Wednesday, Dec 30, 2009
When will the masked magician reveal the secret of this trick?
BBC: House prices up for sixth month, says Land Registry
House prices in England and Wales rose for the sixth month in a row in November, the Land Registry says. Prices rose another 0.9% last month, which means that prices were just 0.3% lower than a year ago. The average home in England and Wales now costs £161,554 - £8,800 higher than at its recent low point in April.
Posted by jack c @ 12:13 PM (2064 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. paul said...
The BBC studiously ignored Rightmove's recent survey of asking prices which they usually post an article about.
I wonder why ... ?
2. devo said...
A price based on unusually low volume is the wrong price.
3. alan said...
Several people I know have recently put in much lower bids than the asking price and these have been accepted. This has been "forced upon them" by lenders who want a bigger deposit, and accepted by those really keen to sell.
I don't see prices going up where I am. Many of the For Sale boards have been up for many months near me (Essex/M25 border). Not much has been sold.
4. Adskirockski said...
Paul, the BBC hardly ever post about Rightmove's surveys but they always post the Land Registry. I think you're imaging bias where there is none.
5. Zebbedee said...
Between the middle of 1998 and early 2008, homeowners had borrowed £325bn against the inflated value of their homes, topping up their mortgages and spending their money on things other than their homes.
Their money surely means their debt on other things. God I hate the BBC's biased propoganda
6. jack c said...
Christmas party my wife says to her friend "so XXXX have you sold your house yet?" - friends response "no weve had it on the market since Christmas of last year and all weve ever had is ridiculously low offers - weve just taken it off the market and are trying to stay put but it wont be easy as weve still got more going out each month than we have coming in"
From my activities at "the coalface" in the North of England the above is not an isolated case.
7. markj69 str05 said...
There seems to be very little activity in the Cambs area (Last 2 mnths). Could just be the seasonal dip.
My Parents have just had their house valued in Stilton, They were not impressed with the value, given that they had also undertaken substantial improvements. I wasn't surprised, since they only bought it in 2006.
8. fallingbuzzard said...
The magic lies in a methodology that excludes any property that has been sold below market value whilst including any property sold above market value.
9. tenant super said...
@ Paul.
I think most people here dismiss Rightmove when up so it is only right to not take it too seriously when down. As I said yesterday, there is no point being selective with evidence when selection is based on desire . I think Rightmove is useful whatever it says because it is indicative of sentiment.
The LR figures lag the lenders figures so we pretty much know what they're going to be, and there's nothing new here. I personally believe that government support can prop up prices for the forseeable future, by preventing distressed sales with legislation and policy. Passingthu pointed out that no government has successfully been able to bend an economy to its will. "... the ever increasing economic imbalances will result in an inexorable, unprecedented, crisis further down the line, which despite any government policy will not go away. ..unfortunately for the bears on HPC, if the 2008 crisis took 7 years to seed, given continued government interference, the next crisis could well take as long to occur."
As a potential buyer, this is the question. How long? Some people here (myself included) felt intervention would slow, not halt falls and only for a few months. Having been proven wrong, I have to be realistic about the turn of the housing market and admit that we just don't know. Imbalances, uncompetetiveness, debt, a crippled currency ... all the poison bubbling away will explode but am I prepared to wait? And when it does explode, can I guarantee I will be in any position to buy anything as a result of the fall-out? In view of this, we've decided to seek employment and buy a house abroad. We can always move back if things change and will keep my London flat.
10. waitingtobuy said...
Ten super@7 "I think most people here dismiss Rightmove when up so it is only right to not take it too seriously when down",When asking prices rise, buyers will not necessary pay the increase,but when the asking prce drops,they certainly wont pay more than asked.
11. tenant super said...
I am not entirely sure I follow your logic. True that when asking prices rise, buyers will not necessarily pay the increase, but they can and do if they are loaned the money and if they believe the commentary that no more falls are on the cards. Most people make an offer of X% below asking price and there will some correlation though not absolue (when prices fell, asking prices actually rose in some months). As I said it is gauge of sentiment amidst sellers and as that and only that is equally valid whether up or down. But selling prices have increased in recent months and I believe only some of this can be attributable to the 'better' properties in each class shifting.
12. Gringodave said...
"I personally believe that government support can prop up prices for the forseeable future, by preventing distressed sales with legislation and policy."
