Grommit

Interesting on the links provided earlier you can get an MS-Word copy of the Halifax report. You can even edit it yourself!!!! What fun!! But, you can grab the numbers and make your own projections. Here is my play spreadsheet of this morning. Sorry I can't paste it in excel for you to manipulate yourself, but this was 2 minutes to create. Grommit Halifax_Numbers_Play.pdf Halifax_Numbers_Play.pdf

Why not consider getting a friend to express interest in the property with the agent and see what story they can extract from them? This is often an interesting tactic to flush out truths from lies. Good luck, stay firm!!

Try this link http://www.thescambaiter.com/ One of the funniest sites I have ever found on the internet. Reversing the scams on the scammers!!! Go onto the forums and read about the "Anus Laptops" scam. Many hours happy reading!!! Grommit

I worked for a while on telephone fraud and a lot of it came from Nigerians. Apparently, they are trained about our benefits system and its loopholes before they come over so they know exactly what to do. When we were doing this work, we looked hard at any people calling Nigeria and it often paid dividends as they were often up to a whole lot of stuff. If you want to know more and have a really good laugh, try this site where the guys are getting their own back on the scammers..... http://www.thescambaiter.com Edited: Have a look at the threads for "Anus" computers....

Fin-u-la

Booking a trip back to Florida last night and looking for a villa, we spoke to some of our old neighbours. Since selling in December 2005, they are telling us we could buy our old villa back for HALF PRICE!!!! This would be less that we bought it for in 2002.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2007...using-spin.aspx Interesting piece from the USA, charting the change in sentiment from the National Association of Realtors. No sign of a decline in sales volume crash speed. Volume estimates down about 2% per month for the last three months, appears to be speeding, not slowing up. My other favourite from Ireland. http://daftwatch.atspace.com/ Looks like volume of houses for sales may be flattening, but properties for rental shooting skywards. Looks like people are abandoning sales and putting properties up for rental.

We are quiet too (direct mail/internet retailer). Saw this coming about 6 months ago, so we are staying quite lean and mean. Lots of grim news out there which is probably only just hitting the consciousness of the sheeple. On a more positive note, Mrs Grommit suggested to the EA yesterday that we pay £750k for an £880k house. They called back this morning and told us they are thinking seriously about it! This is a massive sentiment change as far as I am concerned. Lots of stuff is now stuck and not going anywhere quickly, the occasional test will show where the market currently is.

http://keywestchronicle.blogspot.com/2007/...ref=patrick.net Look at this graph, is this where our homepage graph will be in 12 months??

On my two local postcodes, SL7, SL8, I am going to leave a comment every now and then to track these numbers. Suggest everyone does this if they can so we can see the trends.

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjun07/manhat...ref=patrick.net Interesting with the USA a few months ahead of the UK what they are now saying about the prime of the prime real estate in Manhattan. London cannot expect to escape, can it???

New highs today on daftwatch.atspace.com For sale on daft.ie: 41313 (+20, new high) Houses for sale in Ireland up 30% in two months.

We live in a town in Bucks where prices "always" go up, the demand for houses in our town is stupid. However, a house put on for £850k two weeks ago has already been reduced to £790 "to try to get a quick sale". This is unprecedented here and for Mrs Grommit and I is first visible confirmation that where we live, the market has gone over. I think we are rapidly entering the "anxiety" phase now.

We are in a strange situation, we had a house here in the UK and also a house in the USA. We sold both in December 2005. Our friends in the USA think we are "enlightened", how did we know that the market had peaked??? Our friends in the UK think we are "idiots", why are we not riding the wave of the property boom??? Where our house was in the USA, the prices are down 30% since we sold, I saw on the US news last week, the foreclosures in our county had gone up 1900% in a year!! I anticipate a similar thing here, so we will sit it out for a while longer yet. I was living in central London in 1989-1990, the flat we had lost 25-30% of value very rapidly and took a long time to recover. This next week with the BOE decision will be very telling. Grommit

With my girlfriend at the time, we bought a flat in a very nice part of South Kensington (SW7) in mid 1990. It had been on for £242,000, but was already down-listed to £216,000 when we saw it. We offered £185,000 and settled on £189,000. A couple of years later, it was worth £160,000, and this is just 200 yards from the Albert Hall!! 30% is a pretty good assessment of what actually happened over a 3-4 years period 1989-1993 or so. I stayed in the flat for 10 years and eventually sold it when the kids came along for double we paid for it, so it did sort itself out in the end. I'm personally expecting something of the same order this time also. Looking very ominous now. Grommit