House Prices #4 Property market, buying and selling

[Folkevermore]

No one wins if prices fall except cash buyers. The only way for young FTBs to achieve progress is to demand better wages. People are constantly rooting for house prices to fall instead of putting energy into pressuring government into increasing wages. We are still paid the same as people in early 2000s but everything (and not only houses!) got more expansive. Not fair!

It frustrates me so much, I’ve worked my arse off to further my career and get big payrises over the last few years so I could afford a house, and now everything’s so much more expensive than the extra money I make doesn’t make much difference.
And I’m one of the lucky ones - so many people haven’t had wage growth and their standard of living has dropped so much because of it. A lot of graduate jobs now pay barely more than the minimum wage

 

[Notworthy]

No one wins if prices fall except cash buyers. The only way for young FTBs to achieve progress is to demand better wages. People are constantly rooting for house prices to fall instead of putting energy into pressuring government into increasing wages. We are still paid the same as people in early 2000s but everything (and not only houses!) got more expansive. Not fair!

Not true at all, there are millions stuck in homes too small but we can't make the jump up because the gap has become too big. when I bought my flat for 98k in 2000 a 3bed house was £125k to £150k in my area, my flat is now worth £315k but the 3 bed homes are £600k+

 

[Yel]

Plenty of people will benefit from falling prices, just as plenty did from rising prices.

Plenty of people will be screwed over by falling prices, just as plenty were screwed over by rising prices.

Whether people want house prices to fall or not is a bit irrelevant. They won't stay at the high prices that were only backed up by near zero interest rates.

I don't blame some for wanting them to fall. We've had 20 years of celebrating prices rising and people being made to feel like a failure unless they sign up for a tit load of debt.

The standard of living is falling, but there's not the money to pay people higher wages. The debt is eye-wateringly high already and the days of cheap food and goods in the west due to people in developing countries being paid a few cents a day is over now living standards are rising globally. It's inevitable that the standard of living is reducing in the west.

The big issue is the intergenerational inequality, but no politician dare touch that. In France they're still protesting over the retirement age being raised to 64, which is still massively unaffordable.

The housing crisis is the everything crisis.

 

[Notworthy]

Our standard of living is only falling because it was artificially high due to house prices, historically we still have a good standard of living.
In the 50's 1/3 of our income went on food, now it's less than 15%, barely anyone had central heating, now it's expected, foreign holidays were for the middle classes and above as were cars.
Everyone in the UK wants 1st world wages and 3rd world prices, that doesn't work.

 

[Yel]

Effective mortgage rates about to eclipse what they were in the late 80s. So people can stop talking about 15%+ rates, as this is worse.

The disappointing thing is this was all too predictable what keeping house prices so high and artificially keeping interest rates so low would eventually result in.

Mark Carney has responsibility, just as the Tories have responsibility as the governing power and labour also for not being an effective opposition and now blame Tories for the rising rates rather than the actual issue of supressing rates for so long. Fuckwhits the lot of 'em.

 

[Folkevermore]

Effective mortgage rates about to eclipse what they were in the late 80s. So people can stop talking about 15%+ rates, as this is worse.

The disappointing thing is this was all too predictable what keeping house prices so high and artificially keeping interest rates so low would eventually result in.

Mark Carney has responsibility, just as the Tories have responsibility as the governing power and labour also for not being an effective opposition and now blame Tories for the rising rates rather than the actual issue of supressing rates for so long. Fuckwhits the lot of 'em.

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The amount of older people I’ve heard make fun of younger people for being scared about rates actually disturbs me.
I know a lot of older people don’t understand the info you shared, or that 6% now is like 15% back then, but god do they love to have a superiority complex about how much harder they had it. As if they didn’t have three bedroom houses whilst working in the local tescos

 

[Yel]

The amount of older people I’ve heard make fun of younger people for being scared about rates actually disturbs me.
I know a lot of older people don’t understand the info you shared, or that 6% now is like 15% back then, but god do they love to have a superiority complex about how much harder they had it. As if they didn’t have three bedroom houses whilst working in the local tescos

It's grim the lack of empathy and the top trumps to say they had it worse.

Some people just don't want to accept they had it far easier with the essentials.

A Dr these days will have a lower standard of living than a supermarket worker did for the older generation and retirement will only be an option for a small amount at the top.

 

[aidil]

It's grim the lack of empathy and the top trumps to say they had it worse.

Some people just don't want to accept they had it far easier with the essentials.

A Dr these days will have a lower standard of living than a supermarket worker did for the older generation and retirement will only be an option for a small amount at the top.

Too right! Had a family friend (in her 70s) tell me the other day that I should stop complaining on a £25k salary as she would’ve killed for that at my age… Yes, but you could’ve bought a three bed detached house for £45k at my age back then!

Starting to feel relieved that I bought a tiny one bed apartment on a small mortgage now..!

 

[Folkevermore]

Too right! Had a family friend (in her 70s) tell me the other day that I should stop complaining on a £25k salary as she would’ve killed for that at my age… Yes, but you could’ve bought a three bed detached house for £45k at my age back then!

Starting to feel relieved that I bought a tiny one bed apartment on a small mortgage now..!

