wotser

Lenders, be they mutual or otherwise fear a crash, because it means repossesions, defaults etc, ie a lot more hassle and work and losses, so they will try ( unsucessfully i might add ) to sustain the unsustainable.

London prices are grossly overinflated and I expect will be a huge correction. After the peak in 1988, in the nineties it was possible to find prices at less than half their peak value. EA's dont like a falling market because although their books get loaded with property, they cant shift it. I can just about undertand why some people panic and buy close to peak when prices are rising... but buying when prices are falling is beyond me!!

on the subject of north london, i know one btler that sold a couple of his places about 8 months ago, and has since sold another 5 or 6. my neighbour who is also in btl, sold his house for 365, a few months ago they were fetching 420. i thought it was a bit low given that we are only at the beginning of the downturn, he said he wanted to be ahead of the curve, not a bad strategy in hindsight i guess. next is the 'shock' phase, after which vendors and EA realise that they have to be more realistic with their pricing. EAs like to try to keep the 'headline' prices high.

we are around the end of 88 heading towards 89 in terms of the house price drop process, with a few years to run, i suspect we will be subject to a sharper correction.

[THere is always a shortage oe engineers in this country according to industry. That probably explains why they get paid so well compared to financial sector, law, medicine etc ??? No the reality is that business likes to keep an oversupply of engineers to keep costs down.

The bottom line is that the fundamentals have only got worse only the last few weeks, this is not a new credit crunch as such, just a continuation and deepening of the ongoing situation. Outlook very much on the downside

Population numbers for 2050 are projections rather than predictions. ie they have little relevance.

We are not at the beginning of the end or even the end of the beginning --- we are the beginning of the beginning as far as the HPC is concerned. House proces tend to unravel slowly and we are the start of that process now. So now is not the best time to rush into the market. It could be a 2 year process to the bottom, possibly longer! The risk is all on the downside now.

HSBC recently sold their flagship tower at Canary Wharf as well. Looks like we are only at the beginning of this credit crunch business, will be interesting to see how it all unravels. JP Morgan dont sound too optimistic if this is anything to go by: LONDON (Reuters) - The current relative stability of credit markets may be the calm that precedes the storm as the worst of the credit markets turmoil is yet to come, investment bank JPMorgan says in a new research report. The losses of struggling companies will be more severe as time goes by, after they bought themselves time by having looser bank covenants, the report said. "Even though we think that the downturn is still not imminent, we may be one step closer," the report said. Companies will struggle as they "may well be further down the road of distress when the trigger occurs," the report said. Bankers, analysts and credit specialists forecast an increase in credit defaults as ailing companies find it more difficult to access capital.

Be very wary -- Many Agents will try to keep the headline prices on houses to give the impression that the market is stable. Also, for sellers, as happened to a colleague of mine the Agent is trying to get commission out of him based on the asking price, not the selling price -- which was much lower!

America's battered financial industry has suffered a threefold leap in job cuts during 2007 as mortgage lenders and Wall Street banks slash their payrolls to cope with the summer's credit crunch. Cutbacks have taken place at Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse in the last few days alone as blood-letting gathers pace — and there were rumours today of imminent layoffs at Merrill Lynch. A study published today by a Chicago employment consultancy, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, revealed that in the first nine months of the year, the US financial industry shed 129,927 employees — compared with 34,903 over the same period in 2006 and 41,475 the year before that. The consultancy's chief executive, John Challenger, warned that the pain was far from over: "The dominoes are likely to keep toppling as home values fall and foreclosures continue to climb. http://business.guardian.co.uk/useconomy/s...2183840,00.html

THere are a lot of smokescreens out there at the moment. Hold out, prices are dropping ( and will continue dropping for 1 year + ). 6-9 months away I would expect half of that drop to have taken place. Shrewd property dealers and btlers like those smokescreens, and are responsible for them! Gives them an opportunity to quietly reduce their exposure before the panic sets in!!

Its either bravado ie when you apply you are told you dont qualify, or they and the other banks are trying to delay the inevitable -- they dont want defaulters and keys being handed back. Which looks more and more like the inevitable outcome. Indicators are getting worse and contagion may well be on the cards.

The number of mortgages approved for home purchase in the UK saw a hefty annual fall last month, to its lowest August figure for seven years, the British Bankers' Association said today, adding to evidence that higher interest rates are taking the strength out of the housing market. The BBA said the number of mortgage approvals - a good indicator of the future health of the housing market - dropped by 14.2% in the year to August to 61,051, the weakest figure for an August since 2000. http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2178079,00.html

Maybe they use spin while they batten down their own hatches. Take HSBC selling their HQ in Canary Wharf earlier this year when the banks were predicting outlandish property price increases ad infinitum. Seemed like a sure fire one way bet to have property. But they sold, got out inthe nick of time.