Thursday, Sep 25, 2008
be happy...
Times: 20 reasons to cheer falling house prices
Thousands of pounds may be wiped off the value of your home as you read this, but property market crashes are not all bad. Here are 20 reasons not to be downhearted about the downturn...
Posted by cha55a @ 06:56 AM (1306 views) Add Comment
27 Comments
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1. little professor said...
Wow, there's a change in sentiment. Not sure about Reason 19 though...
2. growler said...
Interesting observation in point 19 :-) Can't help detecting a bit of "peak" in the article when in fact it's the case that most people on here have been proven to be right in the face of massive doubt and ridicule.
3. mark wadsworth said...
Top stuff. Only going by the prices where we'd like to buy, I'd call it hundreds of thousands of reasons.
4. planning4acrash said...
no 19, yes ignore the websites that got it right, we have it right now, come back to us hapless readers!
People, leave the fanestream media, on mass, NOW!!
5. it_is_going_with_a_bang said...
No.19 is a reason to cheer falling house prices? lol.
Rebecca O'Connor what a strange thing to say. If you don't like it you really don't have to read it!
No.6. It's easier to add value. ???
How does that work then? It's a nice idea but how is it "easier". That makes no sense at all. If you wanted to borrow money against any work it would infact be harder would it not?
No.8. Survival of the fittest - and nicest ...
I don't really see that as being true. It just means a survival of the wealthiest - those that had some money for the hard times. That is hardly a hard and fast measurement of a good quality nice person!
Granted - it will get rid of some of the cowboys - but I'm sure it will also get rid of some genuine "nice" people to!!
and ... 13.
Lower council tax bills??? I didn't think they had been assessed since 1991!?
But on the whole it's nice to see some positives about lower house prices!!! :-)
6. Landedgentry said...
Turns out that being a 'harbinger of doom' would have served you better over the last year than being a blind optimist. Wonder how many people relied on advice by The Times and are in a sticky situation now?
7. Landedgentry said...
Was it this paper that said a good garden can add £50k to a property post Northern Rock?
8. bystander said...
7. More bargaining power for buyers. If you do want to buy, you have more bargaining power. Use it to push sellers to reduce the price, but steer clear of gazundering - it's bad manners.
......as is gazumping!!!!!!!!!!! Don't remember them writing that in the past.
9. Aidanapword said...
bystander,
Exactly my thoughts. Does anyone know of anywhere that mentions that gazumping was even vaguely rude?
10. uncle tom said...
Reason 21:
Less of Kirstie Bloody Alsopp
11. drewster said...
Reason 21a:
Less property porn in general on tv.
12. Will said...
" house prices are not falling in London ...." Ohhhh Goooood.
Londoners are expected to pay massive prices to live in rabbit hutches. Used to be OK so long as you could buy a mansion in the country in which to retire.
Sadly such bargains no longer exist.
13. Will said...
Forgot to mention - lower HPs does not lower your mortgage.
14. titaniccaptain said...
average 3 bed house for 45 grand coming to an estate agent near you....think thats a bit harsh? What happens if unemployment spirals and average wages fall to 18 grand a yeas
15. titaniccaptain said...
if average wage is 18 grand a year and lenders will only lend to 2 and a half times your wage...do the maths. The market dictates house prices but wages dictate the market
16. titaniccaptain said...
i hate doing this on my mobile broadband back on line in a week....even a technophobe like myself who lives in bag end has missed his p.c...im talking in 3rd person again time to take my tablet
17. mark wadsworth said...
I like TC's maths!
18. last_days_of_disco said...
@titaniccaptain
You are 100% right. I am just amazed at how everything I said when I first started looking for my first house in 2003 has actually turned out to be right.
My basic instincts, that this is ridiculous were tight on the money but I was beaten down by the relentless media barrage and the need I had to house my family in something more than a rabbit hutch.
It is totally based on how much people can lend. That determines average house prices, nothing else. Every other argument is dangerous nonsense.
