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Fobbar

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  1. I have recently been noticing a few things recently that might suggest all is not well and good in the housing market. I know that rationality suggests this party should have been over a long time ago, but until recently I'd heard little to suggest that the rosey picture of rampant HPI wasn't entirely accurate. I thought I'd post them here, and others can add their own, or even flat out contradict my observations. A month or so ago, I took a train ride from Bangor (North Wales) to York. Along the way the railway passes through Chester, Warrington, Manchester, Leeds. From a train you often get to see an elevated view of the brownfield sites around cities. Not only that, but from a train you can get a good look at what's going on in the massive redevelopment happening on these sites. Predictably, I could see masses of new flats built in the last few years. It was a rainy Sunday evening, and yet despite this, very few of the flats that were finished appeared to have any lights on in them. It was certainly the sort of day, that if you were home, you'd be sat in front of the TV, with the lights on. So, either the residents were out enjoying urban living, or just maybe, occupancy levels in these new builds were pretty low. It wasn't just the odd block, but many of the new builds (and there are a lot of them). If BTL on new build flats is really so good, you'd not have expected to see this repeated over and over again. And, even if these all these newish flats were occupied, you could see masses of new unfinished flats being constructed, so there didn't seem to be much shortage of supply. The second thing I noticed, was last weekend driving around York passing Polar Ford (a large regional car dealer) and seeing bright yellow signs advertising the latest offers to tempt you into buying a new car. One of those signs said 'Negative Equity OK'. Is that the same negative equity you get on a house I wonder, or is this some other use of a very loaded term? The sign is still there this week, so it wasn't me imagining things. From those two observations alone, I'm starting to think that in the north at least the housing market is not looking good. Massive overbuilding of flats and the term negative equity re-entering the vocabulary in York (which has comparitively few new build flats and is quoted as being a hotspot) makes you think the rotten smell is starting to get hard to ignore.
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