Muswell Hillbilly
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Posts posted by Muswell Hillbilly
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I’m surprised nobody has posted this before (to the best of my knowledge), but then I have only just noticed it myself.
A flat in Edinburgh’s supposedly prestigious Quartermile development is currently on sale for ‘region of £290,000’. It sold at the end of 2007 for £350,000, so even if they get their ‘region of’ price, it will represent a loss of 17%.
Flat 17, 28 Simpson Loan last sale price
I think it worth posting any examples of falls like this because Quartermile is marketed as not your ordinary newbuild, but something really special, designed by Norman Foster etc. The flat looks absolutely dire in the description, though, and apart from some glitzy marketing and a very central location it is difficult to see how it actually differs from a newbuild box in Granton.
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Yes but Kate Morgan would seriously get it.
I thought it wouldn’t be long before somebody posted a comment along those lines. ccc, you took the bait! How predictable we HPC posters are at times …
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Number 17 in our continuing series Edinburgh property developments which have gone bust. This time it's commercial rather than residential, but it's well worth mentioning. It's Waverley Gate, or the Post Office to you and me..
Was there once a main post office in that building? On more than one occasion it has struck me as strange that there isn’t a proper main post office in the centre of Edinburgh, just that wretched apology for one in the concrete bunker that is the St James’ Centre. If there was once a main post office at ‘Waverley Gate’, how long ago did it close down?
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A bit late, but I just wanted to say to roblpm, the best of luck to you! Congratulations on taking the plunge, after doing all the maths, and I hope it all works out well.
I actually still couldn’t afford the kind of property that I want in the location I want, so for me it’s a question of can’t buy, rather than won’t buy. But I wonder how long I’ll hold out after the next wave of expected falls from the autumn onwards. We have no children to worry about, but have been renting for three years now and I agree it does get rather tiresome.
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Even the BBC admitted that the boom was huge in Scotland and that negative equity is a big problem. There was, after all, a BBC1 Scotland programme dedicated to this exact topic just a couple of weeks ago, as discussed in the Repossession, Repossession, Repossession thread.
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The trouble with Marchmont is the inflated idea folk have about the value of the area. Many owners are parents of students and so not forced sellers.
You may get more value in bruntsfield/morningside?
We’ve done Marchmont to death in this thread already. See Muswell Hillbilly posts passim ad nauseam.
Like for like, I don’t see any evidence that flats are any more expensive in Marchmont than in Bruntsfield or Morningside.
As for students’ parents, they may have been keen to buy flats in the area when prices were rising and they could easily MEW against the values of their own homes, but when the students come to graduate (and sign on the dole), and the flats they bought for 320k are now worth 250k, will they be so keen to hold on to them and become long-term, long-distance student landlords? And will the parents of new students be keen to buy flats for them now that prices (and rents) are falling and MEWing is more difficult?
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Yes. Go to news, then 'Property Price Reports' at the top.
http://www.espc.co.uk/EspcPageMedia/Proper...rts/2009-Q1.pdf
Excellent – thanks for the link.
So the average Edinburgh price is down just 6.8% YoY, but last year we saw a massive 11.3% spring bounce from Q1 to Q2. We’re currently 16.2% down from the Q2 2008 peak. In three months’ time we’ll see the magnitude of this year’s spring bounce, and whether the YoY –6.8% figure goes up or down.
Personally I’m glad to see Marchmont/Bruntsfield two-bed flats down 14.6% YoY, and a massive 21.4% down from their Q2 2008 peak. I’m sure it’s based on a tiny sample size, though.
But you see how Edinburgh lags the rest of the UK, as the average price only takes us back to late 2006. The Haliwide indices are now back to mid-2004 prices. In Q2/3 2004 the average Edinburgh price was around 169k.
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Has the ESPC Q1 report just been published? Does anyone have a link to it? I know their reports have a habit of wandering all over their website …
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Pathetic people taking no responsibility for themselves. Especially the older man almost in tears as if he was forced to take out a 125% (yes they said that!) loan on a house he already owned.
The programme wanted us to feel sorry for these people and let them keep their homes, but why should they. They can't afford them, and the only alternative is that others pay for them ultimately out of higher taxes. Well I have never been in debt. I have never been greedy like these people. Why on earth should I pay for their profligate lifestyles.
