Assuming brexit goes ahead what are your thoughts on house prices? Like most people I suspect, my main asset value is my house and I’m worried that prices will fall following a probable economic fall. Would it be the smart thing to sell then rent then buy again after brexit?

Yeah, do that. Let us know how it goes

Mods – can you leave this thread unlocked for 5 years please

Would it be the smart thing to sell then rent then buy again after brexit?

Go have a quick look at the fee’s plus 12 months of rent and see how much you need it to drop to come out even.
The bigger worry for house prices is the years of wage stagnation and high levels of personal debt meaning that new people entering the market do not have the funds to sustain growth without brexit.

Unless theres a huge housebuilding boom there will still be a shortage of housing.

If you live in a nice house then I wouldn’t worry too much.

Depends on the area you live in, I suppose, how much equity etc

Personally I’d say it’d be a crazy time to make a gamble like selling up with a view to buying again. Your house falling in value won’t have any impact on your ability to live in it so why worry about that? House prices are likely to keep on rising anyway imo.

Selling in anticipation of a drop is high risk as you’re gambling a long term investment on a short term event, given the wierd volatility of the market over the last decade I really wouldn’t do this right now especially since the bank bailout was all about maintaining property values and I’m not sure brexit affect house prices.

Usually doing the thing that involves the less people handling your money is the cheapest. (I have no idea of finance or house moves)

The housing market is due for a dip, but “experts” have been saying that for the past 20yrs since the days of negative equity.
Prices may be forced flat, or even dip a bit (say 10%) in real terms nothing’s happened unless you’ve bought a house recently… that’s when it’ll hurt, or you have to move to find work and are left with a property in an area where your job isn’t.
Biggest issue IMO is the workplace, the uncertainty and major corporations cutting jobs (in the name of Brexit) when the real reason is they’ve wanted to trim headcount for years and this is a perfect excuse…
Which leads right back to housing affordability doesn’t it..

Do what you like, it’s not the first time uncertainty has entered the marketplace.

And FWIW I sold my Appt in London not long after Brexit when prices were still buoyant, now they’ve flattened and dipped in certain areas, but the Chinese are coming over and buying places so they seem to think London’s still a place to aspire to live in. It’s really just a different ethnic profile buying places..

The breeders will still breed and keep demand for housing at a premium

Why, were you planning on realising your asset in the near future? People do have some funny ideas about how rich they are because of the value of something they need to own.

I suspect the overpriced london / home counties houses may fall / stagnate in value as overseas buyer drop out of the market but otherwise? No.

Selling / renting then buying again is a gamble on a huge price drop that I see as unlikely

Houses are to live in, if you need to downsize then probably a good time to sell, bigger houses will lose great £££s than smaller houses in a market downturn.

I know locally 1-2-3 bed houses have really stagnated over the last ten years but 4-5 bedrooms are at a big premium, families demand bigger houses..

I suspect that there will be considerably greater inward investment from countries where investors are keen to offshore their money.
With further devaluation of Sterling and most importantly the UK not signing up to the impending EU Tax requirements we’ll be overwhelmed by foreign property speculators building either ethno-claves or PRS.
Whilst central London is unlikely to change significantly there’ll be significant foreign funded developments in towns and cities such as Liverpool, Newcastle and Glasgow.

Question is OP do you need to move soon or do you have a plan of when you want to?

The best way to make money out of moving is downsizing (or buying a fixer upper in a crummy area in the hope it gentrifies) so if you can do those then make a plan

And there’s everything wrong with our housing market right there.

It’s a place to live, not an asset to try to use to hedge Brexit risk.

Brexit is only one variable we should be talking about regarding house prices.

If you want to talk about catastrophic effects on house prices let’s talk about what happens when the baby boomers start to die in large numbers.

There are 5 million baby boomers. 80% of them own their own home. Those homes are the top end of the housing stock typically. There are 25 million homes in the UK, which means that in the next five to ten years, 16% of our housing stock is going to come onto the market for sale.

Shall we talk about what happens to house prices then?

Brexit won;t affect prices that much. Building millions of actually affordable homes, council houses that can’t be sold to the person renting it and putting in rent caps are the sort of things that would do that and we don’t have any progressive enough government for that to ever happen.

Building millions of actually affordable homes, council houses that can’t be sold to the person renting it and putting in rent caps are the sort of things that would do that and we don’t have any progressive enough government for that to ever happen.

Amen to that!

Housing and pensions are easily this country’s two biggest issues.

Naa, the tories have it sussed! House building is going ahead round here, over 900 to be built where we live & around 3000 going up between here & York, near Green Hammerton. (Theyr’e the ones I know about)
Affordable? Oh aye, starting around 280K!

My mortgage has 16 years to run. I’ve just agreed a 2.5% 10 year fix, mainly due to brexit uncertainties. I dont want to be caught unable to remortgage if the market drops.

Doesn’t make any odds to me what my house is worth.

The change in agricultural policy may be interesting, given a decade. It’s all sheep around me, so trees are cleared and land is drained. Change in subsidies could change the landscape.

And a field that previously yielded no tax return now provides 900 sets of poll tax. Free money for the council.
Of course they could use it to improve the amnesties needed for these houses or…just spunk it.
I say NO MORE HOUSE BUILDING WITHOUT THE FACILITIES FOR THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN THEM.
Put a massive tax on overseas buyers to cool the London market and its countrywide ripple.
A single house means 4 more cars parked on the path, longer waits for health care and a struggle to get kids in a school.
New homes just benefit the developer and corrupt council officials.
Save our green spaces.

