[Closed] What would it take for house prices to REALLY plummet?

Horrible cougar.

They're grim, and a barrel o' yuks for my mum to live next door to.

The point of that little monologue, which I didn't actually get around to making, is the landlady is going to get the shock of her life should she ever check up on them. Her "huge profits" are going to need to pay for tens of thousands of pounds worth of repairs and cleaning.

To summarize:

To summarise: you haven't listened to a single thing anyone's said to you and instead are making up straw man arguments which have no basis in the reality of what anyone has written.

Let’s talk about why renting is such a bad option in this country.

And there you go again.

Anyone else getting brexit-thread deja vu or is it just me?

In Scotland, I cannot legally do that. I have a usual notice period of 2-weeks, which I can vary from in an emergency such as leaking pipes. Again you apply a rumour and ‘I once heard’ to all and use emotive language to do so.

You shouldn't legally, but it certainly still happens far more than it should, letting agents and landlords.

I am very bitter about this.

I can tell.
hug?

How do you suggest your desired objective of less profit in housing could/should be achieved?
What level of house price correction reduction do you think would be appropriate - 10%, 25%, 50%?
No-one is claiming the housing market is anything like perfect but your portrayal of rapacious landlords and profit driven house owners/mortgagees is delusional.

Anyone else getting brexit-thread deja vu or is it just me?

You're not alone.

 

less profit on housing.

If there was no financial incentive - one sufficient to offset the risk of 'getting a Paddy' - for landlords to landlord then they'd stop landlording and the rental market would cease.

That being the case, homeseekers' only options would be to find thirty grand for a deposit (which if they could do then they wouldn't be considering renting in the first place) or get themselves off to Decathlon's camping section. Is that what you're proposing?

The uncomfortable truth that you seem unwilling to accept is that the rental market exists in the form that it does because there is demand for it.

Is it all a bit shit? Yes. Welcome to capitalism.

No, just less profit on housing.

I bought my house for £50k 23 years ago - it's probably worth £230k now on a good day. It's not profit though. I'd have to spend that or more to get something similar.

The only time it's profit is when they're firing up the furnace at the crematorium and my daughter gets it. That's assuming it's not all been taken to pay for care fees while I'm shitting myself in a home for 5 years.

And then there's the running costs - the wife and I did a spreadsheet of what we need to spend in the next few month to next 5 years. To be honest it's ruddy scary! 🙂

Yes, give him a hug. Then give out a hug to the other millions of young people who'll be shafted by this country's economy due to the disadvantages incurred by being young and not being born into inherited wealth. Maybe in a few years time when we tire of walking past the end result of homeless people in the streets and we can learn that hugs won't be enough - and that the lucky comfortable few may have to give up a portion of their wealth to enable a broader spectrum of society to progress as a whole.

disadvantages incurred by being young and not being born into inherited wealth

Which raises one of my issues with the housing market, and one of the reasons it is out of reach of so many.
Inherited wealth IMO is the biggest differentiation between my kids and their pals when it comes to future houses.
In youngest_oab's class is a family who have chosen to rent while moving around the world. Unless there is a bank full of cash, they inherit naff all.
Then there is our kids, average house to pass on to them, paid off and divided by three siblings and minus my care costs....
Then there are the classmates in the £1m+house, only child....

Jeez, those young fellas like moaning don't they?

Things are the way they are and at some point you'll have to get with the programme and start dealing with reality instead of complaining that your life isn't fair.

I own my own house, after 30 years of working and saving to pay for it. I've moved 3 times and made a grand total of minus... 10'000 pounds in the process.

Try interest rates at 11%, try negative equity of £20'000, try a two up two down with 2 kids and one on the way.

Try putting your big boy pants on and dealing with it instead of telling everyone it's not fair.

Then there are the classmates in the £1m+house, only child….

Or my mate with his £750k house, five more (including his old £500k house) as rentals and an F-Type Jag as a weekend toy when he doesn't want to take his X5 out or his wife's e-Pace. Last weekend I struggled to press the 'Like' button on Facebook when he posted a picture of his latest investment – a fully restored original (ie, steel-bumpered) MGB-GT.

Jeez, those young fellas like moaning don’t they?

LOL, you've got 3 kids Crikey, they're going to be much more screwed than anyone on this thread and directly blaming you 🙂

Then there is our kids, average house to pass on to them, paid off and divided by three siblings and minus my care costs….

You are missing out the next stage - when your kids have nothing to pass on to their kids.

Jeez, those young fellas like moaning don’t they?

Things are the way they are and at some point you’ll have to get with the programme and start dealing with reality instead of complaining that your life isn’t fair.

