UK Market to Fall?

it seems like such a depressed society, like the US , so many folks and big citys, the Olympic games just around the corner for them , perhaps again its just one guy saying his say, ie the uk version of s keen, :eek:
 
The UK feels pretty depressed right now, and there's a real lack of confidence in the country.

In terms of the housing market, nothing much is moving. The sales numbers are about half of what they were three or four years ago.

What I don't get about the UK market is why house prices aren't heading south at a rapid rate of knots. Wages are down, mortgages are difficult to get, first time buyers are generally priced out, and unemployment is high because the country is in the deepest recession since the Great Depression.

What's probably bailed it out is most mortgages aren't fixed. With a base rate of 0.5% there are a lot with interest at 1%. Of course that option isn't open to new customers...

Whereas Keen is one of a few voices saying that Australian prices will fall, there are a large number of commentators making that prediction about the UK.
 
Maybe its easy for commentators to follow the herd. When times are good, there is no end in sight for rising property prices, and when times are tough, no-one can really see the light at the end of the tunnel.

1% mortgage rates really? Wow. Even in the US you don't get their fixed 30 year nortagge rates for that low. :eek:
 
it seems to me that all of the property spokes men/momen need to have lunch together and start writing about how its bargain time for property investers , perhaps then the economy would get a bit of a kick start again,
knowing what your seeing in the UK , do your thoughts / feeling see a dbl dip recesion still on the way?
 
Has anyone bought an investment property in the UK and, if so, could you please advise how you obained finance to do so. I have made some enquiries and it sounds like it is difficult for Aussies to get a mortgage in the UK. I'm told a quirk of current international banking law makes it impossible for UK lenders to recover any residue debts in default that arose from lending to Australian residents who do not work for international companies.


My sister bought in scotland. Had to live there for atleast 1 year from memory. She is now home and very quite on the subject. Me thinks she done a runner.:eek:
 
it seems like such a depressed society, like the US , so many folks and big citys, the Olympic games just around the corner for them , perhaps again its just one guy saying his say, ie the uk version of s keen, :eek:

Yep, Things have gotta be better around the London Games.

I bought my house in London about a year before the announcement that the Games were going to London.

I actually bought it in the same run down area that the games were going in. Amenities, services and general ambience of the area has improved, with all the gentrification happening.

In saying this though, my properties price would be about 10K to 15K pounds more. Certainly not much capital gain, but considering the GFC, am fortunate that it is hasn't dived.

The best thing is that it is cashflow positive, so I will have to have a look at things around the Olympic Games. With all that interst and people coming for the games, there might be a short sporadic capital growth cycle for the area.

I may have to sell around this time, and get out while prices may be artificially high. Will have to wait and see.

Even though interest rates may be low, Buy to Let rates are very high! Deposits have moved back from 40% to 25%.

Cheers,

F
 
Last edited:
The home owners with 1% mortgage rates are those who took out a Bank of England base rate tracker a few years ago when credit was cheap. They got a deal along the lines of half a percent over the base rate, and then lucked out when it dropped.

Four or five years ago it was possible to fix a mortgage rate at 4.99% for 25 years.

I don't know if it's still the case, but until recently you could only get a cheap deal in the UK if you've got a 40% deposit. If you had 10% then the banks would jack mortgage rates up significantly.

I wouldn't be surprised if the housing market has a second dip. Prices are still high relative to wages, and first time buyers without parental support are virtually extinct. (Something like 25% to 30% of buyers are first timers, of which 80% or more have family money helping them. Historically they've made up 40% or 50% of the market.)

London's probably been supported by the weak pound encouraging foreign investors (Russians and Greeks mainly), and the City has been doing very well with all the government support for the financial markets.

As for the wider economy, it could go either way. I get the impression that it's in a better shape than is believed, but a lot of sectors are down. House building is one of them.

The government are bringing in a bunch of measures to stop things from going a bit Greek, and there's talk of large job cuts in the public sector. 600,000 is one number that's been mentioned. :eek: Needless to say, the unions aren't happy, but dropping a lot of people onto the job market could depress things further.
 
Typical Daily Mail reporting. The truth is buried in the story:

A Nationwide spokesman said: 'Valuers are instructed to use a £1 valuation if the property is outside our criteria or if further reports or investigation is required. The property was valued on a buy-to-let basis and, as it was not habitable, we could not proceed.'
 
I was in Manchester a few months back, and used to go past this building. At the time it was the concrete skeleton, but the developers have been a bit creative...

article-1320921-0BA0199D000005DC-885_638x416.jpg


Also from the Daily Mail...

The UK's in a weird state right now. There are virtually no mortgages, people have less money, jobs are tight, and yet house prices have recovered most of their losses in the slump.

I'm currently in London (yes, I know I should get around to emigrating :D), and because the sales market has seized up, and builders have stopped building, there's been a massive growth in the demand for rental property. So rents are rising and there's something of a shortage.

There have been changes to housing benefit announced, which will hurt PIs, and apparently 500,000 public sector jobs are likely to go. Both of those are likely to have a negative impact on the market.

Yeah, I'm a bit bearish. (Unfortunately the flat in the Bear Pit development went before I could secure it. :()
 
I'm currently in London (yes, I know I should get around to emigrating

The killer on emigrating from the UK to Australia is the deadly duo of a depressed property market in the UK and the exchange rate. I sold my London home in November 2008 - probably the bottom of the market: I'd hoped for £300K a year earlier and settled for £235K, but at least I moved the money over here at 2.30, say A$540K. Now the rate is around 1.60 so even if I could get the pre-GFC price it would only translate to A$480K. And Australian property prices have gone up significantly in the meantime, so the days when you sell in the UK and buy something significantly better here are history. But good news for any pre-2008 emigrant who doesn't like it here and wants to go back to the UK.

T.
 
I moved over in 2006, pretty glad I did it then, however i had no assets to bring over. Unfortunately i'm seeing all my families assets go down in value everyday :(
 
I'm currently fighting the London rental market.

A combination of high prices, a lack of mortgage finance, banks requiring a 25% deposit (on a median London house that's $125,000), and uncertainty about the future direction of house prices means that no one's buying.

As a consequence there's a massive shortage of rental properties, and rents have risen by somewhere between 8% and 15% in the last year.

The Evening Standard also ran an article today that vendors are being rather unrealistic, and asking prices are nearly 25% higher than sales prices.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/money/article-23898762-reality-gap-in-property-prices-drives-buyers-from-the-market.do

All in all, it's really dysfunctional. I reckon that if prices slide then they'll drop a long way. But the market is doing the whole irrational longer than you can remain solvent thing, and I expect it to continue to confuse me.
 
Back
Top