Does anyone have figures for what is going to happen to the UK economy in terms of how much we make versus how much we spend. Now the banks are toast. How much real productivity is there in the UK economy when you strip out the financial services + NHS + retail + consumer stuff. Its kind of important right? Where are we heading, how much are real wages going to be in inflation adjusted terms. Anybody got sensible projections, or seen a report now the scale of the problem is apparent?
19. last_days_of_disco said...
errata: "tight" should be "right" (but tight can work too, haha)
20. uncle tom said...
Disco,
The answer to your question is that we have a desperately small manufacturing base left, and a truly critical lack of manufacturing skills, with a whole generation that is virtually untrained in the gentle art of making stuff.
Try looking up the adult training courses available in your area - you'll find all sorts of service industry related rubbish, but you'll struggle to find anywhere that can teach you how to use a lathe...
The UK is carrying a huge amount of dead wood in its labour force - from lawyers to accountants; 'elf and safety parasites to '5-a-day outreach workers'
Many of these people are earning above average incomes, some of them well above average. To turn the UK economy around, most (not some..) - need to be jettisoned.
Few of them will be able to command a similar income when re-deployed in the real world.
21. sneaker said...
The best thing about LOW property prices is that we have more spare cash for OTHER activities.
And in a recessionary/inflationary moment - isn't that exactly what we need?
22. inbreda said...
instead of deriding this website as "doom mongers" they should be pointing out that we were right all along, and the effects of this situation could have been lessened had more people sat up and taken note of this site.
Or - more to the point - they should be looking at the articles and discussion on here RIGHT NOW, and considering that perhaps there is some genuine, well considered insight to the future. Specifically today the fact that the Paulson bailout is effectively theft from the populous. Maybe the times should read those comments and employ a real journalist to write about it, rather than waiting a few years and then looking back to the comments on HPC and still referring to us as doom mongers.
23. Kruador said...
tc@13: It depends what 'average' you're talking about. Haliwide use mean of full-time male employees' salaries, i.e. paid annually. That's 9 million people, out of 23 million on the complete survey: only 39%.
The mean is the arithmetic average - the answer you get by adding up everyone's salary and dividing by the number of people - and it's skewed badly by people at the top end being overpaid. Looking at the percentiles (if you lined up everyone in a row, in order of salary, and asked the person a specific percentage along what their salary is), you see that the mean falls between the 60th and 70th percentile, but closer to 70%. That means that fewer than 40% of the earners earn as much as the mean.
I believe a fairer measure of affordability is that where 50% of all workers - paid weekly rather than annually - can afford this much. This is the median and in last year's survey this was £374.90 per week, which comes out to £19,494.80 if paid for 52 weeks. For simplicity I round this to £19.5k.
All data from http://www.statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/Product.asp?vlnk=15050.
24. last_days_of_disco said...
@uncle tom
Ok, unc, but I was asking if you had any notion of real figures. Back of a fag packet estimates welcome.
25. Cha55a said...
Hmmm, quite a few 'HPC regulars' posts in the Times Online comments section of this article. Quite a few posts from seriously upset Jeremy and Lucinda Barn-Conversions too. Apparently 'HPC regulars' are a 'left-leaning student readership' Hmmm 'socialist', 'obsessive...bitter, disturbed even'.
26. wiltshire said...
Hasn't it always been the way? The enlightened are derided as witches and demons until it becomes so bleedingly obvious that they were right all along. Then suddenly EVERYONE is enlightened. Then most just claim they knew all along anyway!
I have thought about this a lot over the past 2 or 3 years, about how accurate the predictions have been by regular posters on this site. Anyone who found it and took heed has saved themselves a lot of heartache. So far at least. None of us may escape the heartache by the time this thing is over - which is also something that has been regularly discussed on this site for years.
Personally I think this site should be applauded for at least offering some sanity whilst all around were losing their minds - and the shirts off their backs!
27. planning4acrash said...
Maybe, journo's diss our site to promote it? Just give a link to sites that say what you believe in, that you are not allowed to say, and people will, by reverse psychology, go visit? So, please, journo's everywhere, go slam this site in the fanestream media!! Go go gadget infobomb, Thunderbirds are go, Attack stations!!!!!