Did this, home owner now. What was the point of it all? I guess it does not matter if it is not happening to you?

The only time it’s profit is when they’re firing up the furnace at the crematorium and my daughter gets it.

No problem with you owning a house to live it - this was directed at the BTL cheerleaders.

disadvantages incurred by being young and not being born into inherited wealth

I'll probably be retired before my parents die, so any inheritance is unlikely to make much difference to me. More likely there won't be any as nursing home fees will eat it all up....

More likely there won’t be any as nursing home fees will eat it all u

I know this can be a concern, but I do not know of anyone on my circle of friends who has had a parent (or even grand-parent) in a care home for an extended period.

I know this can be a concern, but I do not know of anyone on my circle of friends who has had a parent (or even grand-parent) in a care home for an extended period.

I figure it will be so late that any money I did inherit would just end up being inherited again as I wouldn't have spent it. I figure by the time I'm 70 my spending will be quite modest and covered by my own pension....

8 years for my Gran, 220k it cost from her estate, luckily she had a house to sell and a final salary pension to pay for it

And they spent their life spending 1 and saving 2 as they used to preach to me

I know this can be a concern, but I do not know of anyone on my circle of friends who has had a parent (or even grand-parent) in a care home for an extended period

7 years in the dementia home for my gran. There was enough left to pay for a good wake and £700 a grandchild.

My grandad is in one... £7000 a month. Been in 3 years now and will be 100 next year.
Sad thing is he never wanted to go in and said to us all he,d had enough and wanted done with it all. But Barchester have kept him going and bled him dry. My mum was and still is desperately in need of any money he can provide as she split from her partner about 10 years ago and was left with an £80'000 mortgage which she still owes (interest only mortgage) and has to be paid by the end of the year as she's 73 and out of work.

If there was no financial incentive – one sufficient to offset the risk of ‘getting a Paddy’ – for landlords to landlord then they’d stop landlording and the rental market would cease.

That being the case, homeseekers’ only options would be to find thirty grand for a deposit (which if they could do then they wouldn’t be considering renting in the first place) or get themselves off to Decathlon’s camping section. Is that what you’re proposing?

If only there was an alternative to private landlords. Oh, wait...

Has g5604 gone off to educate him/her self or accepted that their argument was untenable?
So many questions which he/she couldn't or wouldn't answer.
As for '...BTL cheerleaders' I've waded through 8+ pages and don't see any evidence to support that.
Perhaps g5604 could help by pointing me specifically to BTL cheerleaders on this thread.

So many questions which he/she couldn’t or wouldn’t answer.

I answered nearly every point, I guess you just did not like the answers. Many of my own questions have gone unanswered e.g why is student loan debt at 6% when interest rates are near 0?

University education is another example of trusting the market to act responsibliy. What happened is fees tripled in a few years, grants got cut, loans interest rates soared, top staff took massive salaries and foreign students are prioritized for their higher yields. The hell with the young people trying to better themselves. Shall we trust captalism to take care of the NHS? How is that going in the States?

The counter arguments always comes back to it's captalism, suck it up, move, stop wasting your money on a 'instagram lifestyle' etc.. this lack of empathy used to surprise me.

I understand, you and many people like you don't think there is a problem, you can not relate to a experience you have not had.

If commercial property goes down further, what other good options are there for people to create retirement funds? As we’ve seen, the stock market is volatile too so that’s less appealing.

Pharma

I know this can be a concern, but I do not know of anyone on my circle of friends who has had a parent (or even grand-parent) in a care home for an extended period

One on my side of the family and one on SWMBOs side.

Its not really a topic of conversation that comes up with friends.

Try interest rates at 11%, try negative equity of £20’000, try a two up two down with 2 kids and one on the way.

Yikes! And a good example of why we’ve fixed our rates for the next 5 years and put together a very aggressive repayment plan to end the mortgage as early as possible. We’ve lowered our fixed monthly payments but are maxing out our voluntary overpayments.

Id love to see a house price correction(one that doesn’t shaft the economy), according to Zoopla (which was more or less right with their estimated value when we bought) our house has gone up 30k-60k in 5 years which is nuts as we’ve definitely not done work to it to justify that.

I don’t see it happening in the next 10-20 years, I can see 1 probably 2 major price crashes happening but I can also see prices rebounding again. I just can’t see the political will for them to crash and then be suppressed.

Id even like to believe it can correct through price stagnation, but I’ve been listening to people arguing it’s “crazy and can’t go on” since the mid 90s.

Which raises one of my issues with the housing market, and one of the reasons it is out of reach of so many.
Inherited wealth IMO is the biggest differentiation between my kids and their pals when it comes to future houses.

Even when it is in reach you’ll still be screwed for being poor.