Ironically they could afford their homes, at least in the first and third cases, as they bought them long before the bubble, for what today seem like trivial sums. They could either have paid off their mortgages, or be left with small amounts owing. It’s the continual MEWing, presumably for exotic holidays and to buy all kinds of tat, that they couldn’t afford.
If somebody merely bought themselves a home and then couldn’t afford the repayments because of unemployment or divorce or something, then that might inspire sympathy, but not greedy, stupid MEWing.
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I’m surprised you’re not all posting about this programme right now, so I shall start!
First repossession victim bought in Thurso for 40k ten years ago, and now owes something like 60k. This programme should really be called MEW, MEW, MEW. The third case study that is on now is also a MEWing job – a cooncil hoose bought years ago for 20k or something, but the owner fell for Northern Crock flogging him loans the whole time.
Also the lender in the first two cases is GE Money – surely a well-known sub-prime lender.
The people featured on this programme have been greedy and stupid, so it’s difficult for me to have sympathy for them. The children in the first case are the innocent victims here, but the adults, frankly, deserve what’s coming to them. A house should have been treated as a home, not an ATM.
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Couple of recent sales logged in Bruntsfield:
114, Viewforth, EH10 4LN - Sold for £227,500 on 02-02-2009
This was a genuine 2 bed flat (3rd floor). It was advertised at OO230k
12, Bruntsfield Avenue, EH10 4EP - Sold for £223,000 on 17-02-2009
This was a 2-bed maindoor flat but with the kitchen in the box room.
The former property is significant. It seems that 2-beds in bruntsfield can be got for well below 250k now.
I don’t have the particulars for that one, which to me suggests that it wasn’t what I would call a ‘genuine’ two-bedder, although I’ll take your word for it. Maybe I just omit Viewforth from my search because it’s such a gloomy street!
Let me add one of my own, which was brought to my attention by a regular update from OurProperty.co.uk. 59 (3F1) Spottiswoode Street, a genuine three-bedroom flat, finally sold for 273k on 3 February. I went to see it last May, and although the flat itself wasn’t bad, it was on a dreadful neglected (no doubt student-infested) stair. Even so, 273k for a proper three-bedder in Marchmont sets a new low, I believe. The asking price of this one went OO 265, 309 FP, 285 FP, so ironically it went for 3% over its original OO price.
Also, 25/5 Spottiswoode Road, a genuine two-bedder in pretty good condition (though I hadn’t viewed it), went for 250k on 11 February after being on sale for OO 230 (only since November), thus further confirming that 250k is now probably the ceiling price for decent two-bedders in the area.
It’s a long and tedious wait, but I’m hoping to see two-bedders more around the 200k at some point, and three-bedders nudging down towards 250k.
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East Dulwich is a bit of a ‘special case’, as it has been gentrified to a large extent within the last few years. However, in my opinion, and that of many others, its gentrification isn’t all that it is cracked up to be, and we believe its immensely inflated prices are heading for a very sharp fall.
There was a thread on it earlier in the week in the main forum, here:
http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/ind...howtopic=108768
I must admit I had the misfortune to live there (renting) for a year, in between living (owning with mortgage) in North London and moving to Edinburgh. It was okay, but nothing special – absolutely massively overrated – and the transport links are dreadful.
I don’t think it’s representative of England, nor even of London overall, though. I don’t consider London prices (other than in East Dulwich) to be any more overinflated than Edinburgh prices.
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Even the two-bedroom tenement flat at 70 (2F1) Marchmont Crescent is now Under Offer! (See Blair Cadell’s website.)
It has been on sale for the seven months since mid August, with the price going up and down like a whore’s drawers (OO 235, then fixed price 265, 250, 240, down to 230 for a day then back up to 240 and finally 250).
If a lot of the really stale properties for sale are now being mopped up, I only hope that a new lot comes to the market and is still sitting there looking very stale in a few months’ time. My ESPC search now returns fewer than 120 properties, whereas it used to return over 140.
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Yes, the Edinburgh Spring Bounce is well and truly here!
