Thor

Nahhhh !! There might've been a remote chance of that were the majority of buyers not afflicted by the herd mentality. Unfortunately though, people are people and once stories of young professional couples having difficulty selling their 2 bed flat in Fulham start appearing in the Sunday Times, there'll be a stampede for the exit. Even now there's been a surge in supply with a corresponding dip in demand.

No one expected it in August '05 . . . Couldn't they take encouragement from the latest reports of HPI slowing and the apparent resilience of the stock market that everyone was expecting to meltdown today ?

They're not are they ? . . .

Bit too wide a generalisation, don't you think ? Lots of retirees in my neighbourhood . . . most of them with a definite spring in their step

Just exchanged last week on my STR in good ol' Nothing Hill and going to rent in the area. Just thought it was the right time to cash in plus really don't need 3 bedrooms. Going to rent a 1 bed flat for around £300 p/w and really looking forward to having small(er) outgoings . . .

I wouldn't pay anywhere near those prices for bloody South London. With Northern Line tube links and more Aussies than Shepherd's Bush, I'll take West London over that any day

Oh yeah . . . they'll all be buying razor blades tonight to end it all, won't they ?

Charming ! Bloke changes his viewpoint, gets insulted . . . . I don't think that even the most confirmed bull can seriously believe that there's another of those crafty IR cuts on the way a la Aug 2005. There's just too much bearish figures in terms of inflation, sub prime etc floating around. Having said that, someone mentioned earlier that nothing short of another 9/11 could turn the course of global interest rates. I'm inclined to agree but then again, the markets appear to be very adept at shrugging these things off. Maybe the Bush administration has an ace up its sleeve after all . . .

Must say I'm surprised at the number of defectors in recent weeks. Having lurked for a long time on this forum, I'd have thought that with all the bearish press, the sub prime debacle, the Chinese exporting inflation, the yen carry trade and the inexorable rises in the price of a barrel of crude, now would be the best time to switch from bull to bear like Mr Van Damme has. I'm a "neither" but I've STR'd because deep down, I know this party can't go on indefintely and I do think it's going to end very messily. I don't think there's anything that can be done to engineer a soft landing. A few hedge fund collapses and one or two IR increases and one of the banks'll blink and that'll be it . . .

I see . . . well in that case I figure I should give my lender the large profit from the timely sale of my flat seeing as, if you people are to be believed, I'd been completely misled all along about my IO mortgage and in actual fact, they were always the owners and I was only ever renting . . .

You guys are sensationalising this somewhat. While there are some people out there who really don't appreciate that they're only paying interest on their loans, I think most with IO mortgages are perfectly aware. There are many who make lump sum payments off their mortgages.

There were lots of interest only mortgages in the run up to the last crash too. They just tended to be "backed" by endowment policies

Nice of you to get emotional because you disagree with my viewpoint . . . class act, mate . . . well done ! If we're to go on what you've just vomited up, by rights the country ought to be awash with repossessions and all HPC board members should be out circling like buzzards over the broken carcass of the housing market. I should be viewing a stunning 2 bed, 2 bath flat in St John's Wood being auctioned off with a reserve of £100K . . . but I'm not. Are you ? There are a LOT more self cert, "LIE-TO-BUY" loans around than there were in the early 90s so by your "logic" our sub prime market should be dragging down everything else with the gravitational force of a black hole . . . but it's not. There've been 6 interest rate increases in a year, mortgages Shouldn't we have repos approaching levels of '92 ?! No one's saying there aren't many dodgy loans out there but even if you ONLY go by the lending criteria of a typical US sub prime loan versus a typical UK sub prime loan, it's as plain as the nose on your undoubtedly tearful face that the Yanks might as well have gone out and burned the money they lent.

The sub-prime mortgage lending criteria in this country is nowhere near as risk-laden as it was in the US. I heard that people were literally walking out of jail on parole, straight into a realtor's office for a meeting with a broker to get a mortgage . . . without a job You can't do that here. Don't think anyone should be so surprised that there's "an extraordinarily long lag" because there wasn't really much chance of it happening in the first place. Sub prime - in its true sense ie bad debtors, CCJs, arreared borrowers, non-status etc - is not widespread enough to drag the UK market down on its own.

Never really understood that mentality. Surely he/she must realise the jig's up and that it's probably better to bail now than wait 'til everyone else tries sell at the same time ?

Though I'm new here, I think the best way of looking at how things might progress is to put oneself in the mindset of a significant number of recent buyers. You've bought a flat/house within the last 18 months with a mad income multiple because it just seemed like the market was running away with the ball and everyone who ignored calls to avoid housing back in 2004 had made a tidy little profit by the time you made the decision to dive in. Your mortgage payments are a serious burden but you endure because surely you're making some kind of profit, right ?! Imagine for a moment that the notional value of your property comes to a screeching halt . . . it's not rising but there aren't any newspaper headlines reporting MoM falls. There's that calm and then, suddenly, the penny drops. You've got a huge mortgage, you've got maxed-out credit cards that you ran up to furnish the place. You've got the outstanding finance on your Audi TT and the only housing stories you've read point to something called "stagnation". If you bail now, RIGHT NOW . . . you might still be able to keep the TT, pay off the cards and get a flatshare in a respectable area. Now multiply that sentiment by THOUSANDS . . . all in the same boat as you . . .

Don't be ridiculous

I've sold to rent (exchanged today) and for anything short of prime property in Belgravia, Knightsbridge and Kensignton, really do think we've reached the top end of this HPI cycle. People simply cannot borrow larger sums than they are already doing to buy rubbish . . .even in Central London. There is no logic to it and although I'm a neither, I must say that some of the bears seems to be losing hope big time . . . with no real reason. The sting is on the way and woe betide those buying anything short of prime Central London.

Hi I'm an STR in Central London. Not sure the crash is going to be as devastating as lots of folks here think it is but it's going to be interesting to see how things unfold.