Looks like the market has just stalled in South Wales from Chepstow to St. Davids and, as it appears that both home owners and EAs are in total denial about the fundamental economic change, it is going to be quite a while before we even begin to see realistic asking prices.

I get the impression that many of them think that this is only a blip and once it is over the frenzy will begin again. I doubt many can comprehend that the global financial markets are technically bankrupt and that silly money has gone forever.

I agree tmt. The following things are IMO what'll put cat among pigeons:

1) Auctioned repos setting margins on LR database.
2) Newbuild firesales setting margins.

Nothing else will sell so there'll be no other way to value property. I spoke to a chartered surveyor the other night who said that nobody knows what anything is worth now - and all afraid of valuing at any value for fear of being sued by mortgage company.

It'll be psychological even then though : amazing how people believe that their house is worth more than next door because they have granite effect worktop or some other such crap - to the effect of an extra £50K!? In Wales, where there is very little 'family money', people have seen their wealth transformed by this fraudulent boom - it will take a lot of truth to get them to accept it's all gone.

Your posts seem pessimistic over the last few days, TMT. I'm sure it's a phase - I have off days re: not seeing falls as well, but this crash is still very much on.

There is a two bedroomed mid terrace house on my road that has been on the market since April 2007.
The original Price £250,000. and the price now £250,000

I have rung the agents a few times (over the years!) saying I was thinking of selling etc. and was wondering had they any offers?

Same reply everytime: yes we have some very good offers but the seller doesn't want to accept them.

So I don't think its the EAs that are not accepting the market has come to a halt.

This is the one: (nethouseprices)

5 Archer Terrace,
Penarth,
The Vale Of Glamorgan,
CF64 3DU £96,000
Terraced
Freehold
Not New Build 25-Aug-2000
Map (CF64 3DU)

5 Archer Terrace,
Penarth,
The Vale Of Glamorgan,
CF64 3DU £206,250
Terraced
Freehold
Not New Build 12-Jan-2005
Map (CF64 3DU)

I suspect they can see what a dash of paint can achieve on an exact same property a couple of doors down
(50K in three months)

8 Archer Terrace,
Penarth,
The Vale Of Glamorgan,
CF64 3DU £199,000
Terraced
Freehold
Not New Build 07-Aug-2006
Map (CF64 3DU)

8 Archer Terrace,
Penarth,
The Vale Of Glamorgan,
CF64 3DU £245,000
Terraced
Freehold
Not New Build 24-Nov-2006
Map (CF64 3DU)


They need to get real on the price front.

My asthma has been playing up and getting me down... and I am just fed up about... mid-life crisis and all that. Worrying about house prices in Swansea but not sure if I want to live here longer-term.

I remember how 'nasty' and 'vicious' South Wales was in the 1980s recession... and how depressing it was... I am pretty certain that I do not wish to live here if we have to go through that again. I also have hopes for Wales as a country that I doubt I will ever see fulfilled in my lifetime or any other - too insular, too small-minded, to nationalist, to territorial and too... You know the kind of thing, if you come from a place 2 miles down the road they look at you as if you are an enemy or an alien... so the idea of a Microsoft or a Cisco setting up in Wales is pretty non-existent. I can't think down to the mindset - I know this sounds arrogant - of many here in Wales. I think my problem is that I got out and made the mistake of coming back... and this is my home but it doesn't feel like home... but I have no where else to go...

And that concludes my therapy session for this evening

Don't knock it.
I'm originally from Ireland and the same could of been said about it 10 years ago.
Now it lacks any character has the feel of the 51st State of the USA. Consumerism gone totally mad. Is anyone any happier, no just a lot more in debt.

It's the exact opposite to what you say about Wales, if you come from a place 2 miles down the road they look at you as if you are an enemy or an alien can't even speak the same language and wouldn't know their next door neighbours if they fell over them.

I think you could say this about anywhere in the UK but it just happens that in South Wales, everyone knows everyone, and they all have prove to each other how well they are doing. "Local boy makes good syndrome" They are obsessed with obvious material possessions. The property boom was an absolute God send, they could now boast how many properties they had. What they really meant was how many properties they had put down the minimum deposit on off plan. If you go to really affluent areas like say, The Cotswolds, Marlow, Henley, most parts of Berkshire etc, you will not see anywhere near as many Beamers, Mercs, Bentleys as you do in Swansea.

