Norwich/norfolk

[scottow]

In my opinion?

boomers from the south east area who see comparitively low prices and a Uni and think "bingo" easy money. Also people with more ambition than sense pyramid leveraging the starter home they bought in the 90's. More recently Indian families who assume this is normal.

The rest just see a speculative bandwagon and climb aboard yarr!

None of them know Norwich well enough to understand what a speculative dead end it is.

Don't know about flats but Norfolk is completely unreal. There's stuff in the local paper from a planner in Norfolk County Council talking about £250 million coming from the Government for new roads if Norwich introduces a congestion charge. Has he visited Norwich city centre recently. Around Davey Place which used to be the heart of Norwich all the shops are empty. I heard that the other big insurer (not NU ) are cutting back.my friend recently had a relative from Finland over and she was disgusted by the dirt ( although she loved the old buildings). Sad to read Peter Howard who conveyed my flat has recently died. He was an eccentric of the old school

[Fromage Frais]

Spot on if somone wanted to borrow your car you would expect them to pay you more than the cost s why not a house.

In this climate I think we will all be surprised at the properties which have been bought to rent and I wager a fare few houses have been bought along with the usual flats and terraces so a bailout by BTL will have wider than expected impact.

Looking around rightmove again today and not much joy in my target area of sunnngdale/greenways south norwich with nice but needing a overhaul family houses going for 299,000+

Even started to get some pressure from the parents over coffee with the wife offering to lend me money to buy arrrg they do not get it!!

mum: Love promise me if things do not start falling son you will get yourself a house.

me: Things are just ridiculously priced at the moment it is definately going to fall.

mum: Possibly but with your new baby me and you dad have been thinking and we would be willing to lend you £50,000! (crazy crazy) so you can get a nice family house and settle down (secret meaning tie you down near us so you live here forever).

me: Thankyou ever so much but I do not want you to that as I fimly belive I shouldnt need it.

mum: Why

me: Well mum we sold the old house and we have well over 100,000 in the bank cash (house sold for 225,000) and I have a reasonable job.

mum: What are your wages?

me: Nothing spectacular but significantly over £30,000 with 10,000 extra on a good year.

mum: what kind of mortgage can you get?

me: As we have the baby it would be financally irresposible of me to get over 4 times my wages as job could go (been made redundant twice before in corporate retructuring now self employed) so I guess maxing myself on these figures would mean a loan of £160,000.

mum: But that would only let you buy a house of 250,000 as you would need stamp duty and a bit of money of moving an basic rennovations

me: Exactly, and 250,000 gets you a ok family house with ones in my target are being 299,000

mum: OK then as you can see with my money I am going to give you, you can get one of these.

me: no no no you should see by now this s crazy when somone needs to have made 100k in HPI, take a maximum mortgage of 4x salary on an above average salary and borrow 50000£ from their parents jut to buy a reasonable family house somthing is absolutly wrong.

mum: I kind of understand but your against people with lots of money.

me: Maybe but the average wage in Norwich i more like 20k (if that) and only 4000 households earn more than 50K, when you and dad bought a house how did you pay for it?

mum: 30% deposit and mortgage on you dads salary he as working on rigs at the time and getting good money, I was self employed and thus couldn't get on the mortgage.

me: enough said, imagine I also bought one of these houses and then lost my job I couldn't even rent it as the rent wouldn't even cover the payments.

mum: But if for examples sake the average wage 40k per houshold in eaton how are people (like you) goig to afford 800-1000 per month rent with kids etc without going negative each month.

me: I just do not know! How about this for size with the house money in the bank I am earning another £500+ per month if I buy a house I am trading this in for a mortgage of near a thousand whilst worst comes to worst now I have total liquidity and if business goes belly up I can move anyware for work.

mum: I kind of understand but remember inflation will be eating away at that.

me: Fair enough but lets assume that is the case then surely (as has happened) interest rates go up if I can afford 160,000 at 5.5% then surely I can only afford 120,000 at 6.5%, and less than £100,000 on rates over 7.5%

mum: I understand but they say rates are coming down.

me: are they you bet me £100,000 as even banks are not lending money to each other at the moment (northern rock)

mum: No I wouldn't

me: So why should I bet my life savings on this? Remember when i was little and we had the last housing crash?