We’re fortunate enough to have savings that we can use to pay off a large chunk of our mortgage and plan out early voluntary repayments. All in we’re saving in the region of £15.7k in interest payments, if we couldn’t afford to save as we have we’d have to pay that.

So if we earned less, we’d pay more. And if we’d had enough inherited wealth, we’d have no interest to pay at all!

A mate of mine has retired at 54.
He went to Uni, his Dad said dont go into Halls, we'll give you a house deposit (~1981), get 3 other people to rent, then that will pay your mortgage.
And it did, twice over. So after 2 years, he bought another house purely to rent to students. And that paid nearly double the mortgage, so he then bought another house for him only to live in, with the mortgage easily covered by the 2 houses he rented out.
So he could save pretty much whatever he wanted into his pension pot. And it paid dividends big time for him.
Just £3k investment from his parents (£15k now?), a bit of business acumen from him, and his life has been very good.
Myself on the other hand got FA from parents, still paying a mortgage at 55, will be working until at least 67. But I'm not moaning about it, I'm happy with my lot.

Just £3k investment from his parents (£15k now?), a bit of business acumen from him, and his life has been very good.

All depends what University you are at. It is not 1981 anymore and the days of a £150k 4 bed house in the south are very, very long gone.

So he got inheritent wealth, access to credit (presumably guaranteed by parents) free education and house prices were much more affordable. See the problem with the situation today?

All I know is that every time I have come close to being able to think of owning my own home it has been thwarted by something.

2002 - had a deposit together and was looking at houses at the bottom of the market. The Stamp duty limit raised up so every house I was looking at jumped up £20k, putting them all out of reach.

2008 - again had a deposit together and was actively looking. Banking crisis kicked off and that caused the mortgage rules to change, severely cutting my spending power as a single buyer. Literally went from being able to afford a small house to being £30-40k short overnight thanks to the affordability test severely penalising single income applications.

2020 - being made redundant but getting a very good payoff package, more than enough to combine with current savings for a decent deposit. Unfortunately the job market is on it's knees so the whole savings package may well be spent on keeping afloat. The added kick in the teeth is that deposits have jumped from 5 to 20%, again kicking my spending power severely.

Add in all the price rises over the whole period and it's highly unlikely I'll ever own the roof over my head until my parents pass away, that's presuming there's any value left in the house after care costs. I'm 40 at the end of this year and that means that the length of mortgage I can apply for will gradually shrink form now on so that's another issue to worry about. Think I might get myself a mid-life crisis toy instead.

Pretty sure you are meant to stop eating and move to Burnley.

All depends what University you are at. It is not 1981 anymore and the days of a £150k 4 bed house in the south are very, very long gone.

Plenty of University towns where this is still possible and still goes on, student areas are generally not the nicest part of town and you can pick up terrace houses pretty cheap still

Just £3k investment from his parents (£15k now?), a bit of business acumen from him, and his life has been very good.

Some of my friends didn't even need paretns money, just advice. When I went to Uni 15 years ago. My parents told me not to take a loan if I could afford not to, as all debt is bad, so worked all my holidays to pay for it. A couple of other mates, whose parents paid for everything, told them to still take the maximum loan and stick it in an ISA at 6%. I left uni with almost no debt but no bank balance either, they left with £20k in the bank that they used as a house deposit that it took me over a decade after them to get on the housing ladder and in that time had been paying rent, while they had been building equity.

Plenty of University towns where this is still possible and still goes on, student areas are generally not the nicest part of town and you can pick up terrace houses pretty cheap still

Which is why I said depends where the University is. I live in the south so am in a different world and as I said days of a £150k 4 bed house (even in a shitty student areas) are very, very long gone.

My parents told me not to take a loan if I could afford not to, as all debt is bad

Ha, what crap advice that was. Student loans are great.

So he got inheritent wealth, access to credit (presumably guaranteed by parents) free education and house prices were much more affordable.

Mean while much much later on I(and my wife who will be paying hers off for the rest of her life on teachers wages) did the loan for uni thing , my parents didn't give me money for deposit. I didnt inherit a fortune.

I took a job working in a perceived dangerous part of the world and survived long enough to exit and buy a house.(and it wasn't the armed forces ) Spent most of my 20s living in dread of the phone going missing gigs /nights out family gatherings and all but gave up racing my bike ..... when the phone went often from then you had 24 hours notice to get your bags packed and get to the airport. Mainly I got that job because it was pretty shit and no one wanted it .....but it paid well because of the danger both medical and kidnapping plus the nature of the work. I'll probably pay for that in later life physically.. but no more than my dad did doing similar on building sites for our family stability.