Because of the property value depreciation problems currently here in S Wales people are in denial, they will not accept that their house is depreciating in value. In affluent areas they could not care less about the value of their house because they have not borrowed against it nor do they intend to. They just live in it.
What's the saying "As you sow so shall you reap" or is it "What goes up must come down"
Like any other market, property has a cycle normally about 11 years and in about 2 years the market will stabilize and this particular bad time will be forgotten, more high end cars on Newton road, Fairy Hill and P.A's packed again.

I've just had 2 weeks back in S'x and prices do indeed still seem surprisingly sticky. However, you are right , when your house is really all you've got to show for your life's work and the EA suggests you trim 50k off your baby, the philanderer's mantra .... deny ,deny will prevail and so it is.
But there is a deafening background noise . I called to one EA in the centre and asked to see the repos. There were in excess of 50 listed for the S'x office alone , with separate lists for Mumbles and Morriston. Surprisingly , I was advised not to even bother looking until year end when the dust might have settled somewhat. I suggested year-end 2009.

I called to a jeweller .Having previously sold an expensive watch to him in 1998 I wondered whether he was interested in buying another I wanted to offload. He wasn't , saying that it would be impossible to move in S'x where there was just no money. I pointed out that I had just seen 2 Bentleys and an A Martin in Mumbles and he laughed showing me his plastic. A second jeweller admired the watch, said they didn't trade in seconds and that in any event, trade had been dead for the last 12 months. He directed me to a third outlet. Yet again, admiration for my taste, but in vain ... they were in the process of closing down!

Take a long hard look at S'x and the valleys and all you'll see is depressing dependence on dependence. N Labour I recall said something about dealing with these inequalities. They have ... STEP 1....shopping as pyschotherapy.

could anyone share any light on marty's 11 year cycle?

Heres me thinking it was a 16-18 year property cycle?

cheers

My post yesterday about prices and not willing to accept a lower offer.
Looking again on Nethouseprices and other land registry sites, this one stood out:

9 Archer Terrace,
Penarth,
The Vale Of Glamorgan,
CF64 3DU £60,000
Terraced
Freehold
Not New Build 19-Oct-2007
Map (CF64 3DU)

Next door (a year earlier)
8 Archer Terrace,
Penarth,
The Vale Of Glamorgan,
CF64 3DU £245,000
Terraced
Freehold
Not New Build 24-Nov-2006
Map (CF64 3DU)

They look identical, neither is converted to flats. No other records on that house either, what gives, very generous seller?

Can I sell my house to someone for a silly price to avoid tax?

Dear Zamo,

As I see it,

property, from a standing start normally runs for approx 11 years on a gradual increase in price rising to a crescendo before it hits the cusp, then overshoots slightly "that's where it was last September". It also overshoots the cusp on the way down and that's when the smart money buys. I don't want to sound like a conspiracy crackpot but I often think that the whole property market is manipulated, simply because it's so predictable and you never see the big investors off loading.

As a matter of interest I read that Insidetrack the property seminar people went bust for £20 million the other week.
Can you imagine all those people who spent £1000's on their seminars and then to add insult to injury were sold new builds off plan at well over the odds.

I notice they are still on site building away in SA1. It's like a fairy tale, why would you build something when no one is going to buy it?

Driven by amateur investor panic the prices plummet until either the banks step in or the Governing party is coming up for re-election. Property is very susceptible to manipulation by either politics or bankers because it's so easy. Any thing driven by greed is!.
We are currently on the leading edge of a property bear market but it will recover. i.e, always watch the building shares. Barretts Development were at 28p 10 days ago, I bought at 58p last Tuesday and off loaded today at 92p. Says it all. It's the the old story never sell in a down market and never overestimate your assets. Westies take note, I'm talking to you!!

I notice that the Swansea drinking holes are completely dead at the moment, that must mean something.

Large number of pubs for sale in Wind Street - if they can't make money there where can they in Swansea... and the recession hasn't even hit yet.

Yes, you are right, the No Sign Wine bar is in receivership. That's been there for a thousand years and it still went broke!!

