NEO72

This is absolutely key. FTBs (and to a much lesser extent BTLers) are essential to feeding high property prices and if you begin with the reasonable assumption that they will offer what they can afford (borrow) then you can see from your table how a small base rate rise can affect prices. A 1% rise would approximate to a 10% drop in purchasing power alone and this doesn't take into account cost of living, tax increases etc. which lenders will for sure be taking into account moving forward. Will rates rise any higher? Doubtful imo but who knows, besides most here know how sentiment works when prices begin to fall (particularly given that a higher percentage of housing stock than ever are essentially investments (and I'm sure more than a few property investors will be aware that we are heading towards the end of the 18 year cycle anyway.. )

Or based on Rightmove's propietary measure: Since the beginning of the year, selling prices* have fallen (despite four months of 'rises') * Which excludes prices paid by numpties paying over the odds so they can choose their own tiles (aka newbuild purchases)

Ah, that well known standard half year-on-half year measure...particularly appropriate when using non-seasonally adjusted data. In fact I remember only too well all the media reports in December about how asking prices had fallen 7% since June..

'Green shoots' according to the BBC Partly? So what do the attribute the rest to.. those strong fundamentals like real wage increases, drops in unemployment/underemployment, benefits increasing etc.? Or perhaps magic fairy dust? Love also how propping up the market has become 'stimulating'. But hey as long as we have several government 'stimuli' schemes perpetually running, then there's no reason for prices to fall..

Add to that: "If the market is fundamentally sound, why does it need so many props?" Which of course begs the question: "What do you think will happen when those props are removed?"

Ahem..

Who knows but quite a few, including myself predicted that FLS would lead to HPI, however according to the Land Reg prices are lower now than when the scheme was introduced (even though they have risen every month - see LR thread ). So quite happy to have called than one wrongly. If Gidiot backtracks and decides to charge a lot for the mortgage guarantee, we could potentially have the comical situation of a flood of pent up supply coupled with static/lower demand forcing prices down. Oh and of course potential buyers will on average be a bit poorer by then too.

Such are the wonders of LR's downwards revisions - most of the reported figures over the past 12 months (including last month's) have since been revised down, hence LR - the index that rises when its flat.

Loving their-ahem-evidence of all this 'pent up demand' being released..everything except trifling details like transaction numbers, mortgage approvals or sold prices..

To give it a bit of perspective, number of house purchase loans: March 2009 (when the market had pretty much ground to a halt) - 31,000 March 2010 - 45,000 March 2011 - 40,900 March 2012 (end of stamp duty holiday) - 51,200 March 2013 (FLS) - 42,000* *Assuming no cheeky downwards revisions FLS a resounding success it seems

The problem with that report is that the data was collected 2008/10. So interest rates had only just plummeted and wage inflation was running above CPI until early in that period i.e. real disposable incomes had just had a massive boost via the base rate falls and hadn't yet started to fall due to cost inflation. I'd be very surprised if that 13.6% hadn't risen considerably since then as real wage falls, tax credit cuts etc. have made servicing mortgages more difficult, particularly for those with high LTVs stuck on SVRs (which have also been rising since then).

Thing is though, its not even a doomsday scenario (e.g. a currency collapse and sudden jump in the base rate) - its pretty much a continuation of current trends i.e. cost inflation running above wage inflation. And unless you work in the OBR, there's nothing to suggest this is likely to change in the short/medium term.

Wow, you call it gibberish and post this..irony knows no bounds.

Well perhaps you'd do me the honour of enlightening me, oh wise one.

I'm guessing the Express aren't leading with this.. Link So basically, borrowers get burnt via cost inflation in the absence of wage inflation, or through interest rate rises to stem the inflation. Of course TPTB will choose the former route as then it can all be blamed on 'external factors'. But hey it'll all be ok providing we all get real wage increases of 2.5% p.a.