mum: Yes it was terrible we had to move and lost over 50,000 (30%) on a lovely house at the time.

me: Ok I think its going to be like that again maybe not as bad but I feel that houses are worth the equivalent of the maximum interest only mortgage you could get for them (ie 100% of the price) so you are in effect renting from the bank.

mum: But that would mean one of those sunningdale houses you like at say 325,000 ( a nice one) that rents out for £1250 (unlikely to get really) which equates to 190,000 if you have oneaccount 6.9% or say 210/220 with a cheaper mortgage. By this calculation if 325 was a true value then the io for 100% would be 1950 or there abouts (equivalentof 35k+ after tax).

me: Exactly so I belive that I should be able to have oneof those for £235,000 or at least under the stamp duty threashold at the very least (still too expensive ideally one which is 299,000 now I would like to get for 200,000.

mum: Not going to happen

me: You say that but what makes them worth 299 this year when they where 250 last year!

7 30/11/2006 £259,950 Semi F No Map 133, Greenways, Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 6PD

8 29/11/2006 £250,000 Det. F No Map 66, Greenways, Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 6HF

9 04/08/2006 £245,000 Det. F No Map 33, Greenways, Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 6PA

10 27/07/2006 £249,950 Det. F No Map 125, Greenways, Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 6PD

you see I am not asking for the world just for the same price as 2004 :-)

13 11/06/2004 £205,000 Det. F No Map 56, Greenways, Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 6PE

14 05/04/2004 £147,950 Det. F No Map 41, Greenways, Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 6PB

15 29/07/2003 £204,000 Det. F No Map 138, Greenways, Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 6HA

16 25/07/2003 £185,000 Det. F No Map 56, Greenways, Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 6PE

17 21/07/2003 £170,000 Det. F No Map 26, Greenways, Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 6PE

and get this I could actually have borrowed more money then as interest rates where lower!!!!

mum: I see what you mean as the interest rates are now the same as 2002, what are you going to do?

me: I promised the wife that we would sit on the sidelines for a year or so and se how it goes god willing we should be a bit richer in a years time and logically what has happened in america should happen here to a lesser/greater degree as the final 30% of this boom is thin air.

mum: ok then we will have this disussion in another 12 months.

me: x

Bit of a rant but it shows that at the moment sentiment is so strong even with those who should know better!

One of the earlier posts on this thread said that houseprices in nr4 (my target area) are 8x wages which ties in about exactly with the average housedol income of 40k for a house of 299K for money I think we will return to 5x as its a nice area unless economy goes belly up so wth 5% inflation 245k next year (selling for what they paid) or the year after (taking a 10% offer on these prices) circa 220k.

Fingers crossed

I was also thinking going by the interiors of the properties in eaton there is a hell of a lot of equity to play with as folks haven't sent money on their houses inside since 1980 :-p

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-881...=1&tr_t=buy

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-154...=1&tr_t=buy

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-137...=1&tr_t=buy

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-158...=1&tr_t=buy

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-901...=2&tr_t=buy

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-929...=3&tr_t=buy

Funny as the interiors all look the same age maybe this was the era of the affordable house and all the vendors are the same age/dead?

[Killer Bunny]

Bit of a rant but it shows that at the moment sentiment is so strong even with those who should know better!

Brilliant. Thx FF

But why should someone who is economically illiterate know better?

[Fromage Frais]

Brilliant. Thx FF

But why should someone who is economically illiterate know better?

Sad to say but my mother is a very successfull business woman which makes it even more worring such is the extent of this property brainwashing.

On another note I said to her once that this hpi is very annoying.

All her life my mother has bought businesses and sold them after working her fingers to the bone and made a resonable fortune decades of hard grinding work and risky business generating employment.

Ironically she would have almost been better living beyond her means and buying the largest house she could have afforded!!!

Economically speaking surely all this money stuck in housing would be better off in business and investment?

Imagine the fun people would have if they had half the mortgage! Or maybe that is not the case maybe it is more efficient that most people are mortaged up the eye and the banks make a massive profit from people selling the same crap to each other.

Somhow i thik the latter cannot be preferential as if there is one thing I know the large companies do not like paying tax maybe we would all be better off with prices half what they are

[DabHand]

Yeah your mum seems quite smart, despite her initial position on HPI. (what did you do, tape it?)

