[Closed] predictions for the housing market over the next 2 years

My view - it'll bump along pretty much as it is now.

I think that first time buyers will get the opportunity to buy as house prices crash dramatically and move closer in line with wages, the government are planning to seize all second homes/buy-to-lets and sell them off at 3.5times the average local salary and the bank of england will increase interest rates for savers but keep them low for people paying off debt..........possibly

I think that too.

My view - it'll bump along pretty much as it is now.

i dont like you

I think that first time buyers will get the opportunity to buy as house prices crash dramatically and move closer in line with wages, the government are planning to seize all second homes/buy-to-lets and sell them off at 3.5times the average local salary and the bank of england will increase interest rates for savers but keep them low for people paying off debt..

i like you

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depends how deep your head is in the sand.

mortgages are much easier to get now than even a year ago- a friend , a first time buyer just got a mortgage above valuation.....

when i went to get mine i had to pay any difference between valuation and mortgage out my own pocket before they would even look at me......

its all just returning to pre credit crunch as far as i can see..... people with money can borrow money shocker - keeping prices high.

Hang on, just let me check for you......

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Hmmm, let me just check...

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Nope, no idea

he's not even looking at his ball!

I think he may be being pleasured by unseen forces 🙂

Flatlined.

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Within 12 months, all the houses that aren't underwater will be owned by buy-to-let landlords, apart from council houses which you will only be allowed to live in if you're from Bulgaria or Romania, or if you've had 6 kids by 8 different fathers

the real numbers you want to look at are the cost to rent the same kind of property in the area you live in vs the cost of a mortgage.

good point binners - plenty of cheap affordable houses in flood plains. Long as you can live without insurance.

Folk will buy and folk will sell - that's the only reasonably accurate prediction for the housing market.

I'm off to set up Binners First-time Mortgage and Sandbag Emporium

Areas of high unemployment low investment will stagnate at best or more realistically fall in value 😥

Areas of high employment/investment commutable to London will do rather better 😳

The rest of us will just bump along 😉

Of course the great unknown is what the new Head of the Bank of England will do with interest rates, as unemployment is falling and green shoots of recovery are apparently visible 😆

might seem like a dumb question, but compared to asking people to predict the housing market over the next two years i'm pretty sure i can get away with it....

is it possible to find out how much a bank might lend you without applying and having the credit check? i'm under the impression(possibly under the wrong impression) that even when a bank does this it goes on your score as a check without a loan being given and thus knocks you down a little?

Nothing particularly dramatic, certainly not in 2 years anyway. Little bit of fluctuation with house prices dipping marginally in some areas but people are still buying, banks are still lending so fairly stable all in all I would think.

you have to supply ALOT of details to get that far

a basic BANK affordabiliy check consists of - Wages in vs debts going out - be careful as they were offering me up a silly figure to go buy because i have no debt - do your own sums against normal monthly outgoings vs income then whats left is pretty much YOUR affordability - and even then id be careful what % of that you go with.

they then do a sum based on that and give you a figure.

you go look at houses , then apply for a mortgage at which point any hidden bubbles from your past come to light adn you get a true yay or nae ....

In areas of the North East you'll soon be able to buy an entire street of back-to-back Terraces for a bottle of Tesco own brand vodka, 20 Lambert and Butler and 2 packets of Space Raiders

is it better to have regular credit card use thats paid off in full each month, or no debt on credit card with regards to a credit rating?

i was advised a while ago to spend money on the CC regularly and pay off in full to boost my rating, but despite continuing to do so... its always made me feel like i'm shooting myself in the foot.

is it possible to find out how much a bank might lend you without applying and having the credit check?

plenty of the banks have mortgage calculators which use earnings/ savings/ outgoings as a basis for saying how much they will lend you - you don't have to give up any personal information.

as regards the housing market, it really depends on where you live and how greedy the estate agents are. they're the ones who can really influence house prices.

better to use it regularly as it helps prove you are reliable

having had no debts ever is one of the worst thing you could do as they open your credit rating and see no score or a very low score.

make sure your on the electoral roll at your address and that all the addresses on your bank and CC cards tie in as well. I had to swap a couple of mine quick as they were at my parents.

