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Jonesy

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Everything posted by Jonesy

  1. What about transaction volumes? I think what we've got at the moment is a clear case of market disequilibrium, demand has dropped off a cliff but the downward stickiness of seller's price expectations has kept prices high with transaction volumes taking the hit. I think before we can start talking about prices stabilising we'll need to see transactions returning to normal volumes. As it stands would the banking system have the funding to support a housing market at current prices back at long term transaction volumes?
  2. This is the remnants of the psyche of the boom - the whole flawed logic of 'property is so very scarce, must rush to buy now, might lose out forever' - even a moments reflection on economic history shows this is completely false but property commentators, estate agents, developers etc have been living with this belief for the last 5 or more years, it'll take a while for them to adjust to reality.
  3. Very true - I find it amazing when you look at the graphs from Credit Action, how much mortgage and personal debt has had to increase to keep the economy ticking along at a moderate pace. I was surprised how confident the article was about the recession being mild, I'd worry that given the contraction of credit the saving ratio will snap back quite sharply as lending contracts and people pay down debt, plus coupled with a rise in precautionary saving it could be vicious - for the high street anyway.
  4. That's a very interesting point because whilst Nationwide does not handle the more risky sectors itself, I believe it owns two companies that specialise in that part of the market - UCB Home Loans which provide Self Cert loans and "The Mortgage Works" which specialises in Buy-to-let and near-prime. http://www.ucbhomeloans.co.uk http://www.themortgageworks.co.uk [Edit] Links didn't work.
  5. I knew a couple who ran a village pub as tenants of a large pub co. - they were actually paying more for their supplies wholesale from the pub co. than you or I pay at the local supermarket but as they were tied there was nothing they could do. I wonder how much of downfall of the pub is due to pub companies like that squeezing the business too hard - too much margin on the supplies and charging too much rent forcing up prices and leaving nothing left in invest in improving the business.
  6. WNDC objects to badly planned, excessive development!! You couldn't make it up!
  7. I've never understood the 'no garden' as a marketing angle because all the people I know who are 55+ really enjoy gardening and spending time in the garden, they've only given it up once they've hit real old age (85+) and their physical health started to be an issue.
  8. I can understand exactly where you're coming from but having lived in Northampton for many years it does make me smile when people living on new housing estates on the outskirts of town complain about further development - I'm sure the existing residents were saying exactly the same thing when the original Grange Park estate was first proposed. Trouble is though ultimately residents don't have much say in what gets built, the development continues. I understand there was a lot of opposition to Northampton becoming a 'new town' in the 1970's and the massive expansion then but it happened and now the same thing is happening again with the WNDC. As it stands though Grange Park seems to be well served; a primary school, medical centre, shops, community centre and a country park for the relatively small amount of housing is pretty good. I can't see a developer building all of the same facilities again for such a small development - but you would expect them to contribute toward extending the school and perhaps the medical centre.
  9. From a quick drive round Grange Park it's obvious that further development was planned for the area - all the uncompleted stub exits on the roundabouts and road junctions exiting onto the undeveloped fields between the new estate and the A45. Surely the buyers didn't think they were for the benefit of the farmer!
  10. That one building in the photo is actually four one-bed houses - it's divided into quarters, so a cluster of 1 bed houses! There's a bunch of them along Weggs Farm Road and several more in Aquitaine Close near by. Now if it's a garage you're after, why not consider this fine property: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-169...=3&tr_t=buy
  11. I'd say no to all 3: 1 - The grid is pretty robust, supplies are not dependent on particular power stations operating besides if this did occur you'd hear about it. 2 - Could have been a problem with the wider distribution network but unlikely to be due to generation/transmission - there wasn't a NISM (notice of insufficient system margin eg. too little generation) announced. Besides lots of money has been poured into new generation since privatisation. 3 - No, the grid voltage is set and maintained by National Grid and would only be lowered under exceptional circumstances. Generators always look to run their lowest cost plant first so during periods of high gas prices you get a shift to coal fired plant. Ultimately though because gas generation is now a significant part of the total there will always need to be some gas plant running and the generator will have no choice but to run the plant and pass the costs onto the customer - hence what we're seeing with electricity prices at the moment. Plus it's not just gas prices that are rising, coal has gone up quite a bit as well. The change in voltage is most likely due to volt drop across the substation transformer and cabling, the volt drop is proportional to load current hence why the supply voltage rises in the evening as the load on the TX and cabling falls as people go to bed and switch off lighting, appliances etc. I don't know why the voltage is relatively low - it could be an issue on the distribution network feeding the substation, it could be that the transformer is set on the wrong tap.
