Saturday, Oct 13, 2007
86,097 and rising
propertysnake.co.uk: propertysnake.co.uk
Not an Article, just an observation. I looked last week and the number of sellers caught by propertysnake.co.uk as having reduced their asking prices was around 74000. Today it is 86,097.
Could the HPC actually be happening before our eyes?
Posted by sirgoogle @ 01:03 PM (4090 views) Add Comment
47 Comments
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1. sirgoogle said...
It would be good if propertysnake.co.uk could produce a graph of their own showing the number of properties on their site per week - and their view of the collective value of these house prices - as these are the sellers who need to sell - and threfore propertysnake.co.uk is a leading indicator of change.
It amazes me, but I would have thought that rightmove would support sites like this as it would lead more and more people back to their site (with all the advertising revenue that brings).
I thought rightmove was in this for the money - not simply propping up the anti-HPC VI community. They are in the prime position to make lots of money out of property increases AND decreases. It is the rate of change (up or down) that will bring them revenue. Stagnation will cause less visitors to the site and hence make it less attractive to advertisers.
2. su said...
If Propertysnake had access to Rightmove's details then it would be helpful for us because:
a) we would be better able to gauge the downturn in prices
b) those of us interested in buying would be able to view the price cuts and may spot a bargain property we like.
Rightmove, however, may feel that people like us would use the figures to demonstrate the extent of the crash which in turn may frighten potential buyers. At the moment Estate Agents are trying to assure potential buyers that this is not so much a crash as a blip. Their business, in many respects, depends upon buyers believing this.
3. denzil said...
It's really difficult to gauge how significant propertysnakes stats are. I don't dispute them but we are approaching the quiet period for EA's. If house prices are still falling through next spring then a crash is underway but I'm sceptical about a crash and see nothing more than my predication of 10% falls as froth gets blown from the market and then broad stagnation. Don't get me wrong I'm no bull and I would prefer a crash but unless a recession occurs there is just no compelling reason for the market to crash in any big way.
As a side point, I went for a hair cut this morning in my home county of Somerset and I just so happened to be sat next to what transpired to be an EA. The bloke gave credence to the statement, "the emptiest vessels make the most noise". Anyway pushing aside any predjudice I have for stupid people who talk too loudly I listened to what he had to say. The guy said that the market was completely and utterly dead and how he was getting really good at sudoku due to the amount of spare time on his hands. He also passed comment that there was not much property coming onto the market as well and those selling were having to be more realistic with their price expectations. The funniest bit was that he blamed the media and TV for leading people to believe the market was buoyant and they simply had to name their price.
What really topped it for me was that when I returned to my car there was a flyer under the wiper. The flyer was advertising BTL property for sale in a new development just up the road. All in all a morning for the bears in Somerset.
4. Margaret said...
I am currently buying a property and am taking out a large mortgage to do so. I made an offer of £480K about 4 weeks ago. I am worried that prices are dropping and this fear is increased by the BS surveyor valuation report which states that there are no properties like this one in the region to compare it with, but that they feel the offer price is the very highest that the seller could expect to achieve. In the last week it has been reported that house prices in this area have fallen by 7% in the last month and are predicted to fall by 17% in the next couple of months - what would you do?
5. su said...
I do think propertysnakes's figures should be taken with a pinch of salt. Overall it's a good site, but there are inaccuracies. A friend of a friend saw a 4 bed flat in Falconwood, Glenrothes on Propertysnake showing a 28% drop in price. Feeling it was too good to be true, this friend contacted Barratt via propertysnake's link and was told no such property existed. No 4 bed flats had been built there, and no houses had been reduced either!
Also if you look at the detailed breakdown of event history, the price changes on some properties don't make sense.
6. paul said...
"I do think propertysnakes's figures should be taken with a pinch of salt."
You should see Rightmove's!
7. eyeoftheweasel said...
Hi Denzil. Although certain past examples might suggest that a recession is needed to cause significant falls in house prices, I don't think you can conclude that there probably won't be a house price crash without a recession (and you wouldn't be the only person to think along those lines). UK houses are currently grossly overvalued, and completely out of equilibrium with the rest of the economy. At some point, UK house prices have to fall (whether in Sterling or real terms), despite Gordon Brown's ever more desperate measures to continue fuelling house price inflation.