My work colleagues dad bought the family home many moons ago by working in South Georgia (think about what industry that might have been) he did 2 years solid away from his family to give them the security of their own home.

There are ways and means if you are willing and able but you'll have to sacrifice and jump out your comfort zone and you'll probably not do it pushing paper around a desk if you are not one of the chosen ones with a golden spoon.

Compared to other countries the UK is relatively unusual in having so many people who whose homes are privately owned by those living in them.

True. But private rental in the UK is nothing like renting in any other European country. Nothing inherently wrong with renting, but in the UK it is a financial trap without rights or security.

Totally agree. The way renters in the UK can be treated is utterly unacceptable. Absolutely vile process with so few safeguards for tenants.

So, Burnley's probably not far enough - you'll need to be a drug runner in Mogadishu to kickstart your life. Incidentally, many of my friends emigrated to Australia after the turn of the millennium mostly in recognition of the state of housing in London/ South even back then...in retrospect, they made a very smart move.

Don't know why anybody lives down south.

Speaking to a lad the other day - just bought a 2up 2down terrace in Brighton with on-street parking (for 600 quid/year) - for £500,000.

I bought a 3-bed semi with a garage, two car drive and front and back garden in Nottingham for £140k.

The ten grand extra a year he (thinks he) earns from being dahn sarth simply doesn't stack up.

But we were both wrong - I left Notts and have bought a 3 bed detatched house in 7 acres of land with not a neighbour in sight in a forest in Snowdonia for about half what he paid.

YOLO.

If you're banking on inheritance to bail you out of poor life choices (and they *are* poor life choices - like the choice to dick about at school instead of learning, or the choice not to continue learning, paying for courses to further a career so you increase your employability and earning potential) then you're a fool.

No inheritance here - just hard work. Disadvantaged? Try single parent family where the single parent was an abusive alcoholic.

Quit whining about how hard the world is and work your ass off. I'll be stopping at 55. And as I've kept myself in good nick (no junk food, exercise) then I've given myself a shot at a long happy retirement. (If I die at 56 at least I've tried).

There's way too much jealousy and whining in this thread (you struggle to like a mate's facebook post??! Get the **** off facebook and work harder!).

Yes, the odds are stacked against all of us. But consistent intelligent hard work beats the odds.

How about we invest in things that are not peoples homes, but actually create something of value. We have been brainwashed into thinking BTL is the only way to secure our futures and the hell to the next generation coming up behind us.

The housing market is not good for the economy it dampens the economic activity of the young – the people we need to start up new businesses.

Damn well said

And also various stuff said by g5604 or whatever he is called. Damn well said too.

@trail_rat it's a admiral story, ever wonder why you had to make such choices? There is a bizarre belief by some people that there has to be some sort of epic struggle to obtain housing. Personally I would like it to be easier for my children.

Don’t know why anybody lives down south.

@trail_rat it’s a admiral story, ever wonder why you had to make such choices

No I don't. Overpopulation largely.

There’s way too much jealousy and whining in this thread (you struggle to like a mate’s facebook post??! Get the **** off facebook and work harder!).

How many jobs do you want people to have? Average salary does not get you a house.

I saved 80k over 12 years because the bank would not lend me enough to house my children without this deposit. Not sure lack of hard work was the problem.

Since owning a home I have started a business and now earn more. I could not do this before as I would not have been able to get a mortgage.

crikey
Member
Jeez, those young fellas like moaning don’t they?

Things are the way they are and at some point you’ll have to get with the programme and start dealing with reality instead of complaining that your life isn’t fair.

I own my own house, after 30 years of working and saving to pay for it. I’ve moved 3 times and made a grand total of minus… 10’000 pounds in the process.

Try interest rates at 11%, try negative equity of £20’000, try a two up two down with 2 kids and one on the way.

Try putting your big boy pants on and dealing with it instead of telling everyone it’s not fair.

An oddly succinct summary of the issues, as a country we've gotten into the idea of personal property ownership being a good aspiration. But with it seems to come a degree of hardship, 'normal' peoplehave to suffer a bit to earn a house either to make some money on, to pass on to their kids or just to feel secure...

And so the assumption seems to be that all subsequent generations must suffer at least in equal measure to the previous to attain the same standard of living/property ownership... Except over that same 30 year period you mentioned, housing construction rates have fallen, population has increased, BTL and second home ownership has increased, the cost of property relative to income has risen.

The real question is, do you feel your kids generation need to suffer even more financially and personally than you did? Because that is the current trajectory...

Is scrapping amongst ourselves for housing and financial resources a productive, socially beneficial, "character building" activity or could we actually achieve a better society for future generations by allowing human necessity rather than human greed drive our housing market?