the form of marketing/propaganda only with no real substance. If I'm proved wrong I'll be delighted but I'm just being realistic.

I agree that Liverpool will probably be hit hardest when the crash comes - the number of new apartments is already starting to have an effect on rental prices and there are plenty of cranes building many more. I wouldn't touch it

I pretty much agree with what's already been said about the expected outcome of Liverpool house prices after the Capital of Culture has been and gone. All of the out-of-town money that has been here for the past couple of years trying to capitalise on the Capital of Culture rubbish will move onto the next money making scheme elsewhere and pull all of their capital with them.

As mentioned above, the local council has pretty much directed all of the funding earmarked for regeneration towards the City Centre, Pier Head and Albert Dock areas...basically the bits that they want the Tourists to see, and neglected the surrounding areas, such as Toxteth, Kensington, Wavetree and Scotland Road. I live in Toxteth and work in the City Centre and apart from spending £8 Million on paving over a perfectly good street off Parliament Street and putting raised spot lights in it, which are a trip hazard in themselves, they've not touched any of the houses or built any facilities for the kids.

Of course, once the Capital of Culture has been and gone, and investors are struggling to put people in the oversupply of High-Rise flats, (a la Storrington Heights), sorry Exclusive Luxury apartments, they'll take their money elsewhere and end up selling them to a Housing Association who'll not delay in placing Single Mums and Smack Heads in the flats to try a recoup some of their outlay.

It won't take long for the City Centre and surrounding areas to resemble the Ghettos of the early 80's when all the employment from these new, yet temporary ventures, dries up thus adding to the unemployment figures of the City.

Just look at the newest shopping centre in Liverpool, The Quarter. I've never even set foot in the place but hear it's having problems attracting customers basically because it's overpriced and isn't aimed at Liverpool Shoppers, just out-of-towners and footballers who'll not be around for long once the place starts going down the nick.

Hold onto your money for a couple more years and wait and see what happens to the property prices, you could pick yourself up a bit of a bargain once all this nonsense kicks in.

msp

With regard to the Met Quarter - I walk through every day on my way to work - there are more shop assistants than customers. Not convinced that Liverpool will go belly up so quick - unforunately! Venmores have recently had their most successful auction ever - apparently!!!! Asking prices are going up up up - I could have got a house for just over £100k in 2005 - the same houses are now asking £134k! Can't believe this market is so resilient! Where the hell are people finding the money from. I've also noticed in the past 6 months a lot more immigrants! - they need housing too. Also the rents are absolutely ridiculous at the moment i.e. £675 per month for tiny 3 bedroomed house - and I've seen many of these advertised. Rant over.

House prices in liverpool don't look so hot right now:

http://www.home.co.uk/guides/house_prices_...&lastyear=1

and there's only one way it can go....

Three/Four bed detached on coachmans drive estate confirm this graph. 160K gradually gaining more and more purchasing power. Are sellers starting to see reality approaching?

Aka "Brookside" (well, just up the road actually).
I know Coachmans Drive very well.
Not without its crime (and criminal element).
I wouldn't live there thats for sure.
Its possible the dropping prices indicate a slide in the quality of the area as much as anything else.

That part of the city has never reached the dizzy heights of Woolton, Gateacre etc. There are plenty of houses up for sale by me L16 - not a viewer between them! It doesn't stop Sutton Kersh slapping on massively high asking prices though!!!!!

I thought L'Pool only increased by 2% over the past twelve months, (Land Reg). I think its been 'done' now, the auctions offer up no bargains - retail prices mainly. L'Pool wont get hit hardest in percentage terms a 20% drop would only knock 25K off prices, London and the S.East is where the biggest drops will happen, even at 15% that could be 45k off average prices

i believe once 2008 has gone property prices will drop. looking to buy not yet, will wait a few years and save a greater deposit. Know someone in Liverpool bought a few flats, was told hen would make a profit when sold. In fact, has sold them with a loss of £5000 each. did think of renting them, but the rent he would receive was not enough to cover the mortgage payments. Also, lots of property to rent in Liverpool, but the rents are to high, most people only earn about £15000 a year.

It's a two-speed market in Liverpool it seems IMHO.

There is a massive oversupply of one and two bed flats, with more and more going up all the time.