In the situation the UK housing market is currently in, I don't think there needs to be a single particular trigger for house prices to start falling. It'd probably start the ball rolling a bit more noticeably if there was a trigger though, but that doesn't need to be a recession. For example, one (but not the only) reason for the rampant house price inflation over the last 10 years (or at least the last 5 or 6 of those 10) has been the willingness of lenders to lend ever higher multiples of borrowers salaries. Since the reason credit troubles, that's likely to come to an end, and that may turn out to be all that's needed.
It's even possible that a house price crash could be a cause, rather than result, of a recession (I doubt that, although it would have a negative affect on certain industries).
Anyway, I need to go and get my hair cut.
8. su said...
Paul. You mean September's report that said prices had dropped 2.6%? I've just seen 2 houses in Scotland this week drop by about that amount. :-)
9. yoyo1 said...
I agree with su that the web site ran more efficiently/accurately when all of the EA's links were used freely. Just before the clampdown on 'link intrusion' occured back in July the total of reduced properties was standing at approx 250,000 with a photograph for each and every one. Had things continued normally who knows where that figure would be today? I think these guys could do with some help. It strikes me that such a website with the reduced theme is the future for all sales, now that the pendulum has swung t'other way. Why are EA's so embarressed to mention the 'R' word?
10. su said...
@Yoyo1.
I think EAs are worried about their businesses. There has been an increase in the number of EAs in recent years because of the housing boom. Some of them are bound to go bust as house prices fall and people are less likely to buy. However, I do agree that now people are starting to accept that house prices are falling, the EAs would be better to take advantage of the situation rather than trying to deny it is happening. I guess it is just too big a step for them right now. Hopefully they'll change their minds in the near future. I want to buy a house in the next year or two and I'd feel better if I bought a bargain!
11. new_order said...
I think other sites, besides propertysnake, will surface in the next few months.
12. planning4acrash said...
Propertysnake had 140,000 reduced properties a few months ago before other sites stopped them from using all of their details. Propertysnake will boom when EA's recognise that they must publicise lower prices to get a sale. This is probably what's happening now.
13. Sherlockhomes said...
sir google, in a similar fashion like fubra ltd does with housepricecrash.co.uk.
14. pecker said...
Spoke to an agent in the South the other day. She said activity has totally dried up! New enquiries down two thirds in the last month! Its happening out there on the streets! The figures are going to show this in two or three months when a few of the lagging effects are taken out!!
15. new_order said...
The damage has already been done.
The company I work for in London has lost its 3 best engineers because they were young enough to not own yet so could not afford the high living costs. As a result, the firm has lost their best and biggest client as we are no longer a specialist firm in their eyes. I have been assigned to plug another such gap with one of the other clients but I am leaving in the new year for the same reason.
Now count all of the skilled people we have grown who have emigrated to the US, Canada and Australia due to high living costs. When the dust settles, we will have nothing but broken property investors and burger flippers.
16. planning4acrash said...
Apparently you could tell when the last crash happened because the Estate Agents, overnight, went DEAD quiet.
17. voiceofreason said...
new order @13. I am an engineer too. In fact I talk to a load of engineering PHDers regularly as well. They don't plan to work after their PHDs. £35K pa will be nowhere near enough to live on. And that is generous.
No, high house prices have a massive knock on effect to the economy as you say.
I am trying to work out a timescale to this crash in the making.
So the EAs have gone quiet, but it still feels like we are teetering on the edge, but not quite over it yet.
A bit like the cliff-hanger ending of The Italian Job.
We need the final push into a correction that will return house prices and in turn the general economics of the UK back to a workable state.
18. su said...
I spoke with an EA recently. Seemed like a decent guy. He told me that I could try offering below the fixed price! I always thought the fixed price in Scotland was just that - a fixed price.
19. bidin'matime said...
