renting til I die

I long stopped caring about a 'crash'. 11 years ago I used my 'deposit' to invest in stocks, it has been a roller coaster (still is) but I could buy most places outright if I wanted to, maybe 2 or 3 in some parts of the country. It is nice to have a choice, of a kind, and if I saw value in property I would think about buying something. In fact I have been, even though, my renting situation is quite good atm. However, I still think that property, on the whole, is very overvalued as an asset class. Rising rates will probably kill nominal price rises (probably most stock market gains as well) but fully expect governments to go full on destroying their currencies. If there is a crash, what would it look like? I think a real crash, would have very few being in any position to benefit from it. It is likely to be a long drawn out affair where delusions of retiring with downsizing disappear and most people would be struggling or just unemployed. Basically, I predict a depression but with inflationary spurts. Anyone have a more cheery view?

Been quite a while since I have checked on here but I saw this and thought this place may have some opinions on it!

I find companies like Virgin will ring you up about your account (which you do have with them) and then ask you to confirm your postcode! They are not helping. 😂

Last time I bought one it was £19! I may top-up my holding in FRES.L this week and I bought the LSIL etf the other week. Not totally confident that silver will pop but do feel that we are at a good level for a trade. I hold FRES.L long term and wouldn't sell any for less than £20 a share.

Couldn't go through the pain of reading the whole thread! What has HPC become! Banning everything? Ok, lets ban everything, apart from investing in the stock market and BTL! No gambling there! 😜 (and yes I am a big investing in shares) Whatever you do to restrict peoples behaviour, they will find other ways to engage in their vices and get their kicks. Banning things is not the answer (I feel the level of Communism is increasing on this forum! 🤣) The real problem is the distortion in the perception of risks that we have in society. You cannot protect everyone all of the time and governments should not be trying to.

House prices simply don't matter if you can do all of this correct! LOL

Yep, I wonder if the Government will do some sort of bail out for all the poor LLs who can't get tenants! Nice to see that you are still here winkie.

Actually I would say that money always goes down.... long term that is... so I guess they (who are they?) are right, house prices do always go up! But not in the way they think!

Haha, it took a while to find a tread about house prices!

I agreed. Understanding the prices in an area that you want to live is far more useful than hoping for a general decline. I was often puzzled by people who talk of a crash but didn't consider that when/if this happened they may not have a job to get this mortgaged home with? And of course the Remainders who thought that leaving the EU would be so bad that everyone would lose their jobs and the country would go into permanent decline, not looking on the bright side of this scenario that house prices would likely crash! Yeah, still ranting! But the site is called HCP! LOL

majority Hey there, This is my first post (well, first visit) here for quite some time! Pretty much stopped visiting HPC because of all the Brexit moaning! 'its going to be the best thing' 'its going to be the worst thing' ect ect! (I was always of the Mervyn King school of thinking, that Brexit won't really make much of a difference, up or down, in the long term!). Anyway not going to rant over that and thought it might be safe to come back now that Brexit is finally done! So, your question... House 'Prices' may never come down! OF course the real question is in relation to what do you want to them to come down too? Your salary? Your savings? I still believe that house 'values' are too high but prices do not need to come down as such. Although it is certainly not impossible, the Government have shown that they will pretty much pull out all of the stops to stop house prices falling. For most people their home is still a majority of their wealth and I tend to think that the Government will destroy the currency before letting nominal house prices drop by anything over say 5%! LOL. Of course the other question is what value do you want houses to drop too? How will you know they have dropped enough for you? Generally, if there was a large drop in prices, no-one would want to buy because they would think that prices would drop more, etc. The main thing I learnt here was that worrying about what you can't control is a complete waste of time. If you have funds to buy somewhere you want to live and you are not getting yourself up to the eyeballs in debt, then do what you want to. Don't worry about something that may or may not happen. If you can't afford to buy, then stop lamenting and start making enough cash to buy that home you want or just live the best life that you can! I still rent. Currently at a rental yield of 3.2%, so very reasonable. This is the main way I value property over the longer term. I invested the small deposit that I had saved into stocks and over the last 10 years have accumulated equity to a similar/if not a bit more than others have in buying a home. People mostly misunderstand compounding but the biggest cost to buying a home is the opportunity cost! Property investors use interest only mortgages for good reason. It is the only way to make above average returns from property in the longer term, you need the leverage! I have gone over the average post word count now so will stop there and I may check in again sometime.

I have kind of stopped caring about house prices..... some years ago now! Yes, it still gets on my nerves with people's mindless obsession about how much their house is worth and how their home is their biggest and best investment (homes are not investments, but you knew that) etc, but I just work on my own investments and ideas and go with the flow. I never bother mentioning how big my portfolio is to home owners nowadays, or what yield I am getting! OR how the yield of their homes is often pretty poor! Pretty sure I will FIRE before most people my age have paid their home mortgage off! Without more information on your situation (income, areas house prices, your saving/investment), I really couldn't start to advise you on whether you should be buying, taking on debt, etc. £900pm for a family home for 4 people sounds like a bargain for me but being in London, I am kind of at the worst end of the renting thing! :P As for where house prices will go, well I have long considered that inflation will eventually have a huge impact on the relative value of house prices to income. Not that I am expecting many people to notice. A short blip and it will be back to ramping the selling of piles of bricks to each other.... Yeah, I am at the point where whatever happens, I think the general populous are never going to change, well, not this lot and not unless we have 50 years of stagnating prices..

Almost all extra/overtime goes into stock investments! I was thinking of continuing my studies but have decided to invest more of my time into boosting my portfolio! Btw, to the OP, my basic wage looks to be going up 1.9%, although the union is demanding more so we will see.

Of course I am answering on behalf of byron78 here, so I do not claim to be speaking for him but I think you are looking for offence where there is none to be taken. In my mind a 'wage slave' is someone who needs to go to work, i.e. 9 to 5 week in week out. Even a business owner who actively has to work there is still a 'wage slave'. Not until you have enough passive income which you can live off can you say that you are not a 'wage slave'. You may still work but you can chose not too. It seems to me that byron78 was just making an observation and not trying to belittle anyone.