NO MORE HOUSE BUILDING WITHOUT THE FACILITIES FOR THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN THEM

What do you mean by FACILITIES?

If there is a demand for something the market will provide.

New homes just benefit the developer and corrupt council officials.
Save our green spaces.

But nimby there. There needs to be a lot of houses built in the UK, a lot of empty houses back in use and more amenities unless you have a way of dropping the population.

There needs to be a lot of houses built in the UK, a lot of empty houses back in use and more amenities unless you have a way of dropping the population.

More houses doesn’t mean more people.

Just downsized, quids in, pretty relieved we got it sorted before the big recession that’s coming tbh.

If there is a demand for something the market will provide

Massive splurge of flats being built and office blocks being converted to residential here in our bit of sw London , no apparent increase in doctors surgeries, schools or hospitals though

Unless theres a huge housebuilding boom there will still be a shortage of housing

More than 250,000 homes are currently empty, there is no shortage.

Massive splurge of flats being built and office blocks being converted to residential here in our bit of sw London , no apparent increase in doctors surgeries, schools or hospitals though

Does that actually change demand? Doesn’t it just redistribute the same people a bit more thinly?

There may be exceptions, both of decrease and increase in demand, but on balance it’s the same people in more houses.

My first post…
I think it depends on how affordable your mortgage is. If you have taken out a very big mortgage, say x 10 combined earnings, then downsizing could be a good option.
In the South East, people are now knocking 10 percent off to sell their properties; that could easily turn into 20 percent and then 30 percent off over the next 2-4 years. I think London and South East may be 40 percent overvalued.

We have within a square mile or so 182 flats in an office conversion , a 602 flat development and any spare space seems to have small blocks being chucked up, I think it’s a fair guess that demand in the borough is increasing

We have within a square mile or so 182 flats in an office conversion , a 602 flat development and any spare space seems to have small blocks being chucked up, I think it’s a fair guess that demand in the borough is increasing

I’d guess 784 middle aged couples will be delighted to see the back of their freeloading offspring as they move up the road into a new flat.

So it’s a fair guess demand won’t change. Or atleast not proportionally to the number of new homes.

Until the world’s leaders collectively talk about population growth and world unity* all of society’s problems are just effects of the root cause.

*For obvious reasons this will never happen, so the problems will continue to grow until society breaks.

There’s no such thing as the housing market, there are multiple local markets all subject to different dynamic and variables. It’s so hard to predict what’s going to happen under normal circumstances let alone after a massive event like leaving the European Union. The house building industry virtually shut down during the economic crash. Supply of new housing is inelastic of demand because of the lead in period to build out a site. In some areas we’re still feeling the effects of that curtailing of supply. The biggest worry in the industry is a lack of a skilled workforce and again that will curtail supply. My guess is that there will be an immediate drop after the shock or the exit. Markets, including housing markets often react to fear but I expect to see prices rally faily quickly, particularly if the government pump prime the market. Any lack of supply will sustain this growth.

There are 5 million baby boomers. 80% of them own their own home. Those homes are the top end of the housing stock typically. There are 25 million homes in the UK, which means that in the next five to ten years, 16% of our housing stock is going to come onto the market for sale.

It seems you’re expecting every single home-owning baby boomer to die in the next 5 to 10 years. Seems unlikely, unless you’ve some fiendish plan in mind to help them along.

House prices aren’t slowing. Crazy prices round my way and they’re being bought.

The government plan to build a million houses isn’t the answer. The rational behind it is to provide more supply than the demand and thus prices drop. All that will happen is we end up with a massive over supply of empty houses bought up by foreign investors. There are tonnes of empty properties already anyway, both houses and potential housing in empty office space. Affordable housing is nothing of the sort and developers only have to allocate a small proportion as affordable anyway and wont build unless they can build the rest as luxury homes.

The only way for prices to come down is for inflation to shoot through the roof forcing interest rates to do likewise, a lot of negative equity and a big crash.

Brexit may have an impact on many things, but can’t see any impact on housing. As said, the housing shortage isn’t about an excess of people and not enough property, it’s a lack of affordable housing to buy. Hence the desire to oversupply to control prices. So kicking Johnny Foreigner out of the country won’t make a difference.

The problem with building all these new houses is that they only come on the market in small numbers at any one time. So the effect on house prices is zero. Obviously, the developers want to maximise return, hence the slow drip feed so as not to flood the market.
There may be a gradual slowing in house prices, but it will be over several decades. That’s what I think, for what it’s worth.

As far as I can see you have to pay a certain amount of money to buy somewhere to live. If you own (mortgage) a house paying the mortgage is always going to better than paying rent which you get zero return from.

Renting nowadays is also incredibly expensive. We pay £460 a month mortgage on our house and I’d struggle to get a nice 2 bed terrace for that but ours is a big 3 bed semi in a lovely place.

Existing mortgage you got years ago, yeah. A new first time mortgage though is crazy. One bed flat nearby… £270k! Rough Google estimate, £1400 a month. For a one bed flat!

Rental prices round here are high, but far less than that.

Other thing is UK market isn’t suited to rent. We’re obsessed with home ownership. Rest of Europe generally rents and prices are low as house prices aren’t so stupid, plus renting is a long term thing often with freedom to develop the property a bit.

I would worry less about Brexshit and more about what happens when official stealing QE ends across Europe and rates start to normalise. Ouch

You can make you own judgement regionally by going to the various survey (Halifax) etc and looking at valuations of houses in various areas and affordability levels. Then you can decide.