Press reports suggest that 1/3 of these new builds are unoccupied, having been bought by local and out of town speculators who couldn't find tenants.

It seems that prices are indeed falling in this section of the market, although i feel they were set far to high in the first place.

On the other hand, prices for decent family houses in decent areas reamin robust, and the bottom end of the market in particular seems very healthy. Houses in the local area are shifting and sold boards appear quickly.

So;
1) Flats - don't touch with a barge pole.
2) First time buyer houses - hot.
3) Mid-range semis - Sticky but moving slowly
4) Luxury top end - No idea

ditto rest of uk

until demand matches supply BTL is dead

Spot on , rental is plummeting noth end

I've been watching house prices in Merseyside for a long time now and have noticed prices are getting really silly now: £77000 for a house on Pansy Street off Vauxhall Road!! Madness.

word on the street (through a friend of a friend) - a massive portfolio is going up for sale in Liverpool in coming week. I've looked on Rightmove and there is a buy to let exodus (Cheshire Auctions) - prices are low - are they hoping for a quick bail out! about bloody time too!

Anybody notice this at the Barnard Marcus auction 05 December?

Lot 167 - Apartment 1101, Beetham Tower, Liverpool L3 9BD sold at 101K.

Land Registry entry 2004 - £206,500!!

Also on rightmove at £120K.

Seems a hell of a drop - any local info?

Someone at the local rag must be reading this forum.
Today's front page:
http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverp...64375-20215957/

Thanks jimmy, I saw it on the other thread. I thought I had got the apartment numbers mixed up! I suppose it's the 2008 City of Culture effect, keeping things buoyant!

Builder Livesey have gone bust - leaving number of abandoned sites in Liverpool. Also David McClean sacking 50 staff in Liverpool due to the credit crunch. This in the last week.

Is this the one?
Beetham Tower Flat
Probably this doesn't help
Luxury city centre apartments used as drugs den

As a local (renting on the Wirral after a relationshop breakup)

I guess this has some relevance here. Especially as Liverpool is tipped as an upcomer.

http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0100new...-name_page.html

Worries ahead as Liverpool debt soars

Dec 29 2007

DEBT advisors in Liverpool are being inundated with clients as more and more people in the city face crippling financial problems.

Those contacting experts regarding credit problems and mortgage arrears are, on average, in almost three times more debt than they were five years ago.

Advisors, who fear a serious rise in house repossessions in 2008, have seen debt levels on credit cards alone double from around an average £25,000 in 2002 to more than £50,000 this year.

As tills across the region continued to buzz with sales activity yesterday, Liverpool Specialist Advice Service, a consortium of the city’s Citizens Advice Bureaux, said it was now booked solid with people wanting debt advice at a time of year when they are usually considerably quieter. It is especially concerned for what the New Year will bring for those with money worries.

Rachel Howley, of LSAS, said: “There is a huge demand for our service at the moment and that is quite unusual.

So the City of Culture is fecked, at least that is what the ITV news tonight said, it is now the City of Debt with serious mortgage areas and massive credit card debts and its cultered citizens taking out more loans at exhorbitant interest rates like 183% to pay of the areas on existing overdue mortgage, credit card and homeowner loans.

Yeah I'm a Liverpool supporter, yes i've got a mortgage. I want £25,000, how much a month wonderful that's less than we are paying now.

Capital of Culture my ****.

Not that im looking to get a city centre flat i do use these flats across to the arch in chinatown liverpool as a guide. Theres always been one or two up for sale during the last 2-3 years, always on for 140-150k. This has appeared recently and is very telling

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-195...=1&tr_t=buy

"Bulk purchase opportunity available comprising 30 apartments. The development is located in a very popular city centre location central to the Ropewalks Area, Georgian quarter and Chinatown." on for £4million.... still overpriced at 133k each.

Jon

How much house prices change depends on what sort of usage you want for the property. I would like to know more about land ownership. Does owning the land that you're house is on make a good investment like they I've been told about for Land Investment

Hi Eddie,

According to www.MousePrice.com, the average salary in Liverpool is (or was) £20,857, and the average house price to earnings was about 6.5x (compared to a national average of £24.5k and 9.0x. BUT I don't know what date these numbers were compiled on. May have been 2006.
http://www.mouseprice.net/AreaGuide/Price_...mp;PostCode=L15

Is your £15k average salary a rough guess, or does it come from a better / more up-to-date source?