Here are some three-bedroom tenement flats that I’ve been watching:
• 115 (2F1) Warrender Park Road is now Under Offer, after ten months on the market (OO 295, 340 FP then 310 FP) – see ELP’s website
• 28 (2F2) Mardale Crescent is also Under Offer, after seven months on the market (OO 285, 308 FP then 299 FP) – see Allinghams’ website
• 9/5 Bruntsfield Gardens (OO 320) has only been on the market for a week or two, but already they have set a closing date for offers on 31 March. This is the first closing date on the ESPC website I have seen advertised in a long while
I shall expect to see a pronounced rise in average sale prices from Q1 to Q2.
I only hope that the Spring Bounce will release some of the ‘pent-up supply’ onto the market, so that there can be a nice long Summer Slump.
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I looked at the picture when the link was first posted and was trying to figure out why it looked weird, can't imagine why anyone would think that was a good thing to do to a bay window!!
The house and its grounds are actually a lot more imposing than they appear on TV. I went there to have a snoop twenty minutes ago. Workmen were just in the process of installing new panes of glass, watched by a large gaggle of reporters, photographers, TV crews etc. If you’re in the area, it’s worth a look – it’s not often that anything newsworthy happens in the Grange!
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I see in the news this morning that a certain property in Oswald Road has suffered a little bit of accelerated depreciation, presumably administered by the Fred Goodwin Appreciation Society.
Thanks for the street name! I had a screengrab of the house from the TV news a while back, and had been around the Grange looking for it (just out of nosiness, you understand – I certainly wouldn’t want to cause any damage to a historic Grange villa) but didn’t find it. Then today somebody mentioned that it’s near Blackford Pond, so evidently my search was too far north.
The house is actually quite an ugly one, as it’s kind of double fronted, but on one side of the front door the bay window isn’t a bay window, as the main bit where glass should be is just stone. A defensive precaution from the 19th Century, perhaps, in anticipation of much-reviled bankers living there 150 years later!
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Cheers Bailey. It makes sense now. The EA's used to have to contact the ESPC to make changes. I imagine most couldn't be arsed faffing about with **Under Offer** **Sold** etc...
Now they have free range and can change things themselves. So they will !!
As I said I don't think there is anything wrong with it. Just a change from the norm. I think we may start to see lots of random comments appearing soon !!
Very interesting developments. For one thing, I’m surprised that individual ESPC agents did not have direct access to the ESPC website until this year! So they had somehow to convey the information to ESPC head office, where somebody entered it all in for them (presumably only on a Monday afternoon)? Surely it wouldn’t have been hard for a simple web-based interface to allow them to upload their own details.
Secondly, I would be delighted if all agents added ‘under offer’ and ‘sold’ to their property details. It is annoying when a property just disappears from view, as you don’t know whether it has actually been sold, or just withdrawn e.g. ‘let’s just rent it out instead’. To see definite confirmation that it has been sold would be informative.
Two of the three-bedroom tenement flats on my watchlist have recently gone from the ESPC, but no ‘sold’ signs have gone up outside them, so I’d like to know whether they have been sold or not.
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Another dismal Monday for my regular search, with virtually nothing coming to the market at all. There is, however, one price drop:
Fixed price reduced from £349,500 to £339,500 – not quite 3% – after over eight months on the market! Wow, that’s really going to make the buyers rush in …
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Better be quick. http://www.espc.co.uk/EspcPublicMedia/Regi...lars/266790.pdf
225k fixed price, 6k cashback? How preposterous! Why can’t they just say 219k fixed price? Or 250k fixed price, 31k cashback? Why not a million fixed price, 781k cashback? Ridiculous and pathetic behaviour …
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Did Steven Bell used to sign bank notes? (I know there's a cartoonist of the name too)
It would be wonderful if the cartoonist Steve Bell signed banknotes, as long as they let him design them too!
Going back to your original point, though, I’m reminded of the DJ Neil ‘Dr’ Fox in the paedophilia episode of Brass Eye, who read out the text fed to him which said something like ‘Paedophiles actually share more of their DNA with crabs than with humans. There’s no evidence for this, but it’s scientific fact!’
