House Prices

[Boutros-Boutros Ghali]

Estate Agents are essentially just massive chancers (mostly - no offense to any EAs here!!).

It stresses me out to think buyers are being forced into a frenzy that is largely all hype and government bullshit, increased by people being desperate to move because of being cooped up for 18 months.

To be honest, I don’t think our own property we bought during the pandemic was a steal! I think it was on the higher side of fair, although I could never regret it for various reasons (basically moving has been life-changing). I see houses in our area going on RightMove now for the same or even more than we paid, and they’re worse houses - either far smaller or similar size but in need of total reno. I’m gobsmacked!

Then again, as I’ve mentioned before, we get EA leaflets, letters and personal letters through the door everyday asking if we’re selling. We’ve had people hang around outside, we’ve even had an Estate Agent try to organise a “street valuation party”. It’s total madness. The desperation terrifies me.

We’ve even had a letter from Location Location Location asking if we’d consider selling as there are so few properties on the market abs the buyers are willing to pay for the right house, whatever that means

 

[hollowcrown]

Yeah avoid new builds if you can. A colleague has recently bought one and it's been nothing but pain for him. They're supposed to be all ready to go but there's issues around insulation, shoddy workmanship like doors not closing etc.

Council/ ex council are usually where all the amenities are. There is usually a bus route and a local shop/ convenience store. Often there will be a nearby school . New housing development is usually on the edge of a town , and can be quite a distance from the houses to the main road. ( or at least in our local towns) .

This too. they need to also start zoning commerical areas and building amenities like pubs, cafes, little shops etc. in these new developments because they're isolated suburban mazes for the most part.

 

[BettyCrockerr]

That’s why I said sometimes…

As for utility bills I don’t quite get the point? You’re living there so the amount your bill is depends on your usage? Why would someone else say bills included when you could leave all taps on, leave the heating on all day? If you rent you should pay for your bills still

have you ever lived in a rented property or in a house share??


you said upthread that sometimes people living in rented housing don’t always have to pay bills.

that’s not the case.

my point here is that sometimes if you are a student and you are living in a shared house then you pay an equal proportion of all the utility bills. you don’t each get sent a gas bill, electric bill etc - you just pay an amount ontop of your rent to cover your share of bills. That would be the only reason why it may appear that people living in rentals “sometimes don’t pay bills” which was what you said earlier.

the point is; everyone has to pay their utility bills!!!

 

[orange club biscuit]

The market where I am up north (nice area in a big city) is still absolute nonsense tbh - we’ve now lost out on countless houses which have been sold for well over the price they’ve been valued at (talking 20k-50k). It’s completely unsustainable but also means there must be loads of people in negative equity and/or willing to pay the shortfall in cash? I mean in some situations it may be worth it but this has literally now happened to us six times in the last six months and I’m sure it’s not just happening round here.

 

[Yel]

Out of curiosity does anyone here has a new build house and what do you guys think of it? I know so many people have bought new houses in our social circle and they love it. Some of them have bought them on help to buy and some have as their forever home because they are nice and clean. I know they are more expensive than an old house but they are clean and no one has ever lived there before. What do you guys think of them?

I personally wouldn't buy one as usually the plots are so small and crammed into each other - even the ones that cost millions are often barely detached by much.

You never know when you might need to move and even in a rising market it often takes years to be worth the value paid for it when it was new.

 

[theweekend]

They’ve really ruined London and we’re a similar age (although I’m at the later end of the 20s bracket lol) and probably grew up in a similar London that just doesn’t exist anymore.

Agree. Off the top of my head I can count SEVEN new build flat developments currently in progress within a 10 minute drive of my house, in addition to what's already there. It's genuinely a bizarre sight, every inch of available space in suburban London has now got a block of flats crammed into it. And heaven help you if you're lucky enough (or god forbid, paid a premium) to live next to a green or open space of any kind. The amount of houses I see that are now towered over by huge new build flat developments makes me want to weep.

My favourite are the ones marketed as "a luxury, boutique development of only 6 apartments" - i.e. we are taking the absolute piss by turning a tiny post office into another block of flats and this is all we could get permission for. And who are 'luxury flats' even aimed at anyway? The large majority would only be in a flat as they can't afford a house. So who would opt to pay a premium for a luxury version? Or are the standard new builds now so small that a flat of an actual liveable size is now considered 'luxury'?

 

[Yel]

It there were no landlords though there would be nowhere to rent. Not everyone can or wants to

The properties wouldn't disappear. 90% of people that rent want to buy.