Oh happy days. I started my training , yonks ago , next door to the NSB on the top floor of Barclays Bank. Used to pop in most evenings for a glass of wine and still remember a lengthy drunken conversation one night with one Barry John ; him patiently explaining to me why he'd left the game all too soon. Certainly a materially poorer S'x, but with soul.
It's perverse to observe how the physical geography has improved so much over the years whilst the social fabric is noticeably falling apart. You now have a town increasingly populated by the brutal and the banal. Hoards of feral youths openly cruising the streets looking for places or cars to damage or steal . I noticed , that whilst much of this scum was home-grown, there was also an element that looked and sounded Slavic . A Botany Bay process in reverso it would seem.
My recent visit finally confimed to me that S'x has now turned into a septic, mean-spirited little town , where spite is seen as entertainment and dysfunction is the norm. And all this after 10 years of so-called plenty. With the coming descent into real penury, I advise you all to clean up your over and unders and break out the cartridges. I've a feeling you may need them.

Spot on - hence why I am not making any big decisions about working or living longer-term here. As you say, 10 years of plenty and the place just seems nastier and more vicious. In the coming recession it will get a whole lot worse.

Apart from the No Sign Wine Bar going down the pan, the Italian Restaurant nearly at the top of Wind Street on the left hand side has been closed by the landlord. 698 in Mumbles has closed. When will it end?

The only people with any money to spend are those on benefits and they probably spend it on fags, drugs and booze!!

I was in a flower shop in Craddock street when the guy from John Francis came in and bought a big bunch of flowers to be delivered to his EA shop in Walters Road as a moral booster. They had not had a sniff of a buyer all week.

There always were too many EA's in Swansea and half of them did'nt have a clue anyway. This next few months will sort the men from the boys or the wheat from the chaff. That's the trouble with EA's they have had it too good for too long and when times become hard they don't know how to move sideways. They have absolutely no exit stratagy which any business man will tell you is essential to trade correctly.

If they had half a brain they would morfe themselves into business transfer agents, or commercial agents. Having said that Dawsons are according to the grapevine in a spot of trouble having put a lot of dosh into city centre commercials that they can't let.

A friend of mine is an expert in 'cities' and he often chortles at what UK cities try to do to invent themselves. He is particularly scathing of Swansea.

To cut a long story short, he basically says that Councils attempting to regenerate a city centre simply show how out of touch they are. He says city centres have moved on much in the same way that we no longer need people making wagon wheels. Councils try to do so because they have no real understanding of this change, lack the imagination or knowledge to see differently, think that they can continue to screw huge business rates out of SMEs and, occasionally, are brown bag in hand with 'local businessmen'. Of course, I am not suggesting that Swansea is like this at all.

Simply building some flats is not enough and city centres have simply become too dirty for big shops' corporate images, too difficult and expensive to get into hence all the out of town shopping centres and, amazingly, too expensive even for the big chains to pay the rentals and the business rates. Corporates simply got fed up being screwed by small town civil servants and town centres all over the UK have been killed off as a result.

So what so they do - well, they convert anything and everything to bars and nightclubs and, for a time, that works but eventually there are simply too many of them and the city centres become too violent, too dirty and too dangerous for the majority to venture into... so they start building so-called townhouses for the young upwardly mobile executive who, in truth, is probably a muscle-bound chav on steroids or a laddette in the hope of bringing more business into the night-clubs and bars. It all collapses in on itself eventually and often much quicker than people who invest in such venures realise such things can collapse.

As we are seeing in Swansea many of those bars are now up for sale, closing down or going bankrupt. Swansea City Centre is dead IMPO and, well, about time too as it is disgustingly filthy, full of smokers the majority of time and in the nights it is just a dangerous place to be. It is also almost impossible to get into by car, expensive to park in there and walking or cycling in is a smog-filled, filthy and soul-destroying experience if you come in along St. Helens Road, High Street, The Strand or even down Walter Road and Mansel Street.

Town centres needs radical changes, leadership from mayoral-like visionaries and, sadly, most UK towns will not get either nor the money to achieve what is needed. For the immediate future there is very little that can be done for most of our city centres. In other words, small business people and local authorities trying to revive city centres are trying to revive something that has actually had its day - they just don't get it yet!

Personally, I find Troste Park a much more pleasant shopping experience than anything in Swansea these days. Alas, no room for small shops but then there has been no room for such in Swansea for years in truth.

I've said it before, I'll say it again......go East young man. About 10K miles to the east. Wait it out in style and comfort.