This CGT change will be interesting. It’s now widely understood through the press that BTL owners would be better off waiting until April before selling – call me an old cynic, but I think Darling Alistair new that all along – but what will happen then..? Right at the point when prices should be rising, with the spring bounce, a whole load of properties come onto the market (it’s the contract date that counts, so they could appear on the market any time after, well… Christmas). All those people who have been weighing up whether to clock up another year’s taper relief will say “What the hell – let’s get out now!”
20. enuii said...
As all the engineers are crawling out into the open, I am one too, you are (the previous engineers) both right, although I guess you are both younger then me I can vouch for the appalling level of recompense in this country for people with real skills. As I have kids I have been effectively stuck in the same house for the last 20 years due to the cost of living in this country and have watched while every bit spare of land in my local area was filled in with housing and all the 'old' employers went out of business and were replaced by more housing. I now live in a town with no 'real' jobs that's full of commuter housing and a massive bluewater/trafford centre/meadowhall shopping centre. I fear that a downturn in consumer spending will take this once proud little town into more of a soulless dump than it already is.
21. enuii said...
I guess the number of engineers frequenting this site is because of how observant we tend to be about the things that go around us. Stalin knew that the engineers and scientist had him rumbled which is why he had his purges of these troublesome types in the 1930's. Watch your backs lads, we might end up in Gordon's Gulag, then again as we live in the UK we might already be in it!
22. paul said...
su, Rightmove are famous for offering properties for £400m etc. In fact this was most rampant just before their flotation, leading to complaints that they were exaggerating their sales register.
(I think I'm right that that was Rightmove - could be wrong).
new_order, you've summed up exactly what I've seen happening. I know people who won't come back to live in the UK for the foreseeable future - and a couple of them are very talented - one works for Google and the other works in natural language research - both were disgusted at the charade being played out in the UK property market a few years ago and promptly left the country - the guy who now works for Google (Google Labs) just left his job, and then six months later got his position in Tokyo.
The UK plc probably needed people like that, but they're not likely to return ...
23. Stillwaiting said...
I too spoke to an the owner of an estate agent in a very affluent area of Herts (Berkhamsted) during the week.. He is worried, no business and the few offers being done are all 10-15% less..
24. Waitingstill said...
I too spoke to the owner of an estate agent during the week.. The estate agent is in Berkhamsted in Herts, a very popular area where houses usually have gotten snapped up as soon as they come on the market.. He said it is dead and is panicking, the few offers coming in are all 10-15% less..
25. ck one said...
Interesting point about this site being heavily engineer/technology led, the reason we are here talking reason is because we were schooled in logic and understand that every problem can be broken down into a number of equations or simplistic theories that bring solutions to complex problems. Engineers/techs tend to be far less emotional people than your average person, in fact sometimes viewed as boring, we tend not to get overexcited with spin and hype and focus on the facts before us. House prices are a classic case of a control system with a corrupt feedback loop that keeps refusing to let the system operate in a stable manner; at sometime the whole system will breakdown because it's way outside of it's components operating window, at this point the system will return to default in an uncontrolled manner.
26. new_order said...
Google eh Paul. I was at a tech Q-A session at Microsoft in Reading 3 weeks ago. Even they are struggling with living and transport costs. Not food costs though because food/drink at their campus is free. Not suprisingly, most of their alpha-phase development and testing is now done in India. Their staff in the UK are mostly there to talk up what has been built and get it sold, otherwise known as tech evangelists.
27. new_order said...
Interesting point ck one. As engineers (or techies as I prefer because this includes more such people), we see only the objective causes and effects of what is happening. We say things will happen because we expect them to happen based on logical conclusions, not merely because we may want things to happen and our lives may depend upon it.
28. ck one said...
I know this is off thread, but while I am on my soap box here's my tech input...
The government does care about tech, the main reason being they don't understand it... They studied politics or some other 'BA(Hons) Useful Subject' at University.
I went through the Telco meltdown where I watched Marconi Implode + Nortel, Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola etc,etc all who had massive organisations in the UK virtually disappear overnight... Yes we all know that the Telco thing was a bubble but the UK government took 10's of BN's from the UK mobile operators and instead of giving some of it back to the industry to help it through it's dark days by keeping people in jobs and maintaining a leading edge in the Telco technology stakes they decided to invest it (unwisely) elsewhere.
