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

Have fun with this "Is it best to buy or rent" calculator. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/business...NT_GRAPHIC.html Here's my other favourite from the USA..... http://patrick.net/housing/crash.html Grommit

When sentiment changes, it does not just switch from “on” to “off” or “100% positive” to “100% negative” overnight. This is especially true with a large population such as the UK, the sentiment change is made gradually but as sentiment is dynamic, it will constantly be changing. But where are we??? 30-70, 40-60, 50-50???? Make your own guess from the media coverage and your own conversations. But, a fact is that when the sentiment change is 50-50 we will get messages (simultaneously) like; “This market is solid and going to go up further” “This market is weak and about to crash” At one moment, it will all seem rosy, and then "at the same time" it will seem like doom and gloom. Is this where we are today?? From my perspective, I think we are looking at currently a 60% positive, 40% negative in terms of sentiment, but with a trend to the negative. I’m looking at 50-50 by the summer, and then once the majority of sentiment goes negative, we will then speed the rate of change towards negative. What do you think? Where are we today and how quickly is this sentiment changing in your views? My situation is that I am sold in both the UK and USA where I had homes. In the UK, people think I am stupid to have done this, in the USA they think I am "enlightened". Go figure???

Here is another good link to US Housing Crash Stories, about 10-20 new media stories per day coming up here which make interesting reading. http://patrick.net/housing/crash.html

An update on my post from January. Looking around at similar properties to the one we sold in December 2005, we are now talking about $350-360k being advertised. This is clearly down 5%+ since my last post on Jan 29th. To sell, you would be lucky to make $320k, down $20k in less than a month. I really think that in south florida all the gains will be given back before this stops. Grommit

We bought in Fort Myers in 1992 for about $230,000, sold in december 2005 for $430,000. Mrs Grommit and I called it sitting by the pool in August 2005 and decided to sell. Now similar properties on market for $370-390k, but with fees etc, would only realise $340k I am estimating our purchaser is $90k down on his investment in a year. Grommit

We sold our Fort Myers house in December 2005 for $430,000, identical houses now are on the market for $390,000, so would probably sell for $360,000 or so (if they can find a buyer). This is a estimated drop of 16% or so in under a year. With selling costs of 6% in the USA, the guy who bought our place would be struggling to make $340,000 on a sale, a $90,000 "loss" in one year. Looking at the websites we used, there is a much more property on the market now, so I don't think we have seen the end of these reductions by a long way. Grommit

Made me laugh, he says he is an investment banker!!! Hope he is not looking after my pension pot. As Charlotte Church says in her new advert on TV....... Muppet!!!

We sold our house in Florida in December for the full asking price - thank god we got out of there as the reports from our friends out there are not clever. Mrs Grommit was getting slightly worried as we had two hurricanes go right overhead which pretty much trashed the locality. The National Guard came out and set up curfews and helped get things sorted, but it was not fun. For Brits thinking of getting into Florida, just a few words of caution; 1) the real estate agents charge 6% to sell the place. With all the closing costs etc, it is much more expensive to sell than here in the UK 2) The IRS withholds 10% of the sale price for capital gains and then you have to fight to get it back 3) When the money finally hit the Bank of America, they tell me I cannot arrange a money transfer back to the UK unless I am standing in the branch in Florida for security reasons. Their advice was to give the money to a friend who lives locally and then get them to send the money back. I could not believe they were saying this to me. Glad to be home actually. There is only so many burgers you can eat. We are off to Italy this year for a bit of "sanity!!!". The other thing, the price of flights to Florida is much, much higher than previous years. The rental agents we worked with out there had their worst year in 2005 for UK people going over to rent. Don't believe any of the hype of guaranteed rental levels, these will not happen. Grommit

For those of you getting despondent that the downturn may not happen here, take note of the sentiment currently in the USA. Grommit http://ezinearticles.com/?3-Of-The-Top-9-R...sting&id=192244

http://patrick.net/housing/crash.html While the news today is not great from the Land Registry, have a look at this link (go to the bottom of the page for onward links) about the state of the market in the USA. We seem to be the only country along with Ireland who are currently immune from reality. I personally don't think it will be long before we see some major changes here. Grommit