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Damn thanks for that info CCC.. It appears Endinburgh is actually falling quite quickly when you dig into the statistics a little. About the same speed as the rest of the UK.
If you can be bothered to plough through the 100+ pages of the main Edinburgh thread in the Scottish subforum, you’ll see that several of us there spend our time ‘digging into the statistics’ to an almost unhealthy degree!
Despite the approximate 17% falls, largely masked by the Offers Over system, many of us are finding it very frustrating waiting for something to happen. The incredibly low level of transactions, and the terrible dearth of new properties coming to market, makes it very difficult to gauge what the current prices are, because if nothing is being bought and sold, then in effect there is no price at all. The few new properties which come to market are mostly at 2007/08 prices (the peak here was actually in 2008), but whereas a flat at Offers Over 250k may have sold for 330k a year ago, now it will sell for 250k, if it sells at all.
I think it’s fair to say that the tiny numbers of properties which come to the market now at reduced asking prices do in fact sell quite quickly.
And then there is the factor of ‘pent-up supply’: the rental market has been swollen enormously with all the properties that people cannot sell for peak prices so they decide to rent out instead.
Anyway, that’s my brief summary of the situation. It is crashing, but in a style reminiscent of paint drying.
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As for the QoQ figures. Edinburgh had -12% IIRC for Q4 2008.
I’d take the monthly figures with a pinch of salt, especially since there is so little volume that the averages are open to too much variablity.
The figure for Q4 2008 was 193,354, which was indeed down 12% YoY (from 215,168 in Q4 2007).
The figure for Q1 2008 was 210,213, which was down 2% QoQ (from 215,168 in Q4 2007). The previous years had seen rises from Q4 to Q1. In 2008 the one rise – and it was a very big one – was from Q1 to Q2, a QoQ rise of 11% (from 210,123 to 233,840).
Therefore this year I think it highly unlikely that the average quarterly price in Q1 will be up YoY on the average quarterly price in Q1 2008, as to do so would require an increase of 9% (from 193,354 in Q4 2008 to a figure ≥ 210,123 in Q1 2008). Surely the Q1 2009 figure will have to be slightly down, or roughly equal to, the Q4 2008 figure. If it isn’t, then the Evening News will be screaming that Edinburgh prices are above 200k again.
I would not be at all surprised to see a bounce from Q1 to Q2, however, but we’ll have to wait until July for that particular depressing bit of news!
I hope all of the above makes sense – correct me if I’ve got anything wrong. The figures I have been working with are those taken from the ESPC quarterly reports, and they are:
2006 Q1 179,2152006 Q2 200,6372006 Q3 199,6152006 Q4 197,2072007 Q1 207,6692007 Q2 227,9122007 Q3 221,9862007 Q4 215,1682008 Q1 210,1232008 Q2 233,8402008 Q3 219,3452008 Q4 193,354
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Still virtually no asking prices dropping in my regular ESPC search …
• 14 (2F2) Bruntsfield Avenue – OO 250 for a two-bed tenement flat – peak bubble pricing, and it’s only just come to the market
• 6 Woodburn Terrace – finally gone to fixed price, but from OO 290 to 350 FP – do they still really expect 20% over the OO price?
Pretty depressing, really, but neither of these is going to sell in a hurry. The second one has already been on the market for over six months.
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Any chance you could go back and fix the spelling in the title?
Wow, I had never noticed the missing letter either, and I’m ultra-pedantic about spelling and typing! It’s funny how the brain sees the whole word and doesn’t necessarily notice if one letter is missing.
Anyway, the typo in the title is another good reason for us all to move over to roblpm’s other thread, Edinburgh Asking Prices Dropping? See you there!
Edinbugh Latest
in Scotland
Posted
That was indeed well worth repeating here, so thank you very much for doing so, especially for the links direct into the Registers of Scotland site.
I thought the peak in Embra prices was actually in summer of 2008, due to last year’s enormous spring bounce, but then I have been going by the ESPC figures rather than the more comprehensive Registers of Scotland data. I didn’t realise the actual fall had been as steep as that.
However, I expect there will be a bounce in Edinburgh this spring, as there always is, so July 07 to July 09 might not be quite as steep a drop. Even so, it’s reassuring reading for those of us waiting to buy.