So no problem if 90% disappear. Or even if 100% disappear and the government invests in social housing to fill the gap. They're leaches.

Right, so what do you suggest my partner’s aunt and uncle do? Sell? It would fund the fees for 2-3 years maybe, then what they do? It’s his mother’s house that was fully payed for, she owned it, so it’s not like they bought it to make a profit.
And are you against mortgages then? A bank can repossess if you don’t pay your mortgage. Are you going to-say that buyers have no right either?
Germany has incredibly high house prices, you cannot possibly find a place to rent or buy in some cities like Munich. And yet their tenants rights are really good. So is it still landlords’ fault?

Sell it if they don't want to be a landlord, and the inevitable risks that entails.

Saying no one should own more than one house is not anywhere comparable to saying no one should have a mortgage similarly banks have stopped repo'ing during covid so your point makes no sense.

 

[hollowcrown]

Related to this, I far prefer renting a property managed by a property manager/letting agent. It makes for a much better experience for me as a renter and I imagine also saves the landlord a whole lot of hassle.

The properties I've rented from a property managers have typically been of lower quality but require less hassle.

The properties I've rented let-only from the landlords are of better quality but come with the additional stress of dealing with the landlords directly, which is very annoying and causes problems because their personal life and feelings get included with a professional matter.

 

[Lanavalentine]

See this is an interesting conversation! Agree completely, beyond an emergency fund I’m seeing increasingly less point in amassing cash savings beyond an emergency fund and mid term stuff (eg if you were saving for a kitchen or something). So we’re splitting it between overpaying the mortgage (and hopefully finishing it in a decade, if neither of us have a breakdown in the mean while), investments, and then crypto. Crypto is risky and I know a hot topic lots of ppl disagree on but I can’t see how you can get any remarkable returns on anything anymore, it’s potentially the only equaliser for the generation(s) that missed out on the insane property boom.

Then with baby - we’re contributing steadily to max out her NS&I but everything outside of that is going into crypto. So something that’s very safe then something utterly chaotic

Interesting! Crypto terrifies me!

Unfortunately with our mortgage terms we cannot overpay it yet, but equally it is low fixed interest while we can’t overpay it, so I suppose I am over-cautious in saving extra in lieu.

We’re currently looking for a good IFA to see what we can do instead of just endlessly saving for low return. It’s all quite intimidating for me, coming from such a modest financial background. I suspect that’s what makes me overly cautious, too, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

I wholeheartedly agree and support the current legislation that means when taking out your mortgage, you need to be able to afford it if the rate rises by approximately 7%. However if people’s circumstances have changed or they have committed their income to other means since being granted the mortgage that is irrelevant.

I doubt the interest rates will increase much if at all because of the economy tanking. We’re on 2.1% and I expect it to drop slightly when we remortgage.

I’m a huge saver and am looking to pay off the max 10% each year and possibly move to a savings mortgage to eventually pay it off but I haven’t looked into it much yet as we have a year to go until we need to.

Yes, absolutely!

I do feel like it it a vicious cycle for some though. They stretch to afford a mortgage because house prices are so high, and then they may well end up totally fucked if interest increases?! Hopefully anyone who is stretching has locked in their low interest rate to help protect them.

 

[heretoreaditall2019]

I can't afford certain things but I'm bitter than others can, they've earned their money, they can spend it.

You don’t need to be bitter to comment on someone else’s relative privileges. We all have *some* privilege that others don’t benefit from, it’s not a hateful exercise to point out your own or others’.

 

[Yel]

I refuse now to entertain the estate agents offering the viewings as I am very much of the mindset we wasnt good enough in the first place so our money isnt good enough now.

I don't blame you, I'd do the same!

There's not really long left until 1st October when stamp duty changes end. Unless things move very quickly offers accepted now won't go through in time.

The Halifax house price index fell 0.5% last month, if things continue to fall then loads will put off until next year.

Although a 10% fall will only bring us back to pre covid bubble levels which could have been largely avoided by not stoking it with the stamp duty cut in the first place!

 

[BettyCrockerr]

Look, we could probably cut out all the joy in our lives and save a bit more, but it’s not really going to get us to our goal any quicker in the grand scheme of things. If we cut out our once a week takeaway, we wouldn’t be that much closer to our goal in a years time than if we hadn’t. You can’t save more than you earn in a year after all. We could stop our children’s activities but then they’d be losing out on skills and experiences and I’m not going to have them miss out on normal childhood things just so we can buy a house. Maybe we should have waited to have children but life doesn’t always work out in that perfect linear way for everyone.