  12. Do you think any of the 19th century worker-villages would actually get through the current planning system? Could you see a council authorising another Bournville - they'd ratchet up the housing density and build on the park land, that's if it even got through. Probably recommend a high rise development on a brown field site.
  13. Well the outlook for town centre flats seems less encouraging, i think this is the one listed above. 1 bed flat on Wellington Street - Northampton House. First sold 2003 £73,950 Resold in 2005 £88,000 (+19%) For sale at end of 2007 £60,000 (-31% from 2005!) http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-18174935.rsp? http://www.houseprices.co.uk/e.php?q=213+w...%2C+northampton
  14. Yeah I wonder about the Woolmonger street development, I would say the area is actually worse than that around Morrisons/YMCA/Derngate - at least there you've got Becket's Park and over Far Cotton side there's the river. The Woolmonger street development looks out onto the loading bays at the back of Iceland/Homebargains/Peacocks and the back of some shops and the hotel on Gold Street. I've walked around it a couple of times and there's nothing remotely aspirational about the area.
  15. What I can't understand is why would any architect designing a 6 bedroom house which is likely to be occupied by, probably a minimum, of two motorists include only a single garage and one off road parking space. For a house that size you'd want dual garage and a big drive way with parking for at least 2-3 cars.
  16. Be interesting to see what happens to the market when a lot of the developments in the pipeline start construction, when you think that over the next fews years you've got further development at Upton, more at St Crispins, Duston/ex-Timkens site and development around Kings Heath/Dallington area. Going to be a lot of new housing hitting the local market over the next few years.
  17. Yes you do see a lot of shared ownership newbuild properties appearing on Rightmove, a lot of them seem to be peppered within 'private' developments but I think that's to do with the planning regs - eg. x% of properties have to be 'affordable'. There are a few HA developments - main ones I can think of are Derngate and one in St James/Spencer on the old Pilkington Glass site. Most of the shared ownership properties on Rightmove appear over-priced; whole apartments from private sellers on the market for £130k with equivalent 50% shared ownership apartments on at £80k!!
  18. From the figures I've seen I think that wages in the Northampton area are on average lower than the surrounding counties, you certainly don't see a lot of high skilled, well paid jobs in the local papers although I guess much of this recruitment could take place through other channels. Looking at local employers there's the usual local public sector jobs, for the private sector there's Cosworth in St James but they shed workers over the last few years, there's Barclays out at Brackmills but again I think they've shed workers over the last few years. A lot of the employment growth over the last 10/15 years has been in retail and in distribution neither of which is particularly well paid - a quick drive round the ring road shows how many distribution warehouses that have gone up. You're not the only one wondering what people are doing to afford these properties. A good case in point is the new developments at Upton, next to Sixfields, 1 bed flats were going for £120-140k, 2 beds for £200k, 3 bed houses for £300k. Prices at the St Crispins development aren't far off that either. You right, there is a lot of new development taking place - the town in earmarked for massive expansion under the governments MKSM development programme. There's the existing work going on at Upton, there's expansion of St Crispins development to take it down towards Upton, there's plans for building on near Kingsheath/Dallington Heath. More apartments going up in the town centre. A number of brownfield sites around Far Cotton have been developed, mainly into flats/apartments. What baffles me is where the well paid jobs necessary to service the mortgages on all of these new properties are going to come from - building houses is easy, actually getting well paid jobs into the area will be far tougher.
