Friday, Dec 19, 2008
Nationwide and Halifax refuse to make house price forecasts for 2009
BBC News: Lenders axe house price forecast
I guess they believe fear is going to be dribing the market and that predictions of further big falls may become a self-fulfilling prophecy, undermining the confidence of potential buyers who might be afraid of a fall in the value of their homes.
Posted by addictive @ 12:11 PM (1459 views) Add Comment
23 Comments
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1. rm96696 said...
Maybe the government should make it illegal to say anything negative about the "housing market".
2. Tommyweaves said...
Excellent news! What they're really saying is this:
"Our forecast of house price falls for next year is so dire that we dare not publish it. Therefore we're going to pretend that forecasting isn't a good idea unless we can say prices are going up. la la la I'm not listening and I'm going to keep my eyes shut until I feel better"
It's the same mentality as not opening your bank statements because you know you won't like what it tells you.
I'd love to see Dept of Health statistics for the increase in numbers of sheople admitted to hospital with finger stress as a result of keeping them crossed for so long!
3. Papabear said...
This country is a joke!
4. nubbers said...
'the society has shunned making an annual forecast before, in 1992 and 1993'
From that I would very roughly predict another 3 or 4 years of house price falls.
5. japanese uncle said...
Next will be Goldman Sachs refusing to predict oil price. 200 dollars/barrel eh? Hahaha!
6. Renter said...
But of course their more than happy to make predictions when the market is on the way up!
7. wdbeast said...
"Things are changing so rapidly in the market, which makes it very difficult to forecast,"
Wrong actually.
Statistically we have seen remarkably consistent results over the last 9 months which make forecasting the next year very easy.
(Halifax Figures)
Mar -2.5%
Apr -1.5%
May -2.5%
Jun -1.9%
July -1.7%
Aug -1.8%
Sep -1.3%
Oct -2.4%
Nov -2.6%
The average change per month over the last 9 months is -2.02%.
So next year's forecast is 12 x -2.02 = -24.24%
Now how hard was that Martin?
8. mark wadsworth said...
Wdbeast, nice try, but the calculation you want is
(1.00 - 0.0202)^12 = 0.783, a much more modest annual fall of 22%.
9. wdbeast said...
Thanks Mark.
Maths A level was a long time ago now, but at least I had a stab at it, which is more than Fionulla and Martin will do, LOL.
10. gone-to-colombia said...
Ah but how about factoring in rising unemployment, etc. More like 30%
11. crunchy said...
When they are not prepared to even lie things must be bad.
Here's mine another 20% nationally over 2009
That's conservative.
12. Basil said...
Few, thank god we have Jonathan Davies to make predictions insted. Dont tell me buy gold, cos people will always want chunky gold chains eh.
13. will said...
But with so many property investors out there borrowing huge sums of cash, surely they should offer some guidance to their investors. Investment Trust and Unit Trust companies do.
14. will said...
Martin Ellis - you were only too keen to publish the monthly rises over the last decade.
The Banks are clearly trying to control the situation, so why would anyone buy a house again?
If you have to buy, don't borrow from Scrooge Ellis.
15. gotout2006 said...
We can leave the price's of houses now to the trusted estate agent's
who will know what they are worth. NOT
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17. jack c said...
Halifax will still need to publish the actual HP index because there are several structured investment products which are performance linked to it.
18. little professor said...
Propertyfinder.com's predictions for 2009:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/houseprices/3851616/House-prices-It-all-depends-on-the-level-of-mortgage-lending.html
19. Mattormsby said...
Hurray!!! I think this is great news.
After years of waiting our time is here!... And we were right all along.
Fantastic!
20. Britishblue said...
Currently we can still just about trust the monthly figures from Halifax and Nationwide. However, these are not legal indices and Halifax and Nationwide could change how they calculate them at anytime. They would have a vested interest in massaging the stats, just as governments have done in the past with unemployment figures.
The indicator to watch is auction prices. Currently the land registry doesn't include auction results in its stats because it views these transactions as 'trade' rather than a retail sales? If the Halifax and Nationwide followed suit, house prices could easily be shown as a few percent better than they were last year. The number of houses sold at auction is set to explode next year.
If they are not prepared to make predictions, they surely expect a massive fall. Given that these organizations could fail if prices dropped too low, it will be in their interests for the economists and statisticians within these organizations to revisit how they calculate these stats to put them in a more positive line.
Think Retail Price Index and Consumer Price Index. Think of how house prices were not included in inflation. Think about how employment stats were massaged (by both governments) . Expect an 'improved' way of calculation to be slipped in in the not to distant future. Hey, we may even get a little government pressure to do this.
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