Now the Chinese have mastered (read stolen) the technology and are kicking a**e all over the world. Someone up top needs to wise up fast!
29. voiceofreason said...
The USA seem to be able to combine a healthy financial economy (East Coast, Wall Street) and a healthy tech sector (West Coast VCs).
My gut feeling is that the low dollar will bail the Yanks out in short order, as they still have a lot of expertise to sell despite what their finance industry have done to their economy.
There are many engineers who are successful, Jim Clark, Elon Musk (Paypal, Tesla cars, SpaceX).
Just gotta keep the faith !!
And England is in the final next weekend :-)
30. crash bandicoot said...
My name is crash bandicoot and I am an engineer. It's nothing to be ashamed of guys. It may be the fact that we get to analyse systems and back our instincts on a daily basis that lets us see through the whole charade. Everything reverts to equilibrium in the end, we all know that and this system has just started its reversion.
31. Flapjack said...
45% falls already - propertysnake is showing massive reductions in (highly overvalued) properties already. And the crash has only just started - this crash will get very nasty by the New Year. We ain't seen nothing yet! 45% reductions!!!!!!!
32. paul said...
My brother worked for Motorola in Swindon. He was told to move to SE Asia or look for another job. Their offices were never that big, but the type of work they did (R&D) was. He's now quite senior in that neck of the woods. And quite right, Motorola is gone from Swindon.
Anyway. As an engineer (it's in my job title so I can't escape it), I find myself yet again doing really interesting work at the bleeding edge in great offices in the city but definitely not getting a city workers salary!
That £10bn that was taken from the telcos wasn't such a bad thing though - those companies had had a very good run at that stage. Although the money was squandered by the government on fanciful public sector positions, it was a redistribution of wealth. When that money ran out, they told Eddie George to make it all good again by creating a housing boom.
And the rest, I suppose, is history.
33. Hyrax said...
Well I suppose the scientists should pipe up too. Two years ago our start-up was sold to a US biotech firm for over £30 million. They moved the production to California and closed the UK plant. The employees did well on shares I suppose, but no UK wealth generation otherwise. Two years later my nanotech patent is still being pushed through US patent office and I am still unemployed. I am tempted by the investment jobs in nanotechnology by Canada, as there is not even a science park within 50 miles of where I live; So starting my own company in UK is unlikely though I have some neat ideas that will remain on ice for the moment, or longer. This year I get to pay another £10k in tax even though I havent worked in 2 years, the concept of R&D in UK being reduced to a lucky trip to dragons den on TV to be ripped apart by quick bucks and archaic management styles. UK is in serious decline in technology and manufacturing. Today I could not advise a teenager to take science at school or college really as the rewards are not there if you want a steady career and income.
34. Neither Here Nor There said...
Any accountants here?
35. Happyrenter said...
...is another engineer / tech industry type
spot on ck one re telco!
36. David Smith's Sub Prime. . . said...
"...........This CGT change will be interesting. It’s now widely understood through the press that BTL owners would be better off waiting until April before selling – call me an old cynic, but I think Darling Alistair new that all along – but what will happen then..? .........."
It's obvious. Crash is planning to go to the polls in April, or slightly before when there is a desperate window of opportunity.
Enuui, not just engineers but anyone who was switched on, usually lawyers and literary people as well
37. Tricky Dicky said...
Dont forget us scientists too.... I agree with the points several here have made about us understanding logic, not getting excited by fluff etc...If there is a problem, like you engineers, we tend to research it and deduce the likely solution - uncontrolled system, running out of control on its own feedback loops = crash. Just a matter of time. All bubbles burst, housing generally on a 15 year wavelength. Low house prices benefit everyone except the HPI VIs and those selling up and emigrating. Ergo I will wait for the next trough to move again.