Not sure about your box-fetish taste in housing though. Guess if you got one of those now, it would save you moving again when you were waiting to die.

[Fromage Frais]

Yeah your mum seems quite smart, despite her initial position on HPI. (what did you do, tape it?)

Not sure about your box-fetish taste in housing though. Guess if you got one of those now, it would save you moving again when you were waiting to die.

I know what you mean but I used to be a character property type of guy but the bills fxing a house in leamington spa sorted me out on that front and new builds are simply too small.

The housese in sunning sale ar a bt grey but give me a 30ft lounge large garden an a few parking spaces off newmrket road and I forgive the lack of style.

If you want a nice looking place thenits 400+and I will not pay that for a place outsid london unless its a bloody mansion

[detached]

I lived in Norwich for 6 years 1996-2002 and therefore like to keep au fait with the place where I have kept many friends.

Looking on rightmove today, I was amazed to see that there are nearly 500 flats to rent within 1 mile of NR1, with many rents around £1,000 pcm !!!!

A grand a month for a 2 bed-flat - that must be close to the net modal monthly average salary in Norwich.....

Furthermore it makes to sense to rent a badly-built shoe box near the red light district (Rouen Road) when you can get a perfectly nice terraced house in the Golden Triangle for the same money ....

I can see the value of these flats dropping like stones in the Wensum ......

Absolute madness !!!!

For info I paid £72,000 for a 4-bedroom terraced house in the GT in 1996 (sold it for £195K in 2002 which I thought was a crazy price at the time - they now go for £270K/£290K !!!!)

[waitingandsaving]

Personally, I think it should still hit 3.5 times average earnings (for that area) at some point when the economy is really bad - my parents bought there house in Eaton in late 1974 just after the peak of that boom when developers could'nt sell them. There were one or two places in Eaton that were sold to the Council in the mid 70's and early 80's as they just could'nt sell them - Albury Walk and Lindford drive respectively I think (3-bedroom size). I doubt whether any of the houses are council owned now....

I thought the developers went bust, so the council did them a favour and took them off their hands - it was in the days when council houses were of a better standard than private ones - so they all had to be brought up to council house standard.

Some of them are still owned by the council - which makes it one of the few areas where there is genuinely an interesting mix of residents - council houses sit next to rentals, which in turn sit next to professional peoples, as well as relatively wealthy retired residents (not that you can always tell which is which based on the cars outside!!!)

I go through the "renting is dead money" spiel with a senior relative... It is frustrating, and the whole N Rock thing was a mystery to them - they were telling me that N Rock were responsible lenders- had to ask them whether they thought a 110% mortgage over 30 years (whatever the multiple! But in my anecdote, I reckon it's about 4.5x) was responsible lending -they were shocked, and said that no, on reflection perhaps not... Next time I'll be going through the whole interest only mortgages are just renting from the bank argument (one principal at a time, on rotation )

FF - your dialogue was great!

Last week's rental pages had a front page all about Let to Buy - how in the last recession/crash people couldn't get their houses sold, so let out the old house to move into the new one. They are expecting a large upturn in the people doing this. On reflection, I know at least 4 couples who have done this over the last 2 years - they declared it as the beginnings of their BTL portfolio (although, as far as I'm aware, none of them have added to their portfolio), but actually, maybe in a couple of cases it was actually because they couldn't get it sold in time before needing to move... I guess this means that even if BTLers are getting out, there will still be some who will be trapped into Let to Buying, which could potentially keep the rental market stable - just a different sort of investor?

Catflap - your compound inflation is fascinating (and the regional rations - all I can say is that I'm glad I don't want to live in ! I knew they had it good... but didn't realise it was that good! When you look at it like that, people that bought at the time, and who have stayed in the same house (which going by those rightmove photos, is a large proportion....) will have no way of understanding how different a financial climate it is now.

The thing that gets me about all those £300k houses round Sunningdale way, is that essentially they're all pretty much the same, and also pretty much the same as the £395k house we talked about earlier - just that their decor is nicer, and the conservatory looks good - but is it really £100k nicer?

[Helen]

I lived in Norwich for 6 years 1996-2002 and therefore like to keep au fait with the place where I have kept many friends.

