DZZZ

I think parts of the volume decline can be explained by the following: * the disappearance of buyers that don't intent to live in a property (buy-to-let, flipping). * restrictions in the mortgage market means that upgrading to a higher value property requires more equity, therefore people need to stay in a house longer. * due to uncertainty in the economy, buyers and sellers are very risk averse and reluctant to increase their monthly outgoings. They prefer to stay put. Comparing sales volumes to the high of the property boom is not that useful, it won't reach similar levels until the next bubble. I'd think it is better to look at the long term trend over the last few decades. My personal opinion is that property values will stay flat for the next decade or so. Inflation will take care of a decline in real terms.

If you stay close to the coast (a few 100m), Boscombe is pretty nice (and not very cheap either). Same for Southbourne. Hengstbury Head is a step up. I think there is a good catholic school, but I am an atheist with two toddlers so I wouldn't have a clue.

I've been looking in BH6 for the past few months (found something now), I did notice that: * the properties that were already on the market when I started looking were overpriced, some significantly * not many new properties come on the market (one a week or so where I was looking) * the reasonably priced properties are often gone within a couple of weeks, some within a few days * the others just stay for sale for months before the price drops by 5K to 10K I think that home owners are just avoiding putting their property on the market at the moment. The ones that do either ask too much or died (I bought one from the latter).

If the 6 are from land registry sales data, I think this currently runs op to July (i.e. month 7). Assuming sales are evenly distributed throughout the year, this means we're on track for 10 sales this year, the same as 2008. Also, the sale agreed date for most of these is probably somewhere in Q1 of this year. It is very possible that sales picked up since then. Maybe EA's are actually very busy compared to the end of 08 and the first half of this year.

Potential stupid question (or am I on the wrong board here): can property bee show me info properties that are no longer on the market? It would be pretty useful to compare asking prices to land registry sale prices.

Didn't know about property bee until recently, but http://www.home.co.uk/ has similar functionality. I've been printing home ads for the last few months and have looked at about 15 properties now. The properties that have been on the market for a while are just overpriced - we've decided not worth spending our time on unless the prices are lowered. I'm looking in the 350 to 450 range and I can't say that I see much of a price drop (compared to land registry sales) for properties that are newly on the market.

There are a few properties that have been on the market for a while, I haven't looked at the above one (no garden), but generally the asking price is too high. Quite a few of the properties newly on the market are sold within a couple of weeks.

I'm looking in the Hengistbury head area and noticing that asking prices for detached properties don't seem to have dropped very much compared to the historical sale prices from the land registry. Some EAs tell me the area hasn't lost much value (they wouldn't say otherwise) and that there is a shortage of properties coming on the market (which does seem to be the case).