As other posters have shown with their experiences, It’s mental out there. You finally think you’ve got enough to go and then the goal posts move again. It gets to a point where you can either spend your life working and saving and saving and working and it’s still not enough, or have some balance and save what you can, but still allow yourself things that make you happy. Buying a house, although would be nice feels like a luxury that is out of our reach, so we may as well make the best of our circumstances and maybe one day this shit show will calm down or we will come into some money somehow.

Agree.
we are also very conditioned in this country to view getting a mortgage as some sort of bench mark of success; as if it indicates some sort of lifetime achievement. It doesn’t. Maybe at one time, years ago it did. But no longer.

 

[hollowcrown]

Crypto is a bad idea to put money into unless you really really know what you are doing, which most people don't.

Interesting! Crypto terrifies me!

Unfortunately with our mortgage terms we cannot overpay it yet, but equally it is low fixed interest while we can’t overpay it, so I suppose I am over-cautious in saving extra in lieu.

We’re currently looking for a good IFA to see what we can do instead of just endlessly saving for low return. It’s all quite intimidating for me, coming from such a modest financial background. I suspect that’s what makes me overly cautious, too, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.



Yes, absolutely!

I do feel like it it a vicious cycle for some though. They stretch to afford a mortgage because house prices are so high, and then they may well end up totally fucked if interest increases?! Hopefully anyone who is stretching has locked in their low interest rate to help protect them.

This is the worrying thing really. I know a lot of people jumping into buying houses as soon as they can with new partners when they are jobs that I know pay far less than mine. Either they have the secret "help" which no one likes to speak about on social media or they are not prepared for interest rate rises at all.

 

[Bubble10]

Yes but if your house price drops a little bit then the house you would buy will drop as well? Unless you are looking to downsize, it shouldn't affect you. It rather just helps more people get onto the property ladder and people who are already homeowners shouldn't make a loss.

We have found a plot and we love, and are hoping to build our next house ourselves. It's something my husband has always wanted to do because he's a builder and we couldn't have done this when our children were smaller, but now they are older and it will only be our youngest that will be coming with us because the my other 3 children have moved out. I was hoping to sell before the house prices drop too much just so we will have the more money to achieve our dream without having to borrow, if that makes sense. I hope I am not coming across as selfish, we have made a lot of sacrifices through the years to get us where we are today, but I also realise I am quite privileged when many don't even have anywhere to call home.

I do really feel for the younger generation now, it's so difficult for them to get onto the property ladder. It pains me to see them renting from landlords who charge basically a mortgage payment each month when they could be using that money to pay their own if the deposit wasn't so high to get there in the first place.

I'm the opposite! We want an old house, over new build. Which is funny as I was completely for a new build first but after seeing how much they go for and what we get, it wasn't worth it! We are now looking for an old house in a good area with a big garden/driveway parking. We don't mind ripping it all out and starting fresh as hopefully that will only increase the value of the property in the end. My biggest peeve is the fact old houses very rarely have ensuites and only one main bathroom a lot of the time in huge houses!

Just out of curiosity's sake, what is your no.1 thing you look for in a property? Mine is, it needs to have potential to be better i.e hopefully worth more after renovations and located in a good area.

That's what we did when we bought our house, it really was the worst house in our street, no central heating, the fire had been boarded up and the previous owners used calor gas heaters, there was only one window in the house that wasn't broken so we slept in that room, double bed and bunk beds for our children and I was pregnant with another, haha we liked making work for ourselves! My husband built an extension to the back and side of the house, but to keep costs low we bought a lot of materials second hand or in the sale, we also didn't go on holiday, have take outs, basically put our life on hold for 5 years to afford it all without borrowing an money. Now everyone that goes past our house compliments the had work we have done, this makes it all worthwhile. I don't regret doing it this way because at the time we couldn't afford to move into something already done.

 

[Bitofthebubbly]

we had our heart set on a new build property 5 mins from where we live now. read all the planning permission documents on our council website and they estimated to sell the homes for £180k before covid, they’ve just gone on the market for between £216k and £230k!! How can they do this?? a three bed semi with a drive up north! It’s ridiculous

£200k+ used to be what the average 3-bed semi would go for in my area of the West Midlands. Now they’re going for £300k+ and the 2 beds that were usually around £120-150k are now £200k+. I can’t get my head round it. Unless we get a huge windfall there’s no way we’d be able to buy round here. I’ve almost given up on the idea as it seems like we will never have a big enough deposit.