Looking on rightmove today, I was amazed to see that there are nearly 500 flats to rent within 1 mile of NR1, with many rents around £1,000 pcm !!!!

Picked this link up from the main forum - it mentions all the unsold flats in Norwich and repossessions - if link doesnt' work it's in the the thread on Property porn on bbc today.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...property101.xml

[Helen]

Thanks Catflap for your reply - and sorry for being so cr&ppy at putting links on!

think i'll be safer if I stick to reading this site from now on ; )

Helen

[saffron]

Hi everyone

just been looking on the main thread - a telegraph article quotes Brown & Co in Norwich:

"Norwich is also struggling, according to Peter Sargeant of Brown & Co, which has offices all over the region. "The local newspaper has a property section of about 120 pages each week, but they are mainly recycled houses that have been on the market for months and not sold."

[ quote name='Ash4781' post='1' date ='Oct 7 2007, 10:15AM]

Too Many Properties Coming To Market, Too Few Buyers And Not Enough Cheap Credit?

[ /quote ]

Source:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtm....xml&page=2

" target="_blank">

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtm....xml&page=2

</a>

Hope these links work - followed your instructions to Helen, Catflap...

oops - not working and no time to try to work it out, sorry.....

Edited October 7, 2007 by saffron

[Helen]

Hi everyone

just been looking on the main thread - a telegraph article quotes Brown & Co in Norwich:

"Norwich is also struggling, according to Peter Sargeant of Brown & Co, which has offices all over the region. "The local newspaper has a property section of about 120 pages each week, but they are mainly recycled houses that have been on the market for months and not sold."

[ quote name='Ash4781' post='1' date ='Oct 7 2007, 10:15AM]

Too Many Properties Coming To Market, Too Few Buyers And Not Enough Cheap Credit?

[ /quote ]

Source:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtm....xml&page=2

" target="_blank">

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtm....xml&page=2

</a>

Hope these links work - followed your instructions to Helen, Catflap...

oops - not working and no time to try to work it out, sorry.....

Hi Saffron,

Glad it's not just me!! sorry Catflap - must be a female thing!

Saw the same article - really good - mentioned Norwich having problems twice - shall think about buying the Telegraph more often!

Helen

[Helen]

Strangely (or typically) no reporting in both the Eastern Daily Press or Eastern Evening News about these

I wonder whether Friday's property section in the EDP will make any reference to a difficult market, or will as usual tell everyone how rosy things are in Norfolk!?

Incidently, I've been watching 10 properties in North Walsham - all mid or end Victorian terraces - since 9th Sept - as at today's date, 1 has sold, 1 has been removed from the market and 4 have been reduced - one from £157,500 to £149,500. Certainly seems as if the Telegraph is not too far out in its assertions of the problems of the Norwich/Norfolk market.

Helen

[DabHand]

Neither of my two mates selling for less than initial valuation and having reduced by 10k plus within weeks have had a sniff.

One reckons he will be stuck with it. Depends on how much you're willing to drop the price l guess !

[waitingandsaving]

[rant]Hello all!

I think things in the local property market is changing, and sentiments in the paper are also (albeit slowly) shifting a bit more...

Last weeks (4th October) property supplement was 56 pages long:

Total Properties:769

Under £120k: 47 (6.11%)

£120k - £160K: 152 (19.77%)

£160k - £250K: 387 (50.33%)

New on: 148 (19.25%)

New Price: 129 (16.78%)

No Chain: 128 (16.64%)

POA: 2

Reavailable: 2

Incentives 1

When roughly one in six houses in the paper are reduced, I'd things must be starting to hit home.

William H Brown is now having a sale - that's the 4th EA now that have have had some form of sale or another, the Howards Autumn Bonanza continues, as well as a large proportion of a page of Haart ads...

There seemed to be a few more "news" items in the pages (and considerably fewer houses for sale too) and twice it was mentioned "the percentage of asking price to agreed price is down to 89.3% compared to 93.5% in August". Apparently confidence is high despite a challenging market - I guess at least they are admitting to the market being more challenging? The TOPs property news seems to have gone, and there is a a column by William H Brown guy this week - promoting their sale campaign - prices cut by a minimum of 5% - their sale started on 1st October and is only for a limited time so hurry!!! (they say it will initially only go on till 14th October... Hmm so much like a DFS sale, there no fixed end date).

