Posted this in the main forum but sank without a trace!!

Morningside is one of the most expensive areas in Edinburgh and demand is still high .............. until now??

Meadowspot is in the catchment of good schools and is a pretty nice place if you like new houses.

So detached 5 bed comes on the market I think 6 weeks ago, offers over £525k, then went to fixed price £595k but now dropped to fixed price £569k.

If you are quick you can see they havent updated the schedule yet:

http://www.espc.com/Buying/253855.html

This from land registry for last 2 years:

2007-05-03 109 Meadowspot, Edinburgh, EH10 5UY £560,000
2006-09-08 139 Meadowspot, Edinburgh, EH10 5UY £525,000
2006-08-04 135 Meadowspot, Edinburgh, EH10 5UY £611,117
(US date format btw)

No idea if they are all exactly the same but looks to me like for the first time the prices are not up on last year at least!

Cheers Rob

PS Just have to persuade the missus that renting for another year is a good idea!

And while I am at it........................Property developer bought this: http://www.espc.com/Buying/254989.html for 485k in September

2007-09-06 47 Comiston Drive, Edinburgh, EH10 5QS £485,000

Now on at offers over £595k where it has been for weeks. So will be interesting to see if they make any money on it!

Interesting post roblpm.

The posts in these area sub forums dont seem to get as much traffic now.

The problem is that these houses just aren't expensive enough. The Evening News has an advert for Rettie & Co (in the guise of a news story) today saying that they've sold 17 million-pound-plus houses in the last two months.

Three or four weeks ago there was an all-out assault where the Scotsman/Evening News were carrying at least one story about how houses in Edinburgh were remaining reassuringly expensive, with not the slightest possibility of price drops. They've been pretty quiet for the last few weeks though; maybe the local VIs have run out of money to bung their tame journalists.

Currently I'm feeling resigned to a long slow decline in prices, but there may be some light on the horizon. Last year there was a huge unexpected surge in prices in the first quarter, so if this isn't repeated this year then we may see year-on-year falls (if the ESPC actually decides to reveal their figures, that is). Roll on April.

You're right about these regional forums though. I do feel that I'm posting in a seldom-visited backwater here.

Guys in the regional sub zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/ind...showtopic=70001

I posted same in main forum, gt some good comments but day 2 is now on page 3 never to be seen again!! So the choice seems to be post stuff in here and never get any reaction or post in the main forum and wave bye bye!!

I think the regional subforums should be trashed and go back to the "your area" idea??

I suppose one of the problems is that the number of members is increasing, so there's a danger of the main board getting swamped. You can see this already, where a new thread can disappear off the end of the page in 20 or 30 minutes at busy times. Presumably the amount of traffic will continue to grow as the housing situation deteriorates, so this'll only get worse. I'm guessing that the moderators are trying to tidy things up in an attempt to deal with this.

Having said that, I agree with you about the regional subforums. We definitely seem to be stuck in a bit of a ghetto here. I see that there's still plenty of action in the main "House prices in your area" subforum, with threads about Devon, Manchester, Cambridge and Huddersfield among other places in the last couple of days, so one wonders why a major city like Edinburgh is being shunted off to this area. We could just try starting Edinburgh threads in the "your area" subforum rather than on the main forum, but maybe they'd just fall off the bottom there as well.

If all else fails we could try complaining to Alex Salmond.

Ok I am going to stick my neck out and post my next Edinburgh post in the "Your Areas" forum!

I like to life life dangerously!

Careful there...

The Evening News does have a distinctly pessimistic piece on house prices today (http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/opinion/...uses.3854723.jp). It's a lot more realistic than the stuff they usually come out with. They quote an average price of £447,020 for 4-bedroom detached houses in Edinburgh. Insane!!!

Nice find. Check this out, was on at offers over £550k (I think) now fixed price £825k, whats that all about??!!

http://www.espc.com/Buying/255408.html

Update to my first post in this thread to summarise:

47 Comiston Road bought £485k September, done up by developer and put on for offers over £595k. It needed quite a lot doing to it I think.

now on fixed price at £735k

http://www.espc.com/Buying/254989.html

We looked at an identical house in winter of 2005/06 which went for £450k (although not that well done up)

2006-04-03 67 Comiston Drive, Edinburgh, EH10 5QS £450,000

Which has just been resold for £645k!

2008-01-11 67 Comiston Drive, Edinburgh, EH10 5QS £645,000

So the question is is where will the market price of these houses be in a years time?? Some others also sold at around £650k.