 

[Anne1448]

I’ve only done it a few times but if you set your radius to your postcode +0.5miles you can have a nose a few streets round, I’m shocked at the state of some houses some people are living in tbh. One house has a wall half knocked through between rooms so raw dusty bricks just jammin there - all the while there’s a beauty blogger setup in another room with stacks and stacks of multi drawer storage I assume for palettes etc and those huge circle lights?! Beloved you have brick dust in your home! Prioritise!

Oh my God this is the same thing in my neighborhood.

The average price is 345k yet some houses are rotten! I mean mold everywhere, bathtubs are all black, the bedrooms are cluttered and the carpets haven't been changed since Jesus walked on Earth.

I would rather buy an absolute dump for less than 100k and re-do it completely than pay 345k and put 100k in renovations. Some people will pay their mortgage until their last breath.

 

[HoGi]

The anti pension thing is all a bit silly. People acting as if they have no choice but to speculate in bricks

My private pension has gone up 6% in the last year (after fees taken) and obviously is much less of a liability than buy to let and way more flexible and suited to being a pension.

So many people demand that their buy to let is a guaranteed investment and even if it was bought for 50k and is now worth 200k they'll bemoan if it goes down to 195k

The worst part with this man is that he didn't even have a buy to let.

They had a 150k mortgage 35 years ago and only ever paid interest only.

After 30 years they sold the house, repaid the bank the 150k and bought a bungalow on the coast that cost half what the house did.

Very risky IMO

 

[heretoreaditall2019]

Then you have to factor in that some of these people that will never go to the office again, might find out after proving the case study their jobs are outsourced to someone on 1/5th the wages.

I cringe hearing people saying how fab it is their employer has got rid of the office - I think especially for very big companies who will have a lot of “wastage” (eg employees doing very little, roles that no longer need to exist really, overpaid for their actual technical skill set management) they’ll have used the furlough scheme as a proof of concept for how much headcount they could cull.

 

[heretoreaditall2019]

I presumed that the "perk" for those working throughout would be to keep their jobs (not my POV but how I can see companies dressing it up as!).

Although I do worry all these people saying how great it is working from home don't see the bigger long term picture and how they're proving the case for outsourcing more work to cheaper countries.

The express are naturally talking about house prices going to the moon and back. No doubt the stamp duty holiday will force a lot of people to move now, but long term who knows. I guess they'll extend it so that transactions won't fall off a cliff in March 2021 but all the steam could have gone by then.

See on outsourcing, I'm in data/dev which would be an ideal area to outsource but the skillsets still simply aren't there, tbh the skillsets are scarcely there in UK grads really I've found hiring into my department shockingly difficult. For repetitive really instructional work I've seen it be outsourced effectively but for bigger strategic projects, definitely not. Tbh my primary goal / every business' goal should be automation, our biggest problem has always been the dinosaurs that insist on hiring legions of 21 year olds to fill in antiquated shit inaccurate spreadsheets, though. Outsourcing that kind of work is great as you can hire someone in India or Eastern Europe for 3-4 hours a week vs a junior or midweight full time in London, but the sort of work you outsource has to be very instructional/repetitive, the skillsets aren't there to QA work, offer insights, improve off own backs...then again it's not in this country either tbh. The work I see SEO/marketing teams doing needs automating (this is my biggest project at work at the mo) but in absence of that they could 100% be replaced by offshore staff, but I can't imagine the control freak micromanagers allowing that to happen as they need juniors spoon feeding them info they're too lazy to read themselves. The more I write the more I realise how wholly disillusioned I am with work, sorry!

And on the perk being able to keep your job - it depends on why your company used the furlough scheme I guess. My sister's company have seen a similar growth in revenues as mine across the period & have given 3 profit sharing bonuses out to staff as a thank you for working so hard & spreading the joy a bit. Mine haven't bothered (despite huge press releases on it) and now I'm proof reading colleagues' CVs for them loool.

 

[Anne1448]

Yeah exactly - I’ve always worked off the assumption that the state pension won’t exist when I reach traditional retirement age, or at least retirement age will be pushed back by a good 10 years.

Re: birth rate going down, I think there are multiple factors at play, but a major one is definitely the cost of living and the cost of children in particular.

Yep, the cost of living is too high for any person to reproduce safely at least. Young people are too busy trying to survive in apartments that they share with complete strangers. Let's not ignore the fact that salaries are also not increasing. So currently there is no logical reason to have kids without going straight to poverty.

Retirement funds will probably be empty when governments realise that there isn't enough young people to fund them. So by the time we reach 60 we'll receive peanuts.

If governments do not push property prices back to a healthy level they will deal with low birth rates, an insane homeless population and increasing poverty. Cities such as Los Angeles and Hong Kong already reached insanity.