There were a couple of other changes - the property shop pages have had a major makeover (they seem to have gone for a shade of blue very similar to what Howards changed to earlier in the year - maybe a subliminal thing about cooling house prices?! ), different colour, considerably less houses per page, and they bill themselves as Alexander and Co Property Shop - So I'm not sure if this is a merging of EAs (more discrete than a takeover perhaps?) or maybe they always were?

The other big change was TOPS pages itself. They've gone for a makeover too, a big double page ad about how their new look reflects all the innovations they provide to flog homes by, etc... and they've changed the way they advertis the properties. They've taken a leaf from the Howards model of advertising, and have decided to forgo the actual pictures of the houses... And instead of mentioning the salient points that most propspective buyers would be interested in, they've gone for a "why we love this house so much" comment from the vendors, or a made up equivalent from an EA thats been round the place...

Such gems as "The generously proportioned accommodation arranged with the feeling of a house are what I have really enjoyed whilst living here", (read "what we don't tell you anywhere in the ad is that it might "feel" like a house, but it's a flat, and it's one that doesn't feel quite as much like a shoebox as some of the others that we looked at")

"I have owned this apartment from new and found the suberb specification and secure city centre living style exactly to my liking" (read "I got fleeced into buying this new apartment, I never really owned it, and its still the bank's, it looked nice when I moved in but the areas gone to the dogs, and I'm glad of the security features the flat came with. It's so to my liking that I'm moving out")

Although it would seem that the Poringland office wasn't too keen to play along, and have left the descriptions pretty much as it used to be, but with quote marks around them! I'd be pretty narked if I was selling in Caistor St Edmund and all they put in was a brief description, and no photo - surely not worth the commission?

And Chrisptopher Hall carry on with their riduculous advertising that tells people when a property has been staged to sell by home stagers... Surely you're better off having a service like that but not advertising it - otherwise the EA is saying We've tarted up this place to look like it's possible to live in this place, but really its not, and would never sell otherwise....

[/rant]

[waitingandsaving]

With articles like that, and the TV such as the Buy to Debt programme on Friday night (although I wonder how many "normal" people stay in and watch the money programme on a Friday evening in preference to other weekend activities... thank heavens for downloadable TV and youtube!!) the times they are a-changing.

I'm looking forward to the series that starts on Thursday too!

Looking back on last weeks figures, the one thing I missed looking at them was that the total number of properties was the lowest since I've been doing the count. There was considerably more advertising, and with Property shop cutting down to 12 properties/page, it was a significant drop. This week they're a bit more back to normal volume wise, but still huge amounts of double page spread ads for the EAs etc... (It was64 pages this week). William H Brown are still having their sale, Bovis are advertising their shared Equity scheme for new houses in Costessey, Christopher Hall gives great advice for getting that house sold - keep it tidy being the General Gist, and TOPS continue with their pointless way of advertising properties, sans pictures, so you have no idea if you really want to live there or if it's a sh!thole that they're hoping someone will think might sound nice... :angry:

I don't think I 'm looking for an increase in the %age of houses in the 160-250 bracket - that proportion (I think) will stay the same for a while yet, but as prices slowly trickle down, I'm looking for an increase in the total percentage of houses under 250K.

In Jan/Feb this yr it was about 73-74%, and in April/May it dropped down to 67/68%. At the moment its about 75/76%, I guessing that there's some seasonal fluctuation, in that the summer should be fairly dire, as people don't really sell their houses at that time of year (Leading to low prices, and a higher overall %age) but in the Spring and the Autumn, when more house sales go through, the %age of properties under £250k should be lower, as people will be getting the best prices for them. I know this is simplistic, but the Jan/Feb (low sales) and the April/May (Easter - high sales) figures bear this out. This should be a high sales point in the cycle again, and it's not... Only time will tell, and really it will only be next Easter that the data I've come up with so far will really mean anything.

Off to enjoy the autumn sunshine...

[waitingandsaving]

Off Woodcock Road isn't somewhere I'd choose, but there are worse places...

It's interesting that they have the energy efficiency graphs - 1st time I've noticed that on a property. And an open half hour? Maybe they want it to look really busy, but they're not sure they'll get lots of people for an open day, but they could have at least settled for an hour, surely?