  19. Nothing changes: It's surprising how with a few word changes it applies almost as much today as it did then.
  20. Ok a bit of first year a-level algebra; Set up a little model, House is worth X in 2006, Wages in 2006 are Y, the value of the house is linked to wages by some function of the rent received from it, rent received being: kY, the value of the house being: f(kY) where f is the function linking rental income to house value and k is a constant representing the proportion of income devoted to housing rent. X = f(kY) Lets test it: Assume that k remains constant between 2006 and 2027 eg. people continue to devote a constant proportion of their income to housing costs. Also assume the wages rise by, say, 5% per year from 2006 to 2027, then we get: (This assumes f is a linear, time invariant function eg. a doubling of income would double the value of housing and that the rental income-housing value relationship doesn't change with time eg. interest rates/discount rate held constant) 2006: X = f(kY) 2013: 2X = f(kY*1.4) or by rearranging that 1.43X = f(kY) 2020: 4X = f(kY*2) or by rearranging that 2X = f(kY) 2027: 8X = f(kY*2.8) or by rearranging that 2.86X = f(kY) Obviously with the assumptions we've made the model doesn't hold, f(kY) would have to change over the years and that function depends largely on the discount rate and hence interest rates so with these assumptions the only way it could work would be for the discount rate to fall. If you assume the function for the value of the house is a simple discounting calculation: X = kY / discount rate, with a current discount rate of 5% then with the above assumptions the only way the value could rise as predicted would be for the discount rate to fall to 1.75% - Interest rates around 1.75% in 2027? Lets try something else: Wages rise by 6% per year and the proportion of income devoted to rent rises linearly from 30% in 2006 to 50% in 2027, I've removed k and substituted the actual value: 2006: X = f(0.3 * Y) rearranges to give: X=f(0.3Y) or 3.3X = f(Y) 2013: 2X = f(0.37 * 1.5 * Y) or rearranging to get: 2X = f(0.55Y) or 3.63X = f(Y) 2020: 4X = f(0.43 * 2.26 * Y) or rearranging to get: 4X = f(0.97Y) or 4.1X = f(Y) 2027: 8X = f(0.5 * 3.4 * Y) or rearrange to get: 8X = f(1.7Y) or 4.7X = f(Y) Even with these generous assumptions the model still doesn't hold. Of course there's plenty of assumptions going on, with immigration Y would grow more rapidly but just looking at the last calculation, incomes would need to rise by 42%, above the already included 6% trend, between 2006-2027, that would take a heck of a lot of immigration. For the prediction to come true you'd need a pretty much all of the following: * significantly greater proportion of income devoted to housing rent/costs which given the historical trends seems unlikely and would itself would have signigicant negative impact on the economy - falling consumer spending etc. * Wage increases consistantly running several percentage points above inflation, again seems unlikely given BoE inflation target and rising competition due to globalisation * lower discount rates pushing up valuations, questionable as 5% is not exactly a high interest rate. Could happen? * Massive increases in immigration; possible but would start to have political consequences at the number required. Pie in the sky.
  21. I can't see how MK property prices could remain unaffected if those in neighbouring towns fell significantly as there would be an incentive to move further afield and commute which would be relatively easy given the good road links.
  22. I wonder if they said that a few years back to the speculators buying in the hope of price gains, somehow I doubt it.
  23. I wonder if it's the result of different staff incentives - the independent being aware of his/her business knows that it's only worth taking on properties if they have a reasonable chance of selling and getting the commission, no point taking on property that you can't sell. Perhaps the people working for the big chain get rewarded according to the number of sellers they sign up so tend to over value to get the business, plus there's the possibility that having signed up the seller they'll wait a few weeks then encourage them to cut their price.
  24. That certainly ties in with some of the reports I've read, I was reading one that looked at how mortgage costs as a percentage of incomes varied depending on different factors. It was very interesting to see that, with the real interest rate held constant, how quickly mortgage payments fell in a high inflation, high interest rate environment compared to the current situation. In the former repayments as a percentage of income fell very quickly, in the later they fell surprisingly slowly so presumably in future moving up the ladder will rest far more on increases in income.
  25. Balloons have tended to come down in the past but the fundamentals have shifted so the situation today is different, I think the balloons will always rise although perhaps at a slower rate.
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