Tuesday, Feb 10, 2009
South West property market hits the bottom
BBC News: Hopes improve for housing market
Usual ramping by RICS. It appears that where I live, it's time to buy.
Posted by will @ 02:24 PM (1307 views) Add Comment
20 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. titaniccaptain said...
DCB to Bull trap?
2. Dan said...
Thank God!
PHEW!
For a moment there I thought my neighbours house, priced at £240k, [Small 2 bed bungalow] which was sold for £80k in 2000 was a teensy weensy bit overpriced.
Obviously i am a total idiot, and I will go round there right now with my chequebook.
Thankyou to all the lovely lovely people at RICS. :0)
3. little professor said...
No need!
4. jack c said...
They'll have more distressed sales and possession order sales knocking up the average by a minute fraction - what does RICS stand for these days - retarded, inbred, crap surveyors?
5. Les said...
Ah, yes,Roger Punch.He`s a director of one of the "posh" EA`s. He`s in our local paper almost on a daily basis lately, frantically ramping for all he`s worth.The v.i`s are desperately trying to inject some momentum into a dead market in time for the "spring bounce". If they fail,which they will, i can see a lot of E.A`s going to the wall the other side of Easter.
6. mark wadsworth said...
Hmmm. Aren't house prices in the South West propped up by pensioners retiring to the coast and second homers, as well as ludicrouly strict planning restrictions? Didn't they have the highest price-to-income ratio of the whole of the UK, like twenty seven or something?
Sure, the planning restrictions will remain in place, but I don't see much support from current retirees or second homers, not right now and not for the foreseeable.
7. letthemfall said...
Note that these are the views of a Mr Punch. Look behind you.
8. will said...
Dan
Totally agree. Houses had risen 300% in around 7 years where I live too. Maybe I should have asked for a 300% pay increase in that time.
9. Steve said...
I am looking at a holiday flat in Newquay: 22 Horizons currently on for £159,000 having sold for £280,000 back in July 2007. So basically, half price. And I still don't think you could get a decent yield on it so I am going to wait quite a bit longer. My cousin is an estate agent in north cornwall and she is of the opinion that the market is knackered for a decade.
10. justwatching said...
Hopes & sales are different things. Just like viewings, enquiries, and sales.
Read the comments at the end of the report. Many negative ones. Just a few whinging ones (about negative press & miserable lenders)
11. shining wit said...
Mark Wadworth @ 5. These ludicrously strict planning restrictions, are these the ones that have allowed the infill of about 50% of green sites within town boundaries within the last 30 years, With many school playing fields and recreational parks being turned into many thousands of properties. Or the ones that have seen an exponential growth in UK dwellings since WW2 ?
I really don't get this take that planning laws are overly restrictive. This appears to be based on the supply and demand theory/myth. There are more than 700,000 empty properties and probably more than 1 million second homes in the UK. Couple that with the absolute fact that more than 3 million single dwellings (mostly large Victorian and Edwardian properties) have been converted into multiple flats and apartments since 1970, and many city centres have seen other, mostly industrial buildings, turned into more flats and apartments, the idea that planning laws are overly restrictive doesn't really hold water.
The shortage of property in this country is a myth, based on the greed to multiply investment by building new houses and flats. Immigration may also have played a part in any perceived shortage. No-one, and I do mean no-one, knows how many people are in the UK (and owning or renting properties).
There maybe a shortage of particular dwelling types in the country but that doesn't really mean that the laws are wrong, and individual planning departments differing interpretations of the law on green belt and other planning regulations may appear to be restrictive.
In my lifetime I have seen an absolute explosion of property building, with the boundary for Greater London now touching the M25 in numerous places. There has also been a massive growth (more than 500% since WW2) in single occupancy residences. I know you are going to say that other countries have higher proportions of buildings to countryside but that doesn't mean it is good (I have been to former East Germany, the place looks like it has been nuked.)
If planning laws are radically overhauled, and the result is a plethora of badly conceived building, then the net result will be similar to the 'light touch' regulation that has made the banking system such a complete farce.
You can keep saying the same things about LVT and restrictive planning but, in my opinion, these views are just not going to prevail. Where the LVT issue might have some credibility, the majority of the major areas of the large conurbations within the UK are now resembling a badly conceived child's drawing of anything approaching nice places to live. Any expansion will only make these places worse and the country as a whole will become a complete and utter sprawling mess.
We need to start making radical changes to our approach to many things, but making planning laws less restrictive, when the restrictions have come up with the results we now see, are possibly way off the mark and may make what's left of this 'green and pleasant land' much less gren and not very pleasant.
12. montesquieu said...
@ 'shining wit'
We're not talking about London we are talking about the south-west. I'd personally love to buy a plot in the middle of the Mendips or the Quantocks and build a house on it but the half a dozen times a year plots with permission come up, demand is huge (usually from developers who then try to splice the plot into smaller bits for maximum profit).
Try to build a house here or in many other places in the south-west and you'll be out of luck.
The south-east is trashed anyway already and though nimbys fight a continuing rearguard action the battle was lost years ago. I wouldn't live within the M25 if you paid me to do so.