I guess the benefit of all these open days is that it provides the exact address for checking up on net house prices...

Let us know if you go!

[waitingandsaving]

That EA is missing a trick there- I believe if a flat comes with a garden, then they're enchantingly called a "Garden Flat" - giving it more gravitas than the first floor flat billing it has at the moment, but not to go so OTT as to call itself a luxury/executive apartment (which of course never seem to come with such a thing!)...

For my reference, This came onto the market recently, it'll be interesting to see how long it takes to sell...

Anyhoo...

This weeks property pages (todays) were 48 pages long - a bit measly really!

Total Properties: 643

Under £120k: 37 (5.75%)

£120K - 160K:142 (22.08%)

£160k - £250K: 319 (49.61%)

Total Under £250k: 77.44%

New on: 117 (18.2%)

New Price: 136 (21.15%)

No Chain: 95 (14.77%)

Howards are having their Autumn Bonanza again, and William H brown are still having their Sale, so that pushes the new prices %age up considerably (last week it was 12% ish)

William H Brown are also delighted to announce the opening of their new orifices - located within Tesco Extra on Blue Boar Lane, Christopher Hall is also rather delighted and a little smug to announce the opening of TWO new orifices - on Boundary Road, and Colman Road. Hmmmm.

Chris Hall says that he expects prices to rise 10-15% in the next 10-15 years, so I'd say that he isn't hugely bullish on prices, and the TOPS "news" pages go on to explain why they've had their makeover - apparently it's so they can focus on the new way their customers think about house buying - TOPs are now pushing the lifestyle aspect of the property, maybe the fact that the current owners have breakfast in the sunny conservatory will sell that house to the buyer rather than the fact that it's in a good location and has a garage... Apparently their new red, yellow and black livery has been designed to highlight the company's emphasis on "efficient, friendly customer service". I'm doubtful that the colours convey that, but, each to their own!

Haart have had a makeover, and gone all barely there - very little colour, very few pictures, but to temper it all, lots of Bruno style "Hot Property!" (although they're not the only ones marking every house thats been on the market for ages with that)

Alexander and Co property shop took out a double page spread that says "Quiet Market!!!!! In the last 12 weeks (since the 1st August) we have agreed sales on 268 properties totalling £54.6 million"

I'm starting to give up - even in a market that the EAs themselves admit is a buyers market, and that people shouldn't overprice their properties, they still manage to talk up the market, and are prepared to add branches...

However, hopefully tonight's BBC bear food will cheer me up!

[LowestoftBoy]

EDP Property Supplement 26 Oct 07. Simon Freebrey, Senior Lettings Executive at City & County Residential Lettings, contributed an article about his views on the lettings market that left me dumbstruck.

Usual VI waffle ended with this:

"So is now a good time to buy an investment property or should you wait to see if property prices drop? Our advice would be that if you have the deposit in cash then wait, you will get a much better price if the market does indeed really slow down." (fair enough)

However, if you need to release some of the equity in your home in order to finance the deposit for your buy-to-let, then now is the time to do it. If house prices fall then that equity may be eroded, making it harder and harder to finance that deposit,which added to rising interest rates, could mean you miss out."

Is he saying, "take a bite of this big sh1t sandwich or you'll miss out on finding out what sh1t tastes like."

Edited October 26, 2007 by LowestoftBoy

[Little Professor]

God, how does he manage to come out with that tosh without laughing?

Good one, LowestOftBoy

[redwing]

EDP Property Supplement 26 Oct 07. Simon Freebrey, Senior Lettings Executive at City & County Residential Lettings, contributed an article about his views on the lettings market that left me dumbstruck.

Usual VI waffle ended with this:

"So is now a good time to buy an investment property or should you wait to see if property prices drop? Our advice would be that if you have the deposit in cash then wait, you will get a much better price if the market does indeed really slow down." (fair enough)

However, if you need to release some of the equity in your home in order to finance the deposit for your buy-to-let, then now is the time to do it. If house prices fall then that equity may be eroded, making it harder and harder to finance that deposit,which added to rising interest rates, could mean you miss out."

Is he saying, "take a bite of this big sh1t sandwich or you'll miss out on finding out what sh1t tastes like."

Please, please put that quote on the main forum.

