BillyShears

Ah, now I understand what you're saying. This was mentioned some time ago. That people buying hoping to sell for their retirement would find the market very different from now. I think that someone quoted someone in the media saying so. But sadly the number of people able to think ahead 25 years ahead or who would think of actually researching the biggest investment of their life is probably pretty small. Billy Shears

Why do you have an apostrophe in "HIP's"? I'm not sure that prices at auction will increase, as if they become a more efficient selling medium more buyers will arrive, but that will lead to more sellers considering auctions as well. I did actually say that in a previous post. But I'm more interested in would happen to prices overall. If auction prices increased, then more buyers would be attracted to them. What happens to average prices across the board would depend on how much auction prices increased (assuming that the net change is auctions becoming more of a sellers market) versus how much larger a proportion of houses were sold at auction (assuming that auction prices would still be lower than general sale prices, e.g. sellers being prepared to accept less for a quick painless sale). Though as has been pointed out in this thread, it's likely that any small effects on price due to auction sales becoming smoother will be swamped by other factors such as affordability and sentiment. Someone quoted chapter and verse above. But I suppose you didn't get to where you are today (>5000 posts) by reading and thinking about the threads you're responding to Billy Shears

Everyone seems to be saying that one problem with HIPs is that they won't necessarily be accepted by mortgage lenders. So any purchaser needs to do their own survey as well, making the HIP a cost increaser not a cost decreaser. Here's one alternative model for how HIPs could work that I think might make the property market more efficient. What would happen if mortgage lenders such as The Halifax, Nationwide, ad infinitum, started up their own departments to offer HIPs. Then, if The Halifax was the company that created the HIP, they would then say up front that they are prepared to accept their own HIP for a mortage. This would mean that when someone bought a house which had a Halifax HIP, they would know that if they arranged a mortgage with the Halifax, they wouldn't have to get their own survey done. When making the HIP The Halifax (or other) could include any additional information required for mortgage purposes over and above what has to be in a HIP. They could then also say how much they would be prepared to lend on the property (subject to credit etc. checks). So, the potential purchaser would not just not have to pay for their own survey, they'd also have a very good idea about whether they could obtain a mortgage for the amount they need to purchase the house. It might become a selling point for houses, e.g. "Nationwide HIP" in the property descriptions on rightmove. The mortgage lender could go all out in the HIP report (if it's legal to attach this information) saying what sorts of interest rates and payment plans it could make for that particular property given different amounts of deposit. Etc. One problem would be that some organisations may become "HIP parasites". E.g. a small building society may say that they are prepared to accept HIPs created by Halifax, Nationwide, etc. However, since the semi "pre-approved" status of the HIP might be a competitive advantage, perhaps they could be sold at market rates, not as a loss-leader. So the cost to the mortgage provider would be nothing really. I'm sure that HIPs "pre-approved" by particular mortgage providers would be a strong marketing tool for that provider, particularly if additional information is attached with mortgage plans tailored to that property. I'm sure that reasonable mortgage plans could be created by computer given a few basic facts about the property, meaning that they would cost next to nothing to create. This would also help with property auctions, as in the other thread on HIPs and property auctions. If there were such semi-"pre-approved" HIPs, then they would make houses much easier to auction than at present as the buyer could be confident in the condition of the house and be much more confident that a mortgage can be arranged quickly and easier. Perhaps buyers could be "pre-approved" to some extent so that if a buyer approved by Nationwide buys a house with a Nationwide HIP, the mortgage can be agreed automatically by computer within minutes. Edit: As a quick followup, we've heard that mortgage lenders may not accept HIPs. But, even if mortgage lenders don't start offering their own HIPs, if one mortgage lender started accepting them, wouldn't that give them a big competitive advantage in the market? And if that was the case, wouldn't the other lenders have to follow suit or miss out? Billy Shears

Maybe it's one of the first casulties of global warming. Billy Shears

I wouldn't claim that the majority of houses would start selling by auction, but that the numbers might increase. If they start to increase, then more buyers would arrive too, bringing in more sellers. Then new "ways of doing things" might arrive too if the market was more worth the interest of businesses associated with property. I've just thought of something that I'm (perhaps rather pretentiously) going to post in another thread. Billy Shears

When you say "building", do you mean the building of new properties such as newbuild flats? Do you mean people extending their homes? Something else? Any combination of these? Billy Shears

You aren't being very clear about what you are claiming. Could you be more detailed? Are you suggesting that the drop in FTBs is solely due to there being fewer people at FTB age than there were a few years ago? Or are you saying that the rise in age of the typical FTB is due to there being more people of (say) 40, than there were a few years ago? Can you tell us what your claims are? Making a wild guess that you mean that the rise in age of FTBs is due to age demographics, not affordability ... What proportion of the drop in FTBs do you think is attributable solely to age demographics. We've seen the number of FTBs buying fall to a fraction of their previous level. Are age demographics alone enough to account for this? Billy Shears

