Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Crash is good news
Spectator: The truth is that the house price crash is, overall, good news
Rod Liddle says that our pursuit of property as investment has been
the most repulsive and soul-destroying aspect of contemporary British culture.
Posted by doomwatch @ 01:34 PM (783 views) Add Comment
7 Comments
- If you do not have an admin password leave the password field blank.
- If you would like to request a password allowing you to add comments and blog news articles without needing each one approved manually, send an e-mail to the webmaster.
- Your email address is required so we can verify that the comment is genuine. It will not be posted anywhere on the site, will be stored confidentially by us and never given out to any third party.
- Please note that any viewpoints published here as comments are user's views and not the views of HousePriceCrash.co.uk.
- Please adhere to the Guidelines
1. plato said...
A month old article that I missed and is an excellent read. Nothing really new for HPC, but an excellently written piece for those of us who appreciate the differing descriptions by similarly minded thinkers.
Always bits of info to pick up as well. Didn't know about the Berlin stats.
2. montesquieu said...
Berlin may be the capital again but it's in the middle of the old east in a vast sea of deprivation, 60 miles from the Polish border where it's cheaper and easier to hire and fire, in fact there are incentives for relocating. It's situation overall is far from ideal.
I have a mate in Berlin, the place is not only crawling with Brits living there now in trendy parts of the old East Berlin like Prenzlauerberg, but there has been a huge amount of BTL activity. He is totally bemused by these Brits (he lived in England for 16 years btw) expecting to make a fast buck, when the German property market is highly regulated, very stable and where the responsibilities for landlords can be quite onerous (eg the only real reason the courts will accept for kicking someone out is that you have nowhere else to live yourself). Rents are ridiculously low and controlled (and low returns feeds back into low prices). Prices rise at a snails pace and banks require huge deposits (typically 30%) before lending any money. Germans still save far more than we do, and some of them buy a house this it in their late 30s or 40s - though most of them still don't bother.
Whole blocks of 12 or 16 1930s apparments can be bought for maybe 600k Euros (what's that half a mil £ there days), in good locations 20min from the city centre by tram.
I must admit somewhere like Potsdam - grand 14-room mansions from the time of Frederick the Great going for £500k - looks to me something like Bath was in the 60s - run down and ripe for gentrification - but most of the place is going nowhere IMO. Not a property hotspot by any means.
3. handle_it said...
Thanks for posting. As stated it's nowt new to us lot of "moaners" but very well composed.
4. drewster said...
@montesquieu - Thank you for the informative post. I've often wondered why the German market hadn't budged. I think there's possibly another aspect to it aswell: the cheap cost of commuting in Germany. For example, in London prices would be lower if the trains were cheaper (and less crowded, more lines, etc.) because people could afford to live outside London and commute in. In Germany by contrast, trains are cheap so people choose to live outside the city, keeping prices down. Does that chime with your experience?
5. cyril said...
I suppose Germany may become a bit more 'free-market' over time, and if so, presumably prices will go through the roof. The situation with rented property used to be the same in the UK a few years ago until Mrs Thatch abolished everything.
It's all about whether you consider high house prices to be a good thing. We seem to like them in the UK because we are basically stupid I guess.
6. plato said...
montesquieu --
Thanks for the interesting additional info. I had a friend who lived there for many years, in the south though. Always said attitude was very stereotyped and overpowered by rules. Been to the south (Bavaria) myself many years ago. Beautiful place. Travelled through from Belgium but didn't stop elsewhere to really experience the country.
7. mark wadsworth said...
Hurray for Rod Liddle!