Why don't you actually shoot yourself in the foot and see if the analogy stacks up?

V diff call as housing market remains very distorted. Prices are not cheap by historical standards. House price-earnings ratios remain above LT (since ealry 1980s) trends by around 10% across UK. But houses are relatively cheap to finance because of low IRs. The mortgage to earnings ratios are the opposite - 8-10% below historic trends. so relatively cheap to finance but prices not that attractive.

Crystal ball

Top end: firm prices, strong demand, limited supply, foreign support for SE market
Middle end: flat to weak (reasons above)
Low end: weak to flat - expect extra supply of housing at some stage

Guaranteed to be completely wrong!!

Lots of data on Lloyds Bank/Halifax site to help you make your mind up.

In order to get a good or bad credit score you need to be scored on something so using credit cards and keeping them in check is a good way to boost your credit rating.

In areas of the North East you'll soon be able to buy an entire street of back-to-back Terraces for a bottle of Tesco own brand vodka, 20 Lambert and Butler and 2 packets of Space Raiders

You already can in areas of the North West...

We found this out when we sold our house in Accrington. 😐

if my thinkings are right some of the situations folk i know have gotten into are going to be kicked right into touch when the interest rate eventually does rise......

people have seen what they can afford and went BAZINGA

A lot of lower value properties are already in quite significant negative equity, as many of these (particularly ex local authority) were bought at the height of the housing boom by those looking to cash in on the buy to let market. Some properties were changing hands every few weeks, each time going for a few thousand more. Now those stuck with grossly overinflated not very good properties are in a nasty situation where they can't sell (because no-one will meet their asking prices), and now local authorities are imposing benefit caps, a large chunk of potential tenants has been lost to them. So many have to rent at prices barely enough to cover their mortgages, if they're lucky. Added to that the unemployment situation, and stagnating salaries, many will eventually have to just cut their losses. The problem they will face though, is that the properties they bought with a view to getting rich quick, are often poor quality and with an ever shortening lifespan. So at the bottom of the market, values will drop significantly. This will have a knock on effect on slightly 'better' properties, as desperate first time buyers, low-end commercial landlords etc will be snapping up the cheap stuff and ignoring properties a level or two above.

The UK economy is shrinking and will continue to do so. Britain will become a less desirable place to live, as companies will relocate to burgeoning economies/countries where labour is cheaper. Net migration will see a rise in emigration as people seek fortune elsewhere.

And eventually, house prices may become reasonable in relation to salaries once more. But how long this could take I have no idea. In fact all the above could well be utter bollocks. It's as reasonable a view as any other though.

Flat to down in the north.
Flat to up in the south.
Up to up in London.

Although it's all overpriced still imo. 🙂

Housing market has been shagged for 6 years now and can't see much changing - slight national reduction in the average house price, with regional variations. However, an attractive, well priced house in a desirable area will always sell. Credit will still not be easy to get, although its staggering what mortgage lenders in theory will lend, based on their on-line calculators, if you have a nice deposit and no other debts.

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That should buff out.
or

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Happy now binners?

the government are planning to seize all second homes/buy-to-lets and sell them off at 3.5times the average local salary

I've moved my second home offshore 🙂

I have just sold a place in Durham though and had 2 buyers racing to get it so maybe things are moving slightly, I dunno.

Sign up to Experian - you can download your full credit report free of charge then cancel during the free period. Will give you a firmer idea of just how crap you've been with your money over the years...

Won't give a definitive answer to the mortgage question but useful to know.

Prices dropped as much as 20% in 2008/2009 Phil even in Sandhurst - we kind of saw it coming and sold up (Fleet) mid-2008. Unfortunately the government decided they knew better and intervened and prices shot back up, we didn't see that coming and buy back in in time. Round our way I think they're back at 2007 levels which is utterly ridiculous and unaffordable for most under 35s. (for reference the 3 bed end of terrace we rent would probably go for close to £300k at the moment, we rent for a lot less than it would cost to buy).