I like this sideshoot because I find out what's really going on. But that is the most fantastic bit of VI bull5hit I have ever seen.

[Izzyjas]

The EDP24 did report the RICS survey showing house prices in East Anglia falling, plus I saw the small piece in Thursday's Eastern Evening News.

http://new.edp24.co.uk/search/story.aspx?b...3A20%3A25%3A397

Not a lot to say at the moment - prices are still a joke with people still asking over £130,000 for 2-bedroom ex-LA flats, like this one!

Dream on!

This is only my second post so apologies if its incorrect in any way, been watching for a long time nice to see others from round ere I was thinking I was the only one, especially when I sit opposite someone at work who is gushing about purchasing a 3 bed new build for over £225k and thinks I am a miserable toad for my opinion on house prices, myself just sold (and completed) on my house in NR1 for stupid amount of money, waiting for now.

That ex LA flat now STC (who nows if it will ever complete!) - surely this cant keep going on......

[DabHand]

Welcome to hell.

[Izzyjas]

Welcome to hell.

You are not wrong!!! we had a builder round yesterday, who to cut a long story short is building detached 4 bed, offerred it to us start of year for £300k, has since had it valued by local estate agent numpty for £375,000. Just refused a cash offer on it for £330k (greedy so and so )

I try to keep my opinions to myself because I am fed up with people saying that I am a doom monger (suppose better than being a greedy t**t) - I think its fair to say that he got the hump and left pretty quickly with the comment "things are not right for a crash it just wont happen" signs of a stressed builder maxed out in my opinion!

Incidentally, coming home from work the other day, Wilima H Brown for sale sign just off Queens Road with another little round sticker been placed in the middle "now in our sale" translated - we cant sell it and we know the market is dropping out and we need to earn some commission !!!

[waitingandsaving]

Link to New Development in Norwich Closed for Refurb (just to find it at a later date with ease!)

Well done Lowestoftboy - the whole article he was talking out his bee-hind.

Yes, a bit of a creepy place to live though - I wouldn't want to live there even if that was £200K. Very lonely and you have no neighbours - no wonder there is barbed wire round the top of the fence!!.

It is a bit creepy along there (Marston Lane in the dark really doesn't float my boat!), and with the noise from the all too close Ipswich Rd, and the rail track, along with lads going down there in the middle of the night with trail bikes etc, the occasional undoubted smell from the cows, I really don't think it could be worth all that money in anyones eyes...

I've also been wondering about the flats on Riverside - the old ones. It's been ages since the clubs and bowling alley have closed, and I've been wondering if there are any implications on it all for a) selling a flat down there and the structural integrity of the flats there. I know the cinema and restaurants are still going, (which are closer to the houses than the clubs) but don't remember seeing anything that explained the situation...

This weeks pages (25th Oct) were 56 pages...

Arnolds are advertising Carrow Mews - 4 storey 3/4 bed houses with garden and parking from £229,950, which considering the price of a 2 bed flat in a prospective sink estate just down the road, is a bargain - those apartment prices just don't stack up.

Howards continue to have and Autumn Bonanza, William H brown have taken the Sale signs away, but seem to have more new price stickies than ever before...

The TOPS news (as mentioned in the other thread) was all about furniture pack incentives - Surrey St, Trafalgar St, and also York st developments all have the fully furnished incentives, and Larks Meadow just outside Dereham (which, apparently is only a 15 minute commute - I think I probably beg to differ) is offering Stamp Duty and legal fees paid.

Barratts continue with the "own 100% of the home for 75% of the price" lark - It's all getting a bit desperate really. Oh! And it would seem that you didn't need to set up camp for 6 weeks to get one of those homes in Coltishall... Wlm H Brown are advertising "a selection of 2,3 and 4 bed houses starting from 126,777, with incentives available" - in Coltishall.

The TOPS auction is next on 31st October, and I notice that the Earlham House flats are going to be auctioned - we first talked about them in Feb this year - so they haven't sold in all that time! They will be sold as 2 lots of 4 studios each, and then 2 separate 1 bed flats. Will be intersting to see how much they go for, in comparison to how much they were on the market for.

There was another small ad for another auction - in a pub in Marsham - auctioning off 2 houses in need of modernisation, and 2 with protected tenants - kind of a strange ad really.