I’ve bought a three bed but I bought it on the first home scheme so I got 30% off, effectively making it the same price as a typical two bed where I live.
My interest rate is 4.4% and it’s easily affordable for me and I can pay a fair amount more if rates go up.
My plan is just to never move.

 

[Yel]

Starting to feel relieved that I bought a tiny one bed apartment on a small mortgage now..!

Well, there's lots of talk about how there needs to be a furlough for those that overextended themselves thinking that interest rates would never return back to their historic levels.

 

[Folkevermore]

Well, there's lots of talk about how there needs to be a furlough for those that overextended themselves thinking that interest rates would never return back to their historic levels.

I think there should be target debt management plans between people and the banks if they’re struggling with repayments, but the idea of pumping more money into the economy to support the housing market is ridiculous.

Any money they use to support the Market should be targeted for first time buyers, such as the first home scheme that I used. I got 30% off, when I sell I have to sell to another first time buyer for 30% off and so on. Holding up the market is just going to make it even more difficult for young people.

 

[Yel]

I think there should be target debt management plans between people and the banks if they’re struggling with repayments, but the idea of pumping more money into the economy to support the housing market is ridiculous.

Quite. It's insanity. But it's the kind of insanity that has got us to where we are today, so I wouldn't rule it out

Any help should be to increase terms, a short time on interest only, negotiations to prevent repo's etc. Not public money being given to reduce people's debts.

When everything is going well people say their home is an investment, when it turns suddenly it turns into emotive stuff that they need government help otherwise they'll lose their homes.

Renters are kicked out of their homes all the time, at least mortgage holders have quite a bit of control.

 

[Former_Antelopee]

I think there should be target debt management plans between people and the banks if they’re struggling with repayments, but the idea of pumping more money into the economy to support the housing market is ridiculous.

Any money they use to support the Market should be targeted for first time buyers, such as the first home scheme that I used. I got 30% off, when I sell I have to sell to another first time buyer for 30% off and so on. Holding up the market is just going to make it even more difficult for young people.

Pretty sure they still do that on certain houses. I can’t find the website but it was always hard to find. I remember I was possibly looking at doing it, didn’t need to in the end luckily as there was never any in the town I wanted just the other 3 areas they did it.

 

[Folkevermore]

Pretty sure they still do that on certain houses. I can’t find the website but it was always hard to find. I remember I was possibly looking at doing it, didn’t need to in the end luckily as there was never any in the town I wanted just the other 3 areas they did it.

They do still have the scheme, but unfortunately not many places do it. I managed to get a house on it, but over 400 people enquired on the 4 houses available because the scheme is so in demand

 

[Yel]

What they really need is to build a lot of medium density social housing, in areas where there's the infrastructure to support it (or in combination with improving the infrastructure) and to not sell it off. Now prices are reducing the house builders are slowing down to dampen the supply. But they've been needing to do this for the last few decades.

At the moment the UK has lots of people wanting to live and work there, with so many issues I can't see this keeping up with so many other countries now having a lot to offer. Especially the eastern European countries that have used the EU subs to improve infrastructure and industry.

 

[YetAnotherObsessionx]

My interest rate is 4.4% and it’s easily affordable for me and I can pay a fair amount more if rates go up.
My plan is just to never move.

Me & OH are buying our first home. Also
4.4%, we decided to not outstretch ourselves so we got a smaller place, a smaller mortgage, so we can still have a life, we can save, and when the 5-year-fix is up, we can pay off more if we want to stay where we've bought - that's the plan. At the same time we have friends who are frantically trying to get bigger mortgages for bigger places, it's such a huge risk I don't understand why they're doing it. And then the older people keep telling us we should wait till the prices come down... what, while we watch the interest go up? And ourselves get older? We don't all want to be paying it off till our dying day. Also we live in SE England, prices here will never come down that much. Although interestingly, during the pandemic a lot of people moved here from London, and quite a few of those houses are currently for sale, either already empty or looking like people never really lived in them at all.

 

[Former_Antelopee]

If you don’t need a bigger place I don’t see the point, just more to clean and more money needed, I’d rather spend the money I save on holidays etc

 

[Folkevermore]

If you don’t need a bigger place I don’t see the point, just more to clean and more money needed, I’d rather spend the money I save on holidays etc

I’d rather have more space than holidays personally, but I think I just own too much stuff

 

[Former_Antelopee]

I’d rather have more space than holidays personally, but I think I just own too much stuff

The cleaning is a huge thing for me as well, I just cleaned my house and was thinking I’m glad I don’t have a bigger house

 

[YetAnotherObsessionx]

If you don’t need a bigger place I don’t see the point, just more to clean and more money needed, I’d rather spend the money I save on holidays etc

Exactly that! We went for a bigger garden and 1 bedroom less, let's face it we don't get so many visitors that we wanted to pay loads extra for another spare bedroom that just needs dusting. We want a home, not an investment, so ultimately we don't really care if the overall value goes up or down a few times while we live in it, as long as it's not a loss should we ever want to sell it to buy something else. Other people just don't understand that logic, but to us it's important that we're not spending every penny we have on a mortgage. It's still better than renting, at the end of the day.