Morningside seems to have ground to a halt. Nothing coming on, nothing selling.

Luckily Edinburgh is immune to House Price Crashes!

Stuart Saunders, the leading proprty firm has just gone bust!!! yesterday's evening news.

As usual main board in a frenzy, Scotland regional subforum is zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Does that mean:

a) There is no HPC is Scotland/Edinburgh?

The regional subforum idea is not a good one??

Anyway there is an Edinburgh thread in the "In your area" section in which someone had posted this:

http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/topstori...ouse.3957214.jp

Morningside has just had a load of high end stuff on the ESPC at big prices listed. Interesting to see if any of it sells!

The EPSC figures for Q1 2008 have just appeared. There was a 5.3% year-on-year fall in Marchmont (it now costs a mere £260,000 for a 2-bed flat), but rises of various sizes in all the other areas in Edinburgh. Some of the figures look a bit odd. They say that Falkirk rose by 38.9% but Kirkcaldy fell by 23%. Perhaps they're only dealing with small volumes in those areas, so the figures are easily distorted.

There's also a bit of blurb to go with the figures:



Haven't they heard of the ripple effect?

I've only just found this sub-forum. Keep posting here. We just have to keep it lively.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

But I will keep trying!!

Interesting to look on the front page of HPC and see the yearly predictions, Scotland at top!!

Thanks for that. I only spotted yesterday that the figures were out, but I didn’t find the breakdown. I tried to start a new topic on the main forum, and had to ask for posting rights, despite being a member here for over three years. I’ll have to keep an eye on this subforum instead.

Anyway, the most noteworthy thing about the figures is that the Q1 2008 average of £210,123 is 2.3% down on the quarter and 7.8% down on the peak, which was in Q2 2007. Because this peak was so high, at £227,912, unless there is a QoQ rise of 8.5% in Q2 2008, Edinburgh will go YoY negative next quarter.

The latest figure for Marchmont/Bruntsfield, which is the one of most interest to me, is actually a rise from the previous quarter. This doesn’t surprise me, because I have seen many a ‘sold’ sticker going up over the ‘for sale’ boards with remarkable speed recently. It’s still a 5.3% drop on the Q1 2007 peak, though, and I’m sure the only way is down!

If you rummage around in the ESPC ‘Media Room’ you can find the older reports. ESPC don’t want us to see the QoQ figures, so they don’t show them together in a single file, but here they are:

Period / Overall average / Marchmont/Bruntsfield 2-bed flats
2007 Q1 / 207,669 / 274,659
2007 Q2 / 227,912 / 269,953
2007 Q3 / 221,986 / 270,780
2007 Q4 / 215,168 / 252,860
2008 Q1 / 210,123 / 260,078

Does anyone else think that there are a lot of properties on the market just now? Is this the normal spring bounce or is it something more?

So YoY only 1.2% up! That a real fall of 2.8% when compared to a 4.0% RPI figure. I have seen these other statistics but not that one, the papers kept this quiet. Also Home.co.uk survey just reported that Scotland is DOWN 2.9% over 6 months.....I though Scotland was different?

It is. My colleagues are happily informing me that prices won't go down in Edinburgh because of these incredibly difficult to qualify "differences".

Glad to see some action in here.

Have to report in Morningside quite a few expensive houses on at record asking prices!!

Will take a while for people to realise that Edinburgh/Scotland has the same economics as everywhere else! (Or maybe it does!!)

"Anyway, the most noteworthy thing about the figures is that the Q1 2008 average of £210,123 is 2.3% down on the quarter and 7.8% down on the peak, which was in Q2 2007. Because this peak was so high, at £227,912, unless there is a QoQ rise of 8.5% in Q2 2008, Edinburgh will go YoY negative next quarter."

Q2 is traditionally Edinburgh's strongest quarter with an average rise from Q1 of 10% over the last 3 years. So 8.5% is doable but who knows in this cheap mortgage drought? The claim that Edinburgh hasn't had a negative year since the ESPC kept records in the 1970s is oft quoted though this is based on the average price for the whole year and not the YoY. So I am sure Edinburgh has seen negative YoY changes before especially in the early 1990s.

For a negative average year price drop, 2008 prices would have to drop below the 2007 average of £218,000. The average so far is our Q1 number of £210,123.

I keep a weekly spreadsheet of ESPC properties in my square mile or so and have done so since late January. The number of properties on ESPC has stayed steady at 10 since mid-March.

