The Evening Standard

[Bubble Pricker]

Today, our "favourite" newspaper, the Evening Standard has "Property Prices Plunge" screaming from its selling booths. This is not the first headline like this. In recent months, they scramed "House Price Slide Begins" and "Shock London House Price Fall".

As ever, the ES reports on house prices are poorly researched and tend to grab one headline off the figures they are based on.

However, the point is that during the house price boom, the headlines were equally sensationalist. According to the ES, house prices were always "soaring", even if the underlying figures, at closer examination, revealed only a small increase.

What I am trying to say here is that I am ultimately not too unhappy about the sensationalist bear press such as the ES. For years we had to endure the bull spin, which at least in part has contributed to house prices going way out of line. In fact, this sort of negative press may be necessary to help get the crash started or at least catalysed.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe the crash is already built into current house prices. They will crash simply because they have gone too high. No particular trigger is needed. However, what is required to get the crash underway is a change in sentiment. And this is where rubbish papers like the ES come in handy. They need to report sensations. "House prices remain stagnant" does not make a good headline. It also requires shock headlines like today's to change the mood and sentiment in the population. Sentiment in the housing market changes slowly. There are still too many people, in fact probably still the majority of the average Joe population, who think that prices will continue to go up and are in fact still rising. No wonder: they have been fed the bull propaganda day in day out on TV with Locationx3 and many similar programs.

But the media is cruel. Once the tide has turned, Kirsty will be out of her TV job and property shows will be replaced with docu-reality style programs about families who face misery because they have borrowed too much and are in negative equity. Those programs will blame banks, estate agents etc. for talking people into buying at the height of the boom.

We are only at the beginning of the great house price crash of 2005/2006. It is only now that the media are starting to pick up on falling house prices. Falling prices is still news for the vast majority of people in this country. Once the news of stalling/falling prices have begun to filter through and sunk in, the crash will commence in earnest. I look forward to it.

[Starcrossed]

Can't argue with that!

[Van]

Too right. The trashy media are obsessed with headlines - it doesn't matter to them if it's "House Prices Soar" or "Negative Equity Nightmare", it's all about sensationalism and selling papers.

For the press, bad news is good news. Once it snowballs, it will become savage and will contribute to driving prices down past their equilibrium level.

[BufferBear Bitcoin Bull]

BP

"Property prices have plunged" in some areas of London even though the Standard talked of a 5% drop. If you look at individual boroughs, according to Rightmove's Sept. 04 report, which runs from July 10th - 11th September, they have fallen as follows:

Wandsworth (my borough) is down 27491 8.3%

City of West. 42951 7.1%

Ham & Fulham 52228 11.5%

Ken & Chelsea 96309 14.1%

Richmond 25251 7.30%

Merton 22210 7.7

Also, my friend just sold his 3 bedroom in South Norwood for 218000 after reducing it four times, from 245,000 (overpriced) to 225,000. Ouch!

[zzg113]

still wasn't worth that. south norwood=indianville.