As unfortunate as it is, prices won't go anywhere until there are more forced sellers. So interest rates up and banks repo'ing, this won't happen (IMO) until the banks can handle it/will allow it which could be a long time. Personally I don't beleive for a minute that interest rates are this low to keep 'hard working families' in their homes, it's to stop the banks going to the wall. 'They' don't give a damn about us little people.

After waiting for prices to come down to more sensible levels for 4+ years we're going to bite the bullet and buy again this year, either something smaller round here or move away from friends and family. Life's too short and there's too much vested interest in keeping people in eye watering levels of debt for this to be fixed any time soon.

As for credit rating - I think using and paying off your cc regularly helps with that. If you want to know what you can borrow just go and see a mortgage advisor and get an agreement in principle. They'll talk you through all the options and while the search does show up on your credit report I don't think it's detrimental so long as it's not done too often.

that toe makes me feel queasy.

As long as prices for properties in the current £250-300k range in South Manchester, ideally with three or four decent sized bedrooms, good sized kitchen and living/dining rooms, a garage, nice gardens, easy access to transport networks and with pleasant countryside views, fall massively, hitting a low point in about September, and then climb meteorically for the next 25 years, I don't care 🙂

Everyone's perspective is coloured by where they live/the areas they know.

I expect, with a few wee exceptions it'll be as IanW says- London and surroundings driven upwards by foreign buyers, and the subsequent trickle down effect, everywhere else suffering except where there's strong jobs growth.

Saw a figure that said parts of London have shown a [i]70%[/i] increase in property price in last 5 years.

it'll either:

1. stay as it is
2. interest rates go up, house prices stay the same
3. interest rates go up, house prices come down a little bit

I'd say 1 or 3

most likley 3.

Then of course there's the issue of university graduates in two or three years' time, leaving uni with £27k+ debts already, and they'll all be wanting good jobs with good salaries, their own homes etc. Will they simply move back to their parents' homes? Will parents need to downsize to release funds for their children's education? Or will they all stay put, and we could see a return to large home occupancy figures? And what effect would that have on social dynamics?

Interesting times ahead, methinks.

thank you everyone, i used to keep a close eye on the property market but knowing i wouldn't be in a position to buy for a few years i stopped checking up on it.

we're kinda tied into the property we rent for the next 22 months after agreeing to stay for 2 years if the landlord let us have a dog. could of course get out of that but our notice period was amended to 2 months instead of one. not the biggest problem in the world

staying put would give us an extra 2 years of savings into the deposit fund providing things dont go too pear shaped, but in the end if it was worth buying sooner rather than later we'd rather look into it sooner rather than later!

EDIt - we're currently paying about 150quid a month less than anybody else locally in similar sized properties, the landlord's only put the rent up 25quid per month in 4 years cos he wants to keep us as tenants

The banks are being helpful though, as always. To both individuals and the economic health of the nation. So they're taking the governments loan guarentees, meant for lending to small business for investment, and are using it instead to fund buy-to-let mortgages, and property speculation in the the already overheated housing market in the South East.

Great to see the lessons of the past have been taken on board, and there's no chance of a repeat of past disasters. Phew!

tis what i'm worried about binners, buying before a massive crash and return to (relatively) more sensible house prices. a low interest rate is tempting but it can only really go up. i'd like to think we're not stupid enough to base our repayments on current interest levels and max out what we could afford leaving no room for the rates to rise or our income to drop!

EDIT - of course there's no 'good time' to buy a house, only with the benefit of hindsight can you work out when was a good time if you sold at a profit. plan is to buy a home, not a house that needs to be shifted for more money in X years. granted life could change that plan if we needed to move area or something!

I don't think prices will go up any time soon in real terms, certainly not like they did 2001-2008. As far as I can tell the only people that can really afford to buy are those with equity gained over the last 10-20 years, those with parents in a position to help with deposits, or BTLers. First time buyers don't seem to have a chance.

On top of that there's nothing but price rises - petrol, food, electricity, gas. Funny how the papers never rejoice when they go up isn't it?!