StuartMc

Bear in mind that increasing housing density isn't as drastic as widespread subdivision and if done sympatrically doesn't have any significant impact on the quality of life in the dwelling. If you compare my 2 1/2 bed Victorian terrace and my friends newish house, although he has a slightly smaller (but still acceptable) garden than I have - he has an extra story, extra bedroom, a garage and a ton of extra internal space over mine in a similar or even slightly smaller plot overall. His is higher density (4 bed in a 2 1/2 bed plot) but is much nicer inside - it just doesn't look so quaint!

Number on the market in Cambridge has been steadily increasing from 200 odd in Mid 2018 to 250 now (but with a dip over the winter); based on the Zoopla figure.

I remember when IO was basically a way for people to get an extra step up the housing ladder with a slightly larger mortgage with the same monthly repayment. The fact that those people come out of the deal with a pot of cash and no house, which is a pot of cash better than the millions that are renters or homeless, is lost on them. (The pot of cash as per Vacheron's example on page one is 40k in cash - plus the bonus of 20 years of living rent-free).

That's always been my view, too, but I guess they either a) feel that the builders will put it right for them like a car under warranty b) want their "own" house that hasn't been "worn" by someone else?

It is worth remembering that the referendum didn't ask the 2.1 million (or so) new adults who have turned 18 since 2016. I am honestly really impressed with one aspect of the Leave campaign - their marketing brilliance; in this case it has somehow convinced many reluctant people that barring young adults from having a say in what is their future (much more than ours) is somehow necessary to defend democracy.

I think the problem is threefold a) the data is a mixture of effectively very different datapoints as they include everything from a small 1 bed flat to a mansion in areas of very different character b) in statistics 1% is quite a small amount but in a house price that is thousands of pounds and we are trying to look at tenths of a percent accuracy to get a month to month change on a figure that changes by a relatively tiny amount. c) the absolute number of datapoints available even to a large lender is actually very tiny, especially considering a) and b). so even without a tinfoil hat, you'd expect the data to fluctuate apparently randomly and be very noisy, like most charts in economics. Look at the 1 year FTSE 100 index, for example here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/c9qdqqkgz27t/ftse-100 you see spikes, troughs and all sorts of noise - and it's absolutely impossible to look at the data for the a few days and reliably spot the trend: should I have been buying or selling then?

I think your misunderstanding is that you assume that the event visible in the data first must be the cause (house price change), and the one appearing later must be the effect (employment statistics). However, this isn't always the case. There are lots of counter examples to this, like the Baltic Dry Index (effectively the cost of shipping goods) - this famously leads changes in economic activity by some time but it doesn't cause the changes in economic activity - it is an effect of the change in economic activity which has not yet appeared in the data. Consider the announcement of the closure of the of the Honda factory. I think we can agree that this will likely affect both house prices and job statistics. However, I would not be at all surprised if the house prices dropped first, before the redundancies actually occur and the actual job market spikes down. My guess is this also happens on a micro scale throughout the country - sales staff notice the shop is quiet and hold off on that new house, long before any job losses occur.

Or it could be that when things start to look tough economically, people can cancel a visit to the Estate Agent quicker than jobs get lost in significant numbers?

Supply up 20%; demand up 13%.

To underline that, we'd be at the mercy of e.g. a Moldavian WTO veto for one https://www.economist.com/britain/2018/10/25/brexits-latest-obstacle-a-moldovan-veto - not to mention US/Russian hardball bargaining https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-trade-deal-wto-liam-fox-no-deal-international-trade-a8603811.html Honestly, the UK should have learned after the EU negotiations that (despite what were were promised before the referendum) other countries aren't going to act against their own self interest and give us whatever we ask for just because we are the UK. Maybe 2019 is where it might finally start to sink in that we are playing musical chairs and the music has stopped and there is just us and no actual chairs left in the room. Stuart

I'm staggered if it is a simple as the builder willing to ruin houses worth hundreds of thousands of pounds to save on cement at £25 per bag... it would be like Mercedes fitting bungee cords instead of seat belts! Also, did they not think they would get caught out?

Isn't that a bit like deliberately driving a bus off a cliff and asking the stunned passengers: "How would you plummet to the ground differently?"

Similarly, don't forget the finance sector - the UK seems to suffer from the "Resource Curse" in that area. The UK economy depends on money from finance to such an extent that it becomes able to dictate terms. Hence loosening of financial regulation (and subsequent boom/busts), no prosecutions after the crash, bank buy outs, etc etc.

How is a teacher in the UK ever going to afford a house that has attracts a £15k stamp duty bill?!?!?

On a related note I've noticed that the number of houses on the market in Cambridge has increased by about 25% since May/June (when there were about 190) to now whether there are closer to 235. The number with a reduced price has also increased slightly more quickly from about 60 to about 80 - up by about 33%. [The figures I use are from Zoopla as and when I bother to look at it - it gives a quick and simple way to see a current count of houses and reductions. Zoopla -> search "Cambridge, Cambridgeshire"; "Houses Only"; "Filters" - this shows totals. The x axis in the graph is the day of the year highlights are highest and lowest values I've seen]

Exactly, Let's say between us we run a market stall. That makes us "net contributors" to the cost of running of the market and once it's pointed out that we pay £15 per day for the pitch, we start thinking maybe we'd be better off moving our stall to our front lawn in our quiet residential street, because we'd save £15 per day pitch fees. Other people point out we'd lose a big proportion of our sales, but we discount that as "project fear" after a loud mouthed idiot with a posh accent assures us that there will be just as many opportunities to sell in a quiet residential street as in the bustling center of town. So we ignore that so-called "expert" and focus on the £15 we'd save instead.

On Zoopla there are 192 houses for sale in Cambridge, and 56 of those are at a reduced price. Is that normal that 29% of the properties on the market are reduced? I'm sure someone's been watching that number!