I think JF are the best of a bad bunch, but they are all now sailing close to the foul wind .
So why the hell are they not laying down the law to the punters and insisting that they either chop their prices or take them off the books.(What's the answer Char Estate ??).
Dawsons in trouble; my heart bleeds. I cannot get into the GowerCoastalProperties site either. Another one in the shite I wonder??

Gower is up at the moment, they must have just paid their hosting company!!
Funnily enough it's a nice looking site.

You are right the EA's are to scared to tell the punters that properties in Swansea have plummetted in price since September last by 14%.

Before you know it the whole of Swansea will be one huge Housing Association Estate as I hear that they picking up properties left right and centre.

If I had the answer I would be in a nice place

What would make things easier would be for EA's to work closer together and share things instead of seeing each other simply as competition. If all the EA's could look at it the way I do and some of the smaller agents, then I am sure something could be done by us to help improve the market.

The big agents are unable to do much because they are over a barrel. They need to sell at the highest price possible for the commission to cover their costs. With the property post charging roughly £1,000 a page and 99% of vendors wanting their property pictured in the paper on a regular basis what can they do? I simply refuse to pay those costs which is probably why I do not compete with the big guys. If they were to get together and look at ways to reduce advertising costs, then they would not need such high commissions and then maybe they could actually give the vendors the right advice which is to lower the prices in order to have a chance of selling.

This would never happen and if it did it may not work, but I am trying to give a reason why I believe the major EA's are not doing much to help the market.

When I am valueing properties now I give the vendors the following advice. The market value for your property is £xxxx, but in order for you to sell within a reasonable time scale you need to look at putting it on at £xxxx (BMV). Here lies another problem. Many vendors need to sell for near market value in order to repay what they owe and to put a deposit on a new house to leave them a mortgage that they are able to re-pay. Buyers in general are unable to get a mortgage that they can afford to re-pay, so there are not many buyers out there.

The cost of property has risen far too much and too fast which is down to not only the EA's greed, but also to vendors greed. Many investors will have made a fortune over the last 6 or 7 years by buying property low and selling later for huge profits. You can't blame them for using the market to make money, but its taken its toll now.

Simple business sense would be a start - why have so many branches and so many staff?

Currys do not have a branch for TVs, a different branch for washing machines, another one for fridges and so on. Instead of all those offices all over the place they could do with one per town/city and have all the properties on view there and then.

It is ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS that if I go into an EA in Walter Road the staff are unable to tell me about a house in Sketty, Killay, Gorseinon or Mumbles.

I see what you mean, but they expand due to demand and now shrink for the same reason.

If they don't open up more shops and take on more staff, then they will not keep up with the demand of vendors and lose them to an agent that can take on more property. It's not easy to keep on top of the information for so many properties. I struggle with 20, so I have no idea how an agent from one of the big agents copes with looking after 100 properties.

Anybody seen the property post today?

Wafer thin and basically only one agent advertising property sales. Auctions seem up and more lettings advertised than sales plus an interview with Darlows about how it is a buyers market and they urge people to buy-to-let.

See my thread in the main forum re the property post:

http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/ind...showtopic=84450

Just added my view to the thread.

You don't half do some digging Tulip.

I have a guy that calls me almost every week telling me he has a house to let out and is always digging for info. Gives me the same name and contact details each time, but when asked if we have spoken before he always says no.

This is not you is it?

Nah, that is not me. Never given my details once to an EA anywhere. I do like to talk though

It all depends on who you talk to. I find if I talk to someone who has been an EA for years if not decades they are happy to spill the beans on the market. The ones who have only been in it in recent years tended not to say and/or know anything but that too is changing now.

I am quite blunt with people, tell them that I am a cash buyer ready to buy, that I know the market, that I am following prices and am aware of what properties have sold for via the land reg figures. I ain't prepared to be conned and I just inform people what numerous economists are saying at the moment about the BIG falls that will happen in the next year or so.

Of course, I get silly responses from some - notably the odd painted dragon or two - who either are in complete denial or who think they can continue to bull everyone who walks through the door. I suppose it is a tad like those servants who stand behind the Queen - in the boom some EAs have come to think of themselves as important people and now it must be harding letting go of the god complex. We're all Human at the end of the day.

Probably explains my loose tongue then

I've been in property management for a long time, but only 18 months in sales. I do not like to see people ripped off and know what it is like to be ripped off myself. In fact being in this business it happens to me a lot especially from companies supposedly involved in charities.