This is DOWN from February when 15 properties was more the norm. Also the number of FPs is DOWN from a high of 33% to a now consistent 20%.

I can't speak for this time last year but I was house hunting back then and the numbers of available properties does not look significantly different to back then in Q2 2007. Possibly a bit higher now but we'll see how the numbers develop.

Also note completed sales for Q1 2008 in Edinburgh were 1,606 properties. This is HALF what it was at the peak in Q2 2007 (3,267). So much for people panic selling. It will take a recession to force sellers' hands. Being a financial centre. I would have thought some banking redundacies might force some sales. So far nothing. We have a property famine in Edinburgh, as sellers sit this one out.

No! No! It really is different in Edinburgh. Look: it says so here in today's Evening Pish.


Looks like it's an excellent time to get into buy-to-let. I've been holding off, but this news of booming profits might be enough to change my mind.


Addendum: Today's Scotsman was saying House prices: Scotland bucks UK trend.


These guys just won't give up, will they? It's like those Japanese soldiers that they used to find in the jungle 40 years after the end of the war.

Quite, pay no heed to the 'no crash in Scotland' brigade. Property is silly money, not just expensive, but silly money. Property will not become dirt cheap, it will remain expensive. But to get from silly money to expensive we need to see 30-40 percent falls - a crash.

D

I've posted plenty of things before.

However- latest one- last week - april 08-

Friend bought a 2 bed new build in the Love Leith development, Off plan in Salamander court. Fixed price 193K with no carpets.

After some haggling he got it for £160K with carpets. Probably about 34K saved. A 17% discount, pretty significant. True story.

Don't know if Love Leith were just trying to boost the books before the end of the financial year, (sell 6 flats around this price will boost turnover by 1 million GBP for 2007)but whatever the reason, there's a smell of desperation about the transaction.

Good for him tho, and shows that fixed prices can be negotiated downwards.

Scottish House prices DOOOWWN 2.9% after 6 months but still 10.4% up YoY. Must be the huge spike late spring/early summer last year.

Home.co.uk survey with some nice bearish comments.

I have seen tangible falls (2 in Colinton on propertysnake) and more properties reverting to fixed price.

Aha

Just one post today in the Scotland subforum. Back to business as usual in here

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

House price crash cancelled in Scotland!!

If you insist: Buy-to-let market 'immune in crisis' (Scotsman).

The credit crunch is good for BTL, so there's nothing to worry about. It seems the BTL market is dominated by sophisticated investors who are well-placed to ride out any temporary blips in the world economy.

Also fro Friday's Evening News: Buyers lining up for Edinburgh flat with views worth £2m. This is at the Quartermile development. The readers had some fairly cynical comments (including a valiant effort by ccc who I think posts here), but towards the end various people came along to dismiss this as ignorance and jealousy. Seems you're right about the crash being cancelled.

Edit: Some interesting comments on the "BTL immune to crisis" story. There's one which says


There really is a conspiracy!

Also, more denial in the Evening News: Crisis, what crisis? The number of homes up for sale is soaring.. Maybe that's because people are trying to get shot of their investments while there's still a chance of making a profit.

Who exactly is it that is buying these hideously expensive Edinburgh pwoppities ? I mean it is a beautiful place - but it is pretty small, and there are only so many well paid bankers up there.
Maybe it must be those Japanese soldiers (mentioned earlier) picking up their pay checks after 40 years compound interest.

For what its worth I can remember the time a 1 or 2 bed flat fairly central could have been bought for around 1.5 times a graduate starting salary. And also for my tuppence worth. I do think Embra will take a price kicking - albeit last in the queue.

I just don't get it either - a 2-bed place near me went for about 280k recently and for the life of me, I can't fathom what kind of buyers they could be. Thankfully it's owner-occupiers rather than some vulgar BTL chavs but when you think about it, who spends 280k on a FLAT to live in? If you've got that kind of money, you'd want a house. A couple who both earn around 40k e.g. in banking and have 40k of a deposit, could afford this place but why would they want to? If you have that kind of money and salary, you'd be aiming a little higher in life than a 2-bed tenement flat. My OH and I could afford to spend this on a property but why bother? These are starter properties, not proper residences where you could raise a family and most of your neighbours would be students or tenants i.e. people who don't really have a long-term stake in the neighbourhood. Also, it's already reached its maximum value and will only stagnate or fall in price for the next ten years so, again, why bother? None of it makes sense.