And like you engineers, i have seen my field, biotech/pharma, massively contract in the Uk over the last 15 years: In terms of the lab science, we used to be about the strongest in the World (not just my view, read Competitive Advantage of Nations - actually, dont, unless you are an insomniac). Now UK bioscience is mostly gone, and all we have instead are lots of office/car bound biopharm jobs. I was a successful (in that I still have products I invented on the market making someone else millions) biotech R&D lab head for ~10 years, got the chop 5 years ago, couldnt find another lab job in the UK. Loads of friends in the same boat, in fact, I dont know a single scientist or engineer I was at Uni with who still works in this country using the skills they were trained in. Nice one, Gordo and Tony.
38. planning4acrash said...
PROPERTYSNAKE UPDATE: 91,997 and counting :p
39. sirgoogle said...
I too hark from the scientific and engineering professions - and left the UK due to the last bubble burst. I suspect that I will soon be joined by many more of you guys - Living in continental Europe is great, pay is better and the cost of living is less than the UK (although we do have some countries with over inflated House Prices too). International Companies are always looking for numerate native English speakers to join their international divisions - so you engineer types would fit in well.
40. Richard said...
Growth for the last few years has entirely been dependent on service sector and retail sector, but this growth has primarily been fed by debt and through the assumption that house prices will always rise. Equity release schemes and home owner loans have allowed the population to keep spending - using credit cards and then refinancing securing the debt against property to reduce APR. As house prices fall, retail spending will fall, service sector will contract and thus jobs will go, thus repossessions will rise thus leading to a negative feedback forcing prices downward further. Just to make things worse ...... food price inflation will rise another 15% - 20% by Christmas on top of which fuel prices will reach all time highs.
This will be the last debt fueled christmas in sometime with a terrible new year and a house price hangover lasting 5 years.
41. inbreda said...
Well - hands up - I'm a statistician. Can't deny my logical view of things.
I wonder what profession, if any, is held by David 2004?
42. planning4acrash said...
Blimy, this article got over 2000 views already, now that's the most bearish thing I've seen for some time!
43. David Smith's Sub Prime. . . said...
Tricky,
That is quite worrying. Still, they could always be encouraged back. What do you say to swithcing them with BTL'rs? say in the number 1 employee of utility back here to 2 amoeba like leaches exported?
They would soon bankrupt the country they went to? and lower its birthrate to dangerously low levels by their behaviour...
44. David Smith's Sub Prime. . . said...
Who monitors propertysnake?
why so many so recently on the 'market' ?
45. uncle tom said...
Well, everyone else has had something to say on this thread so I suppose I 'd better chip in too!
I have no background information on propertysnake, I don't how representative or accurate their data is.
In absolute terms, their numbers may not mean a great deal, but provided their data sources do not alter, the numbers look interesting in relative terms.
However, do not expect sudden and dramatic price falls at this point - we are a long way from the stage where vendors feel an urgent need to sell, before prices fall further.
I would be surprised to see prices fall by more than 1 or 2% per month at this point, but when the annual price growth stats drop to zero and beyond, then I would expect to see more urgency on the part of vendors, and faster price falls..
46. swamp said...
Interesting on how any engineers frequent this site. I'm an engineer also. I no longer work 9 to 5, purely out of choice due to the demise of 'real' jobs in my area. Most local jobs are your typical clerical, marketing, service type stuff and much of the local industry has been replaced by shops and flats. Friends from the same engineering background and have also noticed this trend in the UK, esp over the last 10 years. I cannot remember who said it.... Engineers 'build' societies. If this continues then future UK generations may not be able to design, engineer, build, fix, repair anything unless it has 4 walls.
47. su said...
@swamp.
I suspect our society is in danger of losing a lot of practical skills.
Take the old war movies - the prisoners used their skills gained in civvy street to enable them to escape. But if a similar war to WW2 were to happen, how many men would know how to tailor a suit, for example? Many of our traditional skills are being made redundant by cheap imports. Nowadays women don't normally choose to sew or knit their own clothes because they can buy ready-made articles much cheaper than the cost of the basic materials. Because of that there are very few women of my generation who can knit anything more complicated than a scarf - assuming they can knit at all. Even the skill of taking up a hem has been replaced by the use of sticky tape!