I've been looking at houses in Gosforth and Jesmond 3-4 bedrooms between 300k and 450k and only 2 have been reduced since may 22nd. I can see why all the city centre and quayside flats will dive because there are just so many of them but will 3 bed family homes in popular areas really tumble that much?

Still plenty of time yet, need to get a job back oop north before I can even consider buying.

IMO, that's just down to the wealth effect.

If your flat is worth £100,000, a drop to £70,000 would be "tragic" but probably livable with. If your flat in Jesmond is worth £350,000 and drops by the same percentage to £245,000, the £105,000 drop would be too much to bear.

Take it from someone who's made lots of money, lost it, made it again, lost it again and am trying to make it again! It's much worse to lose something you've had in abundance, and I think that is reflected in the slower drops. Take my data from NE1 - it's the bottom 1/3rd flats that are falling the fastest. The very expensive flats are only now beginning to drop (in small numbers) and the percentage hit is quite small.

I've also been tracking NE3, albeit more at the flat/cheaper house end of the market, with a view to a possible buy in a couple of years' time. The explanation mentioned above makes a lot of sense, though obviously - for those of us with no fixed timeframe - it'll be interesting to see where things are in 12 months from now and whether things have started to bite, at least at Tyneside flat level...

Slightly off area, but still relevant to larger family homes:

We've been looking at Chester le Street for over a year at the 250-350k bracket. Last year vendors (and hapless EAs) kept pushing the asking prices up 10k every time a new property came on the market, even though existing houses at lower prices were not selling...result being that houses that should have been on the market, priced to sell at around 280k, are now up for between 300-350k!!!!!

Over the last month we've just started seeing the odd house come on the market at last year's realistic selling price of 280, and some of the ones that have been around for ages have dropped to 280-300k, but as you are seeing in Jesmond and Gosforth, it appears most vendors are still in denial about a realistic selling price in today's market i.e. in a market which is predicting falls of 20,30, 40, or even 50% off peak????!!? Who knows what will happen, but clearly if you want to sell a house right now, you have to expect a big hit off last year's values.

Our guess is a lot of vendors selling 4 bed family homes are downsizing, so don't have to sell and are expecting top dollar. If they don't get the price they want, they won't sell. They have also got into their minds that their house is 'worth' last year's peak price, and they will find it difficult to become more realistic. Somehow they feel they deserve to get that price and that anything less would leave them feeling ripped off. I feel this mindset may become even harder to shift as the difference between their 'believed' value and actual market value widens....after all, how hard will it be for these vendors to accept that in a couple of months their '£350k palace' may not even fetch 250k on the open market. A 100k drop, 25% fall, however you look at it will be hard for them to swallow (please note, I'm not suggesting we will see a 25% fall in real terms, just from their overinflated price to a price that will sell in a couple of months time)

I believe that as values fall at the lower end of the market, we will gradually start to see the larger and more expensive properties falling. But it's going to be interesting to see what actually happens in this market. Will the downsizers eventually realise that if they put their property on for a realistic price it might actually sell now (but not to me...I'm waiting till things hit nearer the bottom)? If they do sell now and accept a relatively small fall, they are going to end up with a heck a of lot more equity than if they sit in denial and wait for prices to tumble around them. Perhaps EAs are only going to take houses onto their books if their selling price is realistic, afterall, they are earning nothing at the moment and have to stay in business?? Some might believe that the more 'affluent' housing is more immune to falls in value, because more 'affluent' families will be less affected by current economic...but what is that affluence built on??... larger properties still often carry large mortgages (increasing cost of borrowing), and larger houses are no longer going to be bought with many multiple salaries as before (restrictions to lending, at last!!!). And as inflation and fuel costs rise even the relatively wealthy are going to feel it. Are we seeing relatively few reductions because relatively little is actually selling, so we're unable to gauge what is actually happening in the market for real??..I think so.

I know it's b****y frustrating, but people who are in a position to wait, should wait...keep a very close eye, keep reading the property pages, this website etc, but just wait. If you are selling to move on, sell and rent. Everything I have read here and elsewhere tells me that prices can only go down...but it may take a while for this to take effect throughout the market.

So roll on falls in Jesmond, Gosforth and C-le-St. The crash will happen, if you are patient and let it.

Fine post, doghouse, and good to have you in the North East forum reporting on what's happening in ClS.

Your family are lucky that you are not wearing the blinkers of those in denial. The fact that you are waiting for a realistic price for a house for you and your own to move into means that, despite the frustration of not having it now, the mortgage payments you make on it will be thousands and thousands of pounds less a year than if you bought now.

And you can spend those thousands and thousands you save each year(!) on those closest to you and/or put it aside for a rainy day just in case.

Please keep us up to date. The crash has definitely started in the region's capital, and if we can have you on the ground reporting from ClS, we can get an ever clearer picture of just what the hell is going on out there.

A lot of agents seem to be "pricing to reduce", the prices are still going up so they can knock 10% off and bingo a "bargain"... *ahem*

@ Pacific State - Hi there and thanks for the vote of confidence...will keep you posted about C le St.

@ Meow - I was wondering about this myself...as vendors read in the popular press "house prices fall 20%" (hopefully in the not too distant future!!!!), incompetent EAs will just advise them to wack their house on the market for 20% more than last year's peak prices and instruct them to expect a 20% knock. I thought the upward creep of asking prices during the last year, in what I felt was a stagnant market, might have had something to do with this mentality. I only hope that with more selling price info available to buyers, less people will be taken in by this tactic than might have happened in the 90s.

Have a look a Sturdee Gardens, full of three and four bed semis - http://www.houseprices.co.uk/e.php?q=sturd...2C+ne2&n=10

Showing the first signs of pointing downwards?

In other anecdotal news, a friend of a friend's cat's mother goes skiing with someone who bought near us (also Jesmond) at significantly less than the (last year's sort of level) asking price.

It's the peeps that have to move (or whose company is paying them to move) that will budge first...