Yandros

That's our thinking. We're not even going to think about selling until close to the bottom of the market. For us to trade up from a nice 3 bed detached on an fairly cramped estate to a 4 bed with room to park more than 1 car will currently cost us an extra £130-200K. :angry: One advantage of living on a new build estate is that we keep and eye on the prices of all the identical twins of our house. It's quite fascinating. Currently the spread is: £229K £236K £256K £270K All of these are within about 100 yards of each other, all built 5 years ago with the same floorplan! The crazy part is that the £270K one was the latest one on the market! Considering that the £229K one was reduced about a month ago, and has STILL not sold, you have to wonder what planet some of these people are on!

*sigh* Lambs to the slaughter

1201 No, it still makes sense. It just means that there were marginally fewer reductions over this weekend than last. The total is reductions over the last 7 days supposedly, so if no new reductions are made in the next 7 days the total should in theory drop to zero. If the total remains constant, it just suggests, in a very very vague kinda way, that the price reduction chart is currently linear. As I said before though, since we don't have the magnitudes, this is all very approximate. The number of houses being reduced each week might stay the same, but the average reduction might change from 5K to say 10K, thereby doubling the rate of fall. Anyone with time on their hands fancy sampling the actual reductions?

*sigh* Yes they do add up. Firstly, of course I'm not being optimistic. The flats I'm talking about are specific ones, in a particular development, on the market today, listed on Rightmove, and I know full well what the value used to be, BECAUSE I BOUGHT ONE 15 YEARS AGO!!! In fact, since the average prices paid are 92% of asking price, I could claim that the current price is £69K. Secondly, you're quite right. Morgage, ground rent, maintenance, insurance, council tax, and utility bills would account for over 50% of your income. If you run a car too, that's not a whole lot left for food and luxuries. Your point is?

I don't believe the spin. What I'm seeing in our area (Essex) is housing gridlock, with a small number of properties being reduced (about 7% drops on average). Having seen the previous crash, you can't declare a crash or soft landing until you've got months or years worth of data - it's virtually a case of calling it in hindsight. I'd say that anyone who declares a soft landing in the next quarter is either an idiot or trying to sell you something. I don't intend to make a move until the market is on the way back up (watching out for dead cat bounces too!)

1253 down for the first time in a while

Large corporations go around the universities to headhunt final year students. I don't think it happens as much now though. We've done something similar by having a stand at one of the London graduate careers fairs.

As I'm sure you're aware, you can always find a handy statistic to support your argument (or sell a book). Remember the figures I'm quoting are for the Southeast (my example was a flat in the Thames Gateway), excluding London. I'm not sure where that author concocted £12.5K from but it's simply not true here. I'm speaking as a small scale graduate recruiter (I'm usually involved with CV selection and first round interviews in our company). Our starting salary is currently £15.5K. We generally know what the right level is, because when you drop behind the competition, candidates generally don't accept the position when offered, or we have an increased staff turnover rate. We're still a little on the low side to be honest. You're right though, £14K (1991) and £20K (2005) figures are either higher end graduate starting salaries, or alternatively the salary level they can usually except to be on after a year or two (when most people start considering buying a place).

My guess is BTL holiday homes are responsible for a fair amount of it in North Yorks, correct me if I'm wrong.

Yep, it could get very ugly. If you think there are too many graduates chasing jobs now, wait until we get a proper recession. Anyone remember the daily job losses reports on the news, on a weather forcast style UK map? Doesn't mean it won't happen again though.

I think you missed my point a little. The position today is indeed ridiculous and almost certainly unsustainable, just as it was in 1991. KOTCs argument that 4.5% interest and todays prices is no worse than 12% and 1991 prices is just saying "what's the problem, this bubble is no worse than the last one" Oh and I'm not making the figures up, they're based on personal experience. The 75K flat I used in the example is in a dodgy part of the "Thames Gateway" area. The price was indeed £40K in 1991, and they're selling today for £75K. The morgage payment figures are right too, since they're straight from an old bank statement!

You have to remember folks that KOTC is a troll (and I wouldn't be suprised if it's BBB, but since one troll is the same as the next, the point is academic). There's no point trying to win the argument with the actual troll, but for the sake of any FTB guests to the site, it's worth making sure that this drivel opposed. Circa 1991, a graduate could reasonably expect to start on about £14,000. A small flat in a cheap area cost about £40,000. Repayments on that on a near 100% mortgage would be about £340/month In 2005, an above average starting salary is £20,000 in the SE A small flat in a cheap area costs about £75,000 Repayments on that on a near 100% mortgage are £480/month You will notice that the repayment/earnings ratios are almost identical. You'll also notice that the 3.5x rule still holds. You might think I'm actually arguing on KOTCs side...except for one small detail. We all know what happened to prices after 1991 don't we? So KOTCs argument, in a nutshell is "Housing is just as affordable as it was in 1991". Very courageous position there mate! Good luck

1274 If the number remains static, it shows that the rate of reductions is constant. Since the number is actually increasing, it suggests that the rate at which the market is sliding is actually accelerating. Of course it's highly unscientific, since the magnitude of the fall isn't factored into things, but even so, I think this is a worthwhile weathervane indicator. The only way that this measure could possibly be erroneous is if there is a counterbalancing rise in prices happening for some or all of the rest of Haarts properties.