I completely agree. I'm a young potential FTB with a v good income and a half decent deposit, but I can't get anything half decent in a half decent area, so from where I am it is overpriced. That being said the government can do what they like to control house prices: improve rights for owners in arrears, declassify some land from being green belt, build lots of social housing, allow interest rates to rise (separation of powers, my rrrrrs!) etc so it is up to their policies as to when house prices will come down. Until then, everyone will lose all sense of rationality and spend as much as they can on buying a house.
I think the deciding factor in the long term is the UK population's addiction to house ownership which gives us a sense of pride to own the bricks within we live. Right now, Brown is touting that his policies are helping the good old middle class own their houses, but carry on this way and the percentage of those owning their houses will decline inexorably. The turning point would be when the future PM decides that those without property should be helped and then one way or another prices will be forced down one way or another to help people onto the property ladder...
13. mark wadsworth said...
JackC, there is no one particular secret to reveal. I'd guess the most important ones are ludicrously low (i.e. subsidised) interest rates and the virtual stop on repossessions, but there is a whole raft of other ones.
14. little professor said...
Paul - we've been over this before. The BBC hardly ever cover the Rightmove figures, and whenever they have done its invariably been when the RM has shown a fall in asking prices.
linky
There's a bit too much BBC-bashing on this forum sometimes.
15. tenant super said...
I've been wondering what might unfold after the election. If you remember, there was an article a year ago (In the telegraph I think) listing 10 people(s) responsible for the mess. This included Greenspan, Bankers and also many ordinary people (after all nobody forced them to buy Jimmy Choo shoes and tropical holidays on tick). In Ireland, there is a strong feeling that the banks are most to blame and are now being supported by taxpayers through their government cronies. In return it is only fair the banks should be made to let defaulters remain in their home and this is what has happened (hence only 300 of the 14K serious defaulters were repossesed in the whole of 2009). The banks are the baddies and there is a strong feeling amongst the electorate that ultimately they should soak up all the fall out of reckless lending. In other words, the reckless borrowers should not have to face consequences because the banks are more to blame.
Mass repossession is disastrous for an incumbent government. That Spitting Image 'Our House' parody encapsulates that with utter perfection. " Dad believed what Maggie said, get a mortgage buy a home so dad took out a great big loan...but now the market has collapsed and we're absolutely stuffed... our house, it is now a cardboard box...." The Thatcher government was strongly associated with high levels of homelessness, the image of 200 people sleeping rough under Waterloo bridge being the ultimate symbol of the recession.
Cameron could draw a very clear line between his government and the last Tory government by directly intervening to prevent repos.
In the UK, 13,987 were repossessed in the last quarter out of 395,000 in serious arrears, that's 3.5%. In Ireland, for the last quarter figures are avalable (Q3) this was 110 out of 17,767 which is 0.56%. 79 of those 110 were voluntary, where the borrower abandoned the property, so the remaining 31 were forcibly repossessed, that is a mere 0.2%
I believe that there are brakes on repos now but I believe Cameron could tighten the screws even further. The tories have been lambasting current schemes where "just 15 families have been helped by the Government's flagship repossession prevention scheme – at a staggering cost of £164226 each" so a new scheme which really does totally stop repossession would be a massive political gain.
16. will said...
There have been many sales, in my area, over the past few years which have failed to be registered at the Land Registry.
So just who is responsible for submitting the data to the LR?
17. Alfie said...
The BBC might be able to fool some people into thinking that Eastenders is a Reality Show. But they would have to be real idiots if they think that we are going to believe that house prices are on the rise. Obviously they cant wait to show their new series of Homes Under the Hammer and other property shows that have brain washed a large number of people into believing that property is a sure investment. Not forgeting the top executives who want to see their investments go up again.
18. magnaman said...
@ will
Solicitors, on a TR1
19. dill said...
will @13
As magnaman @14 has said.
I know of many pre-auction repo sales via EA's which are (conveniently) left out of Landreg data, because they are treated as commercial transactions. These have always been at large discounts to the main (and over-optimistic) market. They've also been purchased for PPR. My view - once the Establishment corrupts the game................?
20. alan said...
Locally, a bank repo'd a house and sold it via a greasy estate agent.
The deal didn't (and still doesn't) show on LandReg local searches. This caused a bit of grief for those buying as they were always getting people knocking at the door looking for the previous owner. Some bailiffs were a bit aggressive as the previous owner owed a lot of money before trashing the place and moving away (to HM Prison).
Some of the other money collectors were either dim or fearless - when I checked the place over for a friend, I found a built-in hidden shotgun cabinet which the EA literature failed to list as a "feature".