JoeDavola

Another price level crossed...the £400K semi: https://www.propertypal.com/11-st-johns-park-rosetta-belfast/703393

Yes someone I know has referred to the mid-upper end of the housing market as an 'equity swapping' market - i.e. people basically swapping houses with each other.

To clarify I mean I have a low stress low hours enjoyable job that feels like semi-retirement compared to the stress I've experienced in the past, and I don't want to feel I need to go back to the high-stress long hours life just to pay for a roof over my head.

Oh my. Well done you. Doubling your money in 8 years. You've played it well. The sums of money that are being made and lost here based on when you happened to buy a house are life changing i.e. being able to retire at 50 vs working till you die. I'm not going to retire young, but I also don't want to slave 40-60 hours a week so i won't be buying into this market any more than I need to. It's getting to the point where maxxing out my S&S ISA every year and ending up a renter with 300K+ in shares in a tax free wrapper might actually be a wiser thing than buying a house in Belfast.

I'm still quite shocked at how spectacularly wrong I was when I assumed that the lockdown of the economy would put a brake on HPI or might even cause a drop in house prices. Anedotally, most of my peers bought 5-8 years ago and none of them have moved from their first house and have no plans on moving they think the market is insane and don't want to take on an extra 100K debt as they approach 40 for a little bit of extra room. This trend may well continue given the smaller number of transactions actually happening, but if it does you've got a housing market that fewer and fewer of the population can actually buy into. And as I mentioned above the idea of a housing 'ladder' is now gone.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57648935

Some friends sale agreed their house (owned outright) about 6 months ago for a decent profit on what they paid 6 years back but still haven't sold and moved because there's nothing on the market that represents decent value without adding tens of thousands of extra debt to get something basically the same/inferior to what they have. It's quite something to see someone with tons of equity in the market effecively still priced out from a mixture of ridiculous asking prices and absolute dross that's falling to bits but still asking big prices.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/may/13/top-bank-of-england-economist-warns-of-1970s-style-price-inflation

I'd assume what's being compared there are the 3 most expesive areas of NI - Belfast still seems more expensive than most parts of NI IMO. Your point about the opportunity cost of paying rent every year is perfectly valid. Prices would have to fall faster than the money you're blowing on rent. The other factor I guess is that many houses on sale are fixer-uppers, and I'm hearing a few reports of people being surprised at how high the quotes are from tradesmen to get work done these days.

Yes quite possibly. The only example I can think of is my parents old house. Rateable value 160K, peaked at 320K, sold about 7 years ago for 170K and only had one offer at that, now would be worth about 270K if similar houses listed recently are anything to go by. I have no faith any more that prices will crash. Too many government schemes to prop up the bubble. Help to buy seems tame now compared to government-guaranteed 5% mortgages. They've made it quite clear they'll throw everything at keeping this inflating.

If this keeps going some of these wee terraced houses are gonna end up at double the rateable value: https://www.propertypal.com/22-eastleigh-dale-ballyhackamore-belfast/691302

I remain skeptical that wages will inflate much, especially in industries where there isn't lots of opportunities to 'jump jobs' frequently for pay-rises like there is in IT for example. If you're an IT bod who is ambitious and can hop jobs between these various American companies that are setting up in NI then yes you may well have very large pay increases over the coming decade. I guess it will hinge on what kind of pay rises the public sector gets since so much of NI is public sector? I think current prices are utterly ridiculous especially in Belfast but over the next 10 years it's a better inflation hedge than stirling that's for sure. I also don't believe that IR's will ever rise in any meaningful way.

Apologies, wrong link: https://www.propertypal.com/25-09-obel-62-donegall-quay-belfast/689834

https://www.propertypal.com/25-09-obel-62-donegall-quay-belfast/689834/photo-17 ....£400K for a flat in the Obel tower, anyone?

My family are in East Belfast which has been going mental price wise over the past year. Couple of odd things happened recently - a house that went on for about £160K and sold within the week, mysteriously came on the market again and hasn't sold several weeks on - I'd have thought buyers would have been fighting over it even though it needs a serious facelift. Another house that sold quickly for 200K seems to have had the sale fallen through, then got a new roof put on it (failed the survey?), and is back on a couple weeks back - be interesting to see how fast it sells. A few semi's coming up near my mate in Organgefield east belfast a popular area which are taking slightly longer to sell than expected. Having said that I don't see this as indicitive of a market downturn - I fully expect the market to go absolutely crazy over the summer as the lockdown ends and buyers and sellers come out in larger numbers than ever. I know someone viewed this place and it was in a terrible state apparently - I mean it doesn't look great to me from the photos but it looked even worse in person and even smelled bad ect...but it sold much to my surprise. Doesn't look like £265K worth to me. https://www.propertypal.com/61-donovan-parade-knights-green-castlereagh-belfast/681827