I also was down in Leith yesterday and had a drive around Platinum Point for a nosey to see if any of the places are actually occupied. Surprised to say the ones on the outer-facing blocks were occupied and I only saw one For Sale sign. Again, it seems like the property bulls are judging market sentiment correctly here in Edinburgh. There are two whole phases completed in Platinum Point now and a third to commence soon and there is also a Barratt development going up on the same site. It has done wonders to regenerate the area but I just cannot for the life of me see where on earth the demand is coming from for all of these flats. No-one would want to rent there when you can rent so easily in town and why bother buying a flat for such a high price? Also I saw the new development at Telford College's ex-site the other day and it had a sign on it saying "City townhouses for only £360,000" - what planet are these people living on? The only people for whom £360,000 would seem like a bargain are the senior consultants at the Western General opposite, who are all on six-figure salaries, but I can guarantee most of them will be living in a mansion in the Grange rather than a "city townhouse" that looks like it's built out of polystyrene and sellotape.

Edinburgh is just a mystery to me. People I know who have plenty of money are not buying / have not bought in these new developments so who is?

That's exactly what I've been wondering for a long time. I've kind of got used to the prices now, but if I actually sit down and think about it it completely defies my understanding; it's like some kind of Zen paradox. As you say, if I had a quarter of a million pounds to spend then I'd be hoping for rather more than a two-bed flat. I can only imagine that it's because people have got carried away with the boom of the last few years and actually can't conceive of things being any different.

Coincidentally, I also had a walk around Platinum Point a few days ago. It was during a week-day afternoon, so it was difficult to tell how many people were actually living there. I did see quite a number of very expansive-looking cars there though; perhaps they belonged to the people selling the flats.

One source is "downsizers" freeing up equity in the big ol' family property by selling it, buying a large inner surburban flat for themselves, and giving the lefover cash to their sprogs. I know of a few which in my opinion is a shame. These 30 somethings will never truly understand the value of money and property as they haven't worked for it.

I have to disagree strongly on the subject of two-bedroom tenement flats. People do bring up children in flats in Scottish cities, just as they do in cities in mainland Europe. Scotland doesn’t share with England the obsession with everyone having to have their own little house and garden – an obsession which ultimately leads to sprawling cities and the ‘death of suburbia’ country that Dr Bubb is always (rightly) banging on about.

Tenement flats are superbly designed and built, very spacious (a typical two-bed flat in south Edinburgh measures about 85 square metres), have good sound insulation, and garden access. They are not inherently inferior to houses, unlike the lousy conversion flats that are made from chopped-up old houses in London.

Also the two-bed tenements of south Edinburgh are invariably in band E for council tax, which suggests that they are not ‘starter homes’ and their prices were above the average when the council tax was invented in 1991.

Having said that, of course £280,000 is an absolutely barking mad price for such a flat, and I fully expect them to fall to around £150,000 during the course of the next three years or so.

I used to have the ESPC statistics for the year 2000. I believe that the average price for a 2-bed flat in Marchmont/Bruntsfield was £82,000 at that time. How things change.

Interesting, my little area I have watched since January was pretty consistent for a month at 10 properties each week with 2 at fixed price and 1 or 2 new properties coming on. That has now dropped to 9 properties but 4 fixed prices and no new properties. I would expect to see the number of properties increasing into spring but it is flat if not dropping. The rise of FPs suggests some sellers have gone in too optimistically while the flat numbers suggests other sellers have decided just to sit this one out and wait and see. The average ask/fixed price is also increasing after it dipped in early March from £282K to £334K.

Hmmm!

My usual ESPC search is showing 135 properties that meet my criteria, which is the highest ever and up 4 properties from last week.

The search is central Edinburgh, 2 bedroom flats between £150000 and £200000, but is a bit random about the neighbourhoods because I didn't program the search engine very well. I just use it as a guide for seeing what is on and what the going rates are. Some of the properties don't look too bad for the money... others; they have got to be joking.

This is my favourite 'make me laugh' property. I've got friends who live in this building. The flats are tiny with low ceilings, no storage and poor sound proofing.

http://www.espc.com/Buying/256575.html

Ridiculous! Who would pay such money!! It was the same story when I was flat-hunting not long ago. I dislike a lot of the flats in Edinburgh and think they are vastly overpriced. Horrible flats, a lot of them... as can be seen from the post above!