If the mouseprice data is correct and current (-ish), then the lower price-earnings ratio may mean that Liverpool has less far to fall than other parts of the UK, in order to correct.

The massive influx of low skilled immigration into the city is being citied as one of the key reasons why rents will remain high and property prices will not come down by groups like Liverpool Macroeconomics. Peter Stoney, honorary senior fellow in economics at the University of Liverpool, and a member of the forecasting group, Liverpool Macroeconomics, is saying that the Liverpool One development (a giant retail area) is thus only going to boom.

lol! Well what is clear to me is that Macro-Economically, this country will now start to save, either through evils like milk spiralling up reaching the £2 mark and reducing real incomes, or higher interest rates.

And that means this sort of retail development will face very large negative headwinds going forwards.

But the biggest headwind is due to the mass immigration being dumped on the city from on high as some sort of out the box 'solution' to instant economic growth.

Massive numbers of low earning, low skilled workers though liberal immigration policies coupled with massive dependant chain migration is an economic disaster. The same experiance in the 1970s of the near same policies to lower wages in many US cities like New York, L.A etc... soon turned into rocketing bills and desperation - unemployment and vile crimewaves lasting over a generation (Murder capitals etc... well into the late 1980s). With mismatched labour markets and grinding inflation.

Liverpool didn't do too badly in the last recession compared to the rest of the country. One of Maggies quietest U-turns was her declaring war on the black economy. No sooner said than forgotten. At the time an accountant for M&S said that there wasn't enough wage packets in Liverpool to keep their main store open but it was thriving. I earned good money driving a taxi during those times and there was no shortage of taxi drivers unless you were trying to get home at the weekend after clubbing. Are you really going to bet against a city that has seen plenty of hard times and already knows how to cope? (I don't mean those in charge but those at the bottom or close to it.)

There are some new builds on Fern Grove, asking £75k for a half share, no chance. 2 up 2 down terraces on adjacent streets were advertised in shop windows on Lodge Lane for ~£5k in 2000.

afaik, all the BTL LLs here had plenty of voids apart from DHSS tenants. They'd be in for 6 months then bought their own place. I can't see how leveraged BTL can ever be sustainable, DHSS aside, they are only doing what their tenants can also do and if the loans are available and cheap enough then that is exactly what the 'soon to be ex' tenants did.

The 'city of culture 2008' is a damp squib, no buzz at all, total non event.

Plenty of DSS here - just look at this always wondered why I feel like I'm one of the few that actually works

I know 2 civil servants and a woman that invents data for the city council. Between them I doubt they do 20 hours a week of useful and necessary work but pull 3 decent salaries.

We give half of the unemployed similar 'not really needed' jobs and life becomes wonderful because unemployment has dropped by 50%

I have just seen that the house I bought for £1, 750 in 1973 is now for sale at £86,000. A two bed terrace in Birkenhead. Great views of the Liverpool waterfront beyond Birkenhead's gasometer. I was glad to move despite having grown up thereabouts and nothing done to the area has enhanced it by a factor to match the change in house prices. Liverpool is sadly still a basket case for employment. The mismanagement of the Capital of Culture is a scandal I believe and yet the Chairman of the Culture Company, Drummond Bone of the University of Liverpool got a Knighthood. He was originally parachuted in to sort out the University's responsibilities for the Alder Hey affair. Since then the University has slid down the ratings. That to my mind, encapsulates Liverpool's problems. Outsiders with London perspectives go in full of overblown ideas but without the means to make a real difference. So Liverpool has wound up with a lot of irrelevent housing and no real employment opportunities. Gerald Westminster's big development is doomed, overpriced flats and shops no-one will have the means to shop in.

You only have to look at the Lowry centre in Salford. Big names are enticed to set up 'flagship' stores. The same situation (more staff than customers) has meant that stores open up, do their sums, then close as soon as the lease is up, at a heavy loss. It's a costly White Elephant.

Good news if you hate crowds.

The Government announced it was moving many dapartments out of London to cut costs. If they, or other orgs like the BBC (relocating to Salford Quays) had been attracted to Liverpool, it would have provided long term, sustainable employment and growth and the city would continue to prosper well into the future.

Instead it's looking bleak when all of the temporary workers and tourists move on.