Au contraire mon ami! I'm singularly lacking in anxiety. Since we're sitting on about £180K of equity on a house bought for £125K in 1999, a renegotiated mortgage and a massive mortgage overpayment per month, we have nothing to worry about at all. We're simply taking the minimum risk option - we want to trade up, and a price crash will nicely narrow the gap to the absurdly priced "executive" homes in the area, without the risk and hassle of STRing. Heads I win, tails they lose! Oh and prices are indeed dropping slightly around here and virtually nothing is selling. The "virtually" part incidentally is due to one house that sold in January after being on the market since last March . It'll be interesting to see what it eventually went for. The bigest drops I've seen recently within a half mile of our postcode are £30K on a £430K house, and £50K knocked off £700K. Our next door neighbours had to reduce by £15K before xmas, due to lack of interest, and still no luck.

You may remember that I got a letter from an investment co. offering to buy our house a couple of weeks ago. Well today we've had another one. Same basic gist..."Having trouble selling your house? We'll buy it for cash now!" What odd things to receive since Dogbox has assured us that we're in the middle of a Spring Bounce!!

Yeah he's a troll all right. I've seen enough of 'em in my time. You can't heave brick into a computer gaming forum for example without hitting half a dozen of the odious little creatures. Strangely enough though, one of my other hangouts, the home cinema community is almost totally devoid of them (apart from in the DTS vs Dolby Digital threads ). Trolls are the price you pay for having a community with a fair proportion of "true believers", some red hot issues and a lot of people openly proclaiming their vulnerabilities (ie priced out of the housing market). I'm still curious as to whether KOTC and his ilk are actually proper pureblood trolls, feeding on your paranoia for the hell of it, or if they're increasing worried bulls using troll tactics to desperately disrupt the HPC community. Be careful though not to equate bull to troll. Some of the bullish folks around here are stimulating some good debates, so don't drive them off.

Sad but true. I went into my local branch and tried to get an form to make a change to my credit card. I was told to phone the number on the back of the card. It then took 5 calls to different numbers, only to be told I couldn't do what their website told me I could! Totally useless. Bank branches these days are pointless. I only go in to pay in the odd check and get rid of loose change. Similarly, we went into our building soc. to change our morgage slightly. It turned out that we would be better off changing to a different product. "Great" we said, "we've got all our IDs etc, lets do the paperwork". "Sorry, you can only apply for that product by phone" *sigh*

Already happened just down the road. The Fortune of War pub on the A127 has gone, replaced by a load of flats. Of course, since it's right next to the dual carriageway they've had to put a noise barrier - so there's now a huge earth bank with an ugly fence on top. Of course you don't get that info in the idyllic brochure http://www.barratthomes.co.uk/site.cfm?intDevID=548

1089 out of 9866 Going up again after a quiet Sunday

Will a degree in physics do? Looking pretty linear so far having done a quick plot, but we need a lot more data I think. Give it another week at least

Absolutely, hence why I was mourning the loss of science departments. Apparently the UK pharmaceutical industry is getting very worried because the closure of chemistry depts in particular. Of course it doesn't help that there's no money in backroom science jobs these days, so why should anyone choose a difficult subject when they can get more money in where and only have to write one essay a term and a couple of hours of lectures a week? (and as a result we've got no chemists, but Business Studies, Information Management, Marketing etc etc grads coming out of our ears) It's a worry.

*gets on soapbox* Too many graduates are chasing far too few graduate level jobs. Universities are underfunded and are closing sensible depts like physics and chemistry, because they make far more money dishing out degrees in Business Studies (the current flavour of the month in my experience). Why on earth do 50% of the population need to go to university?!!!! We've got to the ludicrous situation where the poor s*ds are forced to go, and end up £15K in debt, because everyone else has a degree. We're heading rapidly to the stage where you'll need a degree in Fast Food Management to be able to get a job asking "do you want fries with that"! Apologies to any recent graduates, but your degree has been devalued. End of story. Once upon a time I considered anyone with a honours degree. These days, anyone without a 1st or a 2.1 frankly doesn't have much hope unless the rest of their CV is something pretty special.

I totally agree. When you've got cases where people are suing lenders because they let them borrow too much, you know the world has finally gone mad. It seems there's no such thing as personal responsibility these days. Maybe loan applications should include an IQ test? "Sorry, you're too dumb to be trusted to repay more than £8K"

Well, that change of tune from the Halifax was interesting lets see now.. Prices are rising! Prices are rising! Prices are rising! OMG 92% of FTBs are priced out of the market! Not so much a change of direction - more like a handbrake turn! Either their marketing dept has totally lost the plot, or they've got a problem.

Slow day - 1063 Give it a few weeks and we'll have a nice little graph to plot