Hey, don't get me wrong - I'm as big a fan of the Edinburgh-style tenement flats as the next person. In fact these old tenements are what make city living so much more attractive than it would be in most comparable UK cities. I know a couple of people who are raising families in 2 or 3 bed tenement flats but I know for sure that they didn't pay over a quarter of a million pounds for them!

That's my point: these flats are great and if you have young kids, it certainly means you get access to good schools (e.g. James Gillespies in Marchmont and Bruntsfield Primary) but at these prices??? No way. Flats like that should be around the 120-160k mark maximum. One I saw in Morningside even sold for 340k - it's surreal. They're nice, but they're not that nice, considering you don't even get a decent garden or a garage.

ESPC front page tells you how many properties they have for sale or to rent.

15 Mar it was 6400
Today it is 8600

A rise of 34% in 5 weeks. Now even considering this is the busy time of year that is a HUGE increase. And remember whilst this is a busy time of year for selling, it should also be a busy time of year for buying. So an increase of this size, IMO, is quite incredible.

I love the old tenement flats. I have a very small (32 m2) top floor studio one at the moment, but am hoping to move up to something bigger in the next couple of years. We'll see how fast my savings for a deposit catches up with the (fingers crossed) price falls in Edinburgh.

Why do new builds always have such small rooms?!? They can't compete at all with the spaciousness and flexibility of the big old tenements. It concerns me that so many new buildings of all types are cheap and cramped, people in the future will live a reduced lifestyle because of it.

And it's not as if we don't have a lot of space in Scotland! I love the spacious U.S. / Oz properties.. wow!



Damn, what depressing figures! I reckon if there's a crash in Edinburgh, it'll be separate from London.. maybe a few years delayed.

How are they depressing ? There are a record number of homes for sale in Edinburgh. Most are at fixed price because very few people are buying, and everything is looking bleaker for borrowers by the day.

I think this is going to hasten up the Edinburgh crash rather than delay it...

I met someone who was working on the Quartermile development and was told that they actually had to re-work the plans during the build as they realised that the toilets in some of the flats were too small to allow anyone 6 feet or over to stand up in them(!). Bit of a problem as most of the 6 ft+ population are male...

It's pure greed that drives it - the Quartermile site could actually have been a great development given the large airy windows and grand Victorian scale of the old hospital buildings but instead they squeezed in as many rabbit hutches as they could legally fit. If the builders weren't so greedy it could actually be a very nice development but the above anecdote put me right off (not to mention the idiotic 300k+ price tags )

On the talk of a rise in properties for sale:

I did some work from the ASPC - Aberdeen - and found out that the number of properties selling per quarter hasn't really changed that much in the past 7 years or so.
But the number of properties for sale has:
Numbers fell from over 3,000 on the register in 2001 (for each quarter)
And fell over the next 4 years until the numbers bottomed at less than 500 in Q4 2006 - at this point the number of houses sold in that quarter was over 1500 - meaning that properties were marketed on ASPC for an average of 1 month.
What we have now seen is an increase properties on the register with numbers rising by over 500 YOY for Q4 (2006/7) and by more than that for Q1 (2007/8).

More places are on the market and it will be interesting to see who the market responds.
Sales have been roughly the same over the past 7 years with Q1 2008 being higher than any Q1 for the past 7 years - but we'll see how this changes.

I love your optimistic posts!!

Purely realistic. Seriously I want to know how you equate a massive increase in properties for sale, whilst the number of buyers is dropping, as a bad thing for people wanting a serious fall ? Have I missed something.

Surely if you are trying to sell a house the less competition the better.....

I actually misunderstood what the figures represented. I thought that was the number of people buying increasing rather than the number of places available. 'My bad' oops!!

Nah that is the sellers !!

And BTW if you need a piece of real evidence that things are on a down turn I advise you to do the following:

Head down Dundas St. Stop at the junction with Cumberland St. Remember this is one of the most prestigious and sought after addresses in Edinburgh.

Look down both sides of the street, left and right off Dundas St. That should cheer you up.

That post about the Quarter Mile development was very interesting. The shoe boxes that they've already finished above the new Sainsburys are dreadful. Everybody who walks by can look straight into your living space and worse on the other side the building the flats look directly into the flats opposite at a distance of about 100 ft. You'd have to have your curtains closed all the time!

I completely agree that they could have been fantastic conversions. I know they are releasing the flats in bunches, but I can't help but think that there are some muppets out there who will want them, so they might drive down the area prices generally.

I'm trying to be optimistic.

Deal, I'll do that!!