You sort of covered it in "5.", but I think that one of the big advantages of internet retail is that you can hedge your bets and effectively run several different bizs with the same staff. E.g. you can run a second hand bookshop, online lolly store, and a custom video editing and production company all under one roof and one set of staff. Space for equipment/stock is not such a problem in a "business park unit" out in the sticks compared to a shop on the highstreet, and you don't confuse customers who would see a shop selling multiple products at once (e.g. Burtons the clothing shop selling electrical goods). Billy Shears

An over-simple way of looking at it would be that more buyers would mean more competition and hence higher prices at auction. But with HIPs making a quick sale more important, and also with the normal pull of more buyers attracting more sellers, things could go either way. But as you say, any effects from the factors considered here would probably be small compared to overall trends. Billy Shears

I disagree that nothing will change if lenders to not accept the information in HIPs. Even if lenders do not accept the HIPs, things may change if buyers themselves are prepared to take at least some of the information in HIPs seriously. They will then be more prepared to bid without having invested in a survey themselves. They can then get a survey to satisfy the lender after a successful bid. Billy Shears

When you say that "top prices would go down, while bottom prices would go up" do you mean overall, so that expensive properties would go down while cheaper properties would go up, or do you mean prices for like-for-like properties? I wouldn't like to be bidding for a property if I'd already invested a grand or so in it. Many "scams" are based on getting the "mark" to invest a small amount of money, and then get them to spend more money chasing the original small stake. Billy Shears

One of the problems of buying property at auction is that you generally haven't had time to have a survey done on the property. Or, if you have, you've sunk money into the property but have no idea whether you will buy it or not. Having surveys done on I presume that properties going up for auction will have a HIP. Won't this mean that it'll be easier to buy at auction? If that's the case, then won't auctions become more popular? It would work both from the seller's and buyer's viewpoint. The buyer knows more about the property, and the seller gets a quick answer as to whether they'll get their asking (or desired) price without having to renew the HIP month after month. Billy Shears

They're closing the one in Leicester town centre. That's annoying as for certain types of items Woolies is a reasonable price/quality point. Billy Shears

The house has a sold sign outside it Wonder why it's still on for sale on Rightmove. You would think it would be easier to change the listing than change the sign. I can't see the garden from the road, but could see the top of those "pole" things, whatever they are or are supposed to be. The house looks a bit smaller in real life than it did in the photo, and while I couldn't see the garden, I could see the back fence, and the garden looks shorter than it did in the photo. Marina said that it was a snip at 135K. In the same area of the same road the last house to sell was a detached house, just across the road, for 145K. Looks a little bit older than the house in question, but was in OK looking condition. The last semi to sell was 106K, in a similar location. But unfortunately I entrusted the address to memory and couldn't remember which one it was while out there. Billy Shears

Gold now going up again, back up to $567.10. Anyone think it's going to rally and get back up to $600, or is this a blip in a downward trend? Billy Shears

It looks like in my area there are no expensive houses selling at all. If I search on nethouseprices.co.uk for my street plus 1/2 a mile around over the last three months, there are no houses that have sold for more than 200K. If I search for the last six months, there are large numbers of them. OK, there are more houses if I search over six months than if I search over three, but I don't think this explains the difference as there are a lot of >200K properties in the six month batch. I also know of areas near here where pretty well all house prices are well over 200K, and the streets are littered with for sale signs. But no recent sales. At least not on nethouseprices. Billy Shears

Just recently a shop fire in Leicester turned out to be insurance fraud. Billy Shears

How does "increased supply of housing" solve the problem without a price correction? I assume that you mean that increased supply will decrease price, but it's a bit confusing for you to list that factor alongside as what looks like an alternative. Billly Shears

If the CML got all its members to refuse to lend more than 3.5 x salary, would that help or hinder FTBs? Billy Shears

Not an unusual price around here. For a 3 bed semi on the Anstey Lane, it's probably a few grand less than the typical asking price for that road, but no more. But it would cost at least that few grand to fix the garden, so no bargain. Billy Shears

I'd agree with you. When I lived in Harrow, the next door house was empty. Then people started working on it. They concreted over the back garden. A really horrible amateurish job. Same around the front. And they didn't even weed round the edges first so the weeds were part of the concrete. And the worst thing was that they put in random pieces of brickwork into the concrete, which I suppose someone thought was supposed to look good. Dunno what they were intending to do with it. I just checked, and that house has no sales on nethouseprices.com, so no sign of it having sold. Billy Shears

I'm tempted to go for a viewing, and act really interested while in the house. Then when I walk out the back door to the garden, just stare silently at it for a minute or so, then just walk away without a single word to the agent. Perhaps the owner thinks that properties sell by weight, rather than area, and figured he could add a few tonnes to the total in double quick time. Billy Shears

This house has a pretty poor quality picture of the back garden. But what on earth has been done to it? It looks like concrete terraces or something. http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-114...pa_n=1&tr_t=buy Billy Shears

$562.20. I wasn't far off. Billy Shears

@£318.14, the 30 ounces would be worth £9544.20. Given 0.8% commission for selling, that would make a return of £9467.85. So, if I had actually bought the gold listed above, I'd currently be down £611.15. Or, the amount I could sell the investment for would be woth 93.34% of what I paid for it. Billy Shears