In the past I have had some excellent mortgage/property advice from here, this has informed and prepared me to go and see the professionals ready to ask the right questions.

I am about to move from NE Scotland where houses, whilst not shooting up in value are selling quick-ish, (identical house in same street sold quickly for what I would want – within 4 weeks) to Dorset where they are going down in value. I would be there for 1 year then I will then relocate to Germany for 2 years. My employer has offered to accommodate me & family throughout at minimal cost but in ‘just adequate’ accommodation. Normal plan would be to rent out my home and return back in 3 years. However given the depressed market, I could get a decent place to live for a year in Dorset and rent it out for a further 2 years and if market picks up, then a house in Dorset is going to be a better asset than in Scotland. I would lose out on selling but make it up more on buying if that makes sense. It would be easier to rent out Dorset house then my current one.

I’m looking at big house that has gone down £125k in 6 months and the gadgy that is selling is desperate to sell.

I am looking primarily for a home not an investment but living somewhere nice and making a bit of money on it seems like a good plan.

In past I have sold in places that are cooling and bought in rising market and did well out of it. Is it worth a gamble this time and in 3 years will properties be going up again?

Sounds like you're already made your mind up & to me seems a better idea to buy in Dorset too for the reasons you state.
Roughly where, BTW? I'm only a mile or so from the border, just further than spitting distance! 😉

Dave – Nope, not made mind up yet. Would really like to do it but is a gamble given expenses of buying & selling and fact might be buying long term house that keeps dropping in value. Risks of housing market 😕

Looking all over at moment but seems to get cheaper the further north you go.

Sell in Scotland, rent something nice in Dorset for a year, by the time you come back things just might have stabilised.

If you're renting out a place in the UK while living elsewhere you'll have to have someone manage it (as it's not like you can just pop round) which is a chunk of the rent gone. And while I can't speak for what it's like in Dorset, much of the country has an excess of rental property after the BTL bandwagon and forced movers renting out houses rather than selling – hence rents are staying low and even falling in some areas.

The early 90s house price crash may have had the steep downward line in 91/92, but the curve didn't flatten out and start pointing upwards again until 1996. I think this has even longer to go before it'll get better.

If you're considering buying in dorset with a view to letting the property , I would have thought it would be harder to find tennants for one large/expensive property vs. a couple of smaller / cheaper ones.
If you're dead set on investing in property would it not be more sensible to use the equity from your current home to spread risk accross several smaller houses? Also as I understand it the most sensible way to invest is to invest for yield (rather than speculating for capital gains) and to invest long-term.

IMO the market has either bottomed or is only a few % from bottling. You are not going to make any money form property when it is at its height. Go

Because many of the Dorest towns are fairly small, prices in the immediate areas are reasonably bouyant, but once you move out into villages they can be all over the place depending on how nice the village is & what facilities there, etc.
Basically, decent villages seem to be suffering less badly than ones with less going for them, from what i've seen.

Be careful if you're needing a mortgage (which I'm assuming). You might find if you're only there a year then
a) you might end up with a house that doesn't sell quickly if things stay depressed
b) getting stung for mortgage set-up and cancellation fees which might be quick considerable.

To be honest, for a year I'd consider renting. Are you planning on returning to Dorset or Scotland?

I've seen that prices are all over the shop. Some good deals on some and daft expensive prices esp given the current market.

The plan would be to buy for 3 years and then as I am not sure where I will return to, I could either live in it or sell/rent it again. I would probably go for a 3 year fixed rate which would fit in with my plans.

The easy option would be to sell, put the money in bank and live cheaply in the employer provided accommodation but given low interest rates not such a good idea if in 3 years market picks up again.

I'm just in the process of buying, renting and selling a house. You will need at least 20% cash deposit to get a half decent mortgage, and we generally found that mortgage fees are currently higher than they used to be.

My gut feeling is that things are starting to move at the lower end because smaller cash deposits are required, but things are still strugling higher up.

The house I have bought needs £40k spending on it, but I dont reckon I will get any return on it for at least 5 years, and this was kind of the thinking of estate agents, and the surveyer who came out.

So all in all, I wouldnt have thought you would make a profit in 1 year… but then again I know nothing 🙂

….rent rent rent….!!

The reality of the financial markets is that the worst is still yet to come….and for all those 'bricks'n'mortar' stalwarts…the housing market has yet to bottom out…

House prices have increased an average of about 1% per year over the last 80 odd years, until around the late 70's/early 80's….since then, we've been buying on over leveraged credit…the last 15 or so years at exponential rates…some have seen over 100% increase in this period alone….guess what, that money doesn't really exist in circulation…

Financial history tells us one thing….(well, the history we have documented!!)…it repeats itself!!..

Keep hold of your cash and ride the current rental depression…..house prices will continue to fall/redundancies will continue to increase….we've a lot of over-inflation to back pedal on!!

IMO the market has either bottomed or is only a few % from bottling

Only if you believe the stats coming out of lenders and things like the National Association of Housebuilders who want to talk up the market. We're still looking at -15% year-on-year at the moment (from the same Halifax stats that showed +0.9% month-on-month last month), PWC last week forecast at least 18 months of further decline and a very slow recovery, and the NIESR report today saying house price decline will continue into 2012.

Unemployment figures and redundancies keep going up, salaries for those with jobs are being frozen, mortgages aren't getting a lot easier to obtain any time soon either. It still has a long way to go before average houses are affordable to those on average salaries and people will be (understandably) wary of overexending themselves for quite a while to come.

As I say, sell, rent, by the time you come get back the news should be a little more positive.