Not so in the south-west. You can buy any amount of placed built in infil in Bridgewater or Weston Super Mare, or in designated places where housing schemes are planned to meet local authority targets (like the instant town created on the edge of Burnham) but anywhere nice at a reasonable price? - forget it.
13. shining wit said...
montesquieu .....
So planning laws should change because you want to build a house where you like it. The South East was (and parts still are) very nice. The south west will be destroyed if people are allowed to de-regulate the planning laws. The problem appears that everyone and his mate wishes to live their now. Second homes are a real problem and make LVT a far more viable possibility. Planning regulations aren't completely without their good points, otherwise the property bubble would've started to ruin that part of the country.
It isn't planning laws that are the problem. It is the social problems that people create. It isn't impossible to build almost anywhere, it's just more difficult in certain areas (like the countryside, particularly national parks). If laws were passed to prevent second homes that could greatly reduce the price of country properties. People have to realise that it's too much wealth and credit, in the hands of the few, a huge chunk of whom, do not even live in the country (weekends and holidays perhaps and getting income from letting to holidayers), that have exasserbated the problem.
What happens if the 'light touch' to regulation comes to everywhere from wiltshire and dorset, to devon and cornwall, is allowed? As soon as all those people advocating liberal planning get into their lovely cheap country properties, their own nimby-ism would go through the roof. Too many people, wanting too much, with a car that can carry them to work in Bristol or other towns and other social issues are a huge part of this problem.
There needs to be joined up thinking here. I know from first hand experience that their are too few homes, for people wishing to live in desirable country areas but in my opinion, liberalising planning laws will only work for so long before the places become a mess. The south west, wales, and many other places, are full of empty second homes and holiday homes, that make the places totally and utterly empty out of the summer months and local economies struggle because they are less people living in these areas than almost any period in the last 300 years (north wales for example).
Land Value Tax has a lot of good points that could address this situation but has as much chance of ever being made law as the British will stop eating chips and drinking beer. Liberal planning laws can only go so far, and will in themselves, ruin the place even more. What some people really are advocating is liberal planning laws so that they can live where they want to because of being priced out of the area. This is an unfortunate result of too many people and too much money. Personally I advocate one house for every family or person that needs one but I don't know how that is attainable.
I lived in wales during the early 80s for more than 15 years and the "Keep the home fires burning campaign" was an interesting concept.
14. Caffeine said...
The sales figures are a bit vague. Is that 9.9 properties per Estate Agency sold per month or sold per 3 months?
If the figure is per 3 month then it's really dire.
15. shining wit said...
All this 'new' enquiry guff, is other estate agents ringing up and enquiring. Obvious really
16. shining wit said...
oops wrong blog.
17. tyrellcorporation said...
Bur Mr Punch said that while house prices may not have settled just yet, "some are possibly at their lowest point".
...that's the way to do it!
Ramping that is.
18. Buyinginafewyears said...
@shining wit
Did you happen to see grand designs and one mans dream to build his own house in Oxfordshire?
Short version... he bought a plot of land 20 years ago, bought a kit house, finally got planning permission. After he got the all clear he started building, got as far as putting the slates on the roof before the neighbours said they objected since it was 2 foot higher than the plans stated. From what I could tell you couldn't even see the neighbours house from theirs! What followed was 2 years of hearings and threats of legal action in which he wasn't allowed to do anything to his new home.
In the end he got his house built, albeit with restrictions impairing the design. Asked whether he wanted it after 2 years of stress... no he didn't. My heart went out to him and his family, a true victim of NIMBYs. His lifelong dream of building his family home by hand was crushed.
So UK planning laws aren't restrictive, IF you don't have anyone objecting, and IF you have a team of solicitors. Those are big ifs. It's not all of nothing, they can be less restrictive without being a free for all i'm sure.
19. Positive News said...
It does't really matter what you think, the positive news that things are looking up is having some effect out there. Here in the east midlands sales are up, sold boards are up and acording to the Halifax, so are house prices. People that have been sitting on the fence waiting for the right time to buy, are now jumping in. Small numbers at first, but this has the snowball effect. Next month, you mark my word, they will be reporting the second month of house price increases and a greater number of buyers, now buying.
While I accept that the economy is still in a mess, many buyers that have not been effected by redundancy and have been priced out of the property market for many years, now feel that we have hit the bottom (Or very close to the bottom) as far as house prices are concerned, and they are not going to miss this opportunity to buy a house of their own. It only takes a thousand buyers or so more to buy this month over the last for the media to get hold of this and next month, more and more people will jump in.
Seasonally, April, May & June are the busiest months in the property market and this is not that far away from now. By the time we hit April, the market will be in full swing again. The banks will have confidence in lending again as they see house prices stabilise once more and they will lower their lending critera opening the gates to more and more buyers.
Anyone thinking of buying, should not listen to the doom mongers on this site. It is a well known fact that vendors getting lots of viewings on their property, are less likely to sell for a bargain price than one that hasn't had a viewing in months. More buyers than ever are out looking at property right now, so if you wait too long, you will lose out!
20. titaniccaptain said...
@positive news
im stunned.............good on you...........nice to see a pair of balls......I may think that you are utterly wrong but much respect to you