House Prices

[Giggling Squid]

You'd be lucky to get a very average three bed semi for less than £450/500K near me, and where I am from and had to move away from to buy it is more like over £600K. It is crazy!

Yeah, it was the best part of £400k

 

[Yel]

but being in work and getting top ups must be better than 100% unemployed still surely?

I don't have a great deal of experience with it, other than at places I worked where we had to use agency workers because the part timers didn't want to increase their hours during peak periods as they wouldn't be any better off. Which is ludicrous.

It's the uncertainty of top up benefits that are the huge downside I believe. One change to your circumstance and you're shifted onto UC where everything is different.

Oh it is there, you just have to look at the wasted spending though this pandemic to see the checks and audits for spending are not there. Worthless PPE, contact tracing, wages for managers who are incompetent.

There's some savings to be had, but enough to cover the huge social care bill seems very unlikely.

It's a bit like the Amazon argument for me, where people say no more tax contributions are required - just tax Amazon, Facebook and Google to solve everything! A bit to simplistic and I haven't seen anything to actually back it up. But it does make for a compelling bite.

 

[Homebird44]

I feel like it sometimes works at the other end of the age spectrum too. I have had colleagues around retirement age to still have to work to continue to pay off their mortgage. I have found these people to be a little resentful of their mortgage free contemporaries. Same with people who want to move up the property ladder.

Having said that, Home ownership should not be at the expense of any enjoyment in life.

If they're still paying for their mortgage in their 60s then they've remortgaged a lot. Id love to move to a bigger house, id love a driveway and a garage and a utility room. Id get all that an hour up the road but I'm in a stupidly expensive area and I'm happy in my 3 bed terraced. I've been here 20 years and I'll happily stay here, I know I'm lucky compared to some but others will look down their nose.

 

[Boutros-Boutros Ghali]

Do you know about buying the lease? My parents said they’d buy it for me, can they do that?

Do you mean buy the freehold? Only if the current freeholder wants to sell it and at what price. You really need to speak to your solicitor about it, they’ll be able to give you advice as every situation will be different with different clauses/people involved etc

 

[Former_Antelopee]

Can you access a copy of the lease to read? What to expect from the freeholder and the terms of extending the lease should all be in there - its basically the contract between the home owner and the freeholder and so all of the obligations for both parties will be in there.
Its good that the council own the freehold as they usually fulfil their obligations and you have a route to go down if they fail and you need to complain. The only issue would be if the council then resold the freehold to someone else (as they are all stretched in the current climate).

I would contact the council (the asset management team) in the first instance and ask if they have a policy of selling the freehold or not - they might be able to give you more information as they will have a team who deal with this.

If there is a way of getting it to me without outing yourself I would be happy to have a look for you.

Thank you I’ll ask the solictor and get in touch with whoever I need

 

[Boutros-Boutros Ghali]

Or it could of all be done within the rules.

My aunt and uncle have had a lot of money in their lifetime. At one point my uncles tax bill alone was £300,000 for the years and that was years ago! They have now got next to nothing. They are selling their £1.5m home in England to move to Scotland to get free care in their later years.

My parents in the other hand have been very careful with their cash, saved and would be expected to fund their care just because they’ve not spent it like my aunt and uncle. Oh the other hand, my uncles paid a lot more in tax than most.

Personally I think everything should be a level playing field, stamp duty, tax, care, inheritance tax. But I think that’s another debate.

They might find they don’t get free care when they actually need it. If the Scottish government get their way and there’s another independence referendum which is successful there isn’t a hope that everything that is free there now will be…but again that’s another debate! Agree that things need to be on a more level playing field for certain things though

 

[Tublet83]

House prices are crazy we just sold our 3 bed terrace for 248… close to beach but not a great area, we are buying a 3 bed 8 miles away with better schools for 425k I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. This is in Dorset.
We got our first flat 135k at 24 with our own money, we didn’t go to uni just went straight to work with a 90% mortg sold for 155k & got this home for 189k. We will have a big mortgage but need to be close to work & good schools .

Just read the other comments & might delete this now

Just noticed your username

 

[Esbeepea]

We're still holding out for next year. As horrible as it sounds, I dont think we've hit boiling point yet with unemployment etc.

Same here. We've just signed up for a 6 months rental as I doubt we'll be going anywhere soon. I also don't want to and can't pay more than a 10% deposit so happy to wait and see what happens. It's shit but what can you do?

 

[hnoz]

I think -1.7% during a time when many lenders have restricted borrowing and have only been doing 60% LTV lending for a few weeks is actually surprisingly low. The market as all but frozen for a while for first time buyers and buyers purchasing at the bottom of the ladder.
I don’t think this is going to have a huge impact on house prices overall, any dip will be a few months which isn’t really a good enough measure of time for something like this.

 

[heretoreaditall2019]

I have read up about Shared Ownership schemes and the statistics show that hardly anyone ever manages to buy more equity in the house. This scheme is such a trap for young people or low income people to lure them into buying a house they will never ever own. You are essentially just paying someone else's rent whilst paying for all the repairs in the house. Sadly, many people don't read their leases, tenancy agreements or property ownership document to understand the implications of what they are signing up for.

I work in commercial property law and it's alarming how many people sign a lease without understanding what they are signing up for.

This is so interesting to read - I had no idea people were genuinely ignorant to it? I guess it’s not that surprising when most people struggle with personal finance as it’s never taught or discussed, and most of us are taken for a ride by banks chucking overdrafts etc at us as the clock strikes midnight on our 18th birthday...

I just can’t believe they’ve managed to swindle people into having all the pitfalls of home ownership with literally none of the benefits - it’s outrageous. I can’t imagine any one ever does staircase either because the properties I’ve seen require SO much work to them you wouldn’t have a spare penny left to buy more equity.
It’s sad cos most the people who “own” them would be eligible for council housing anyway so could have a comparatively secure letting agreement with people to do repairs etc for them.

What happens to these properties when an “owner” dies in them out of interest? They always have quite short leases of like 90 years, so say mum dies owning £70k of a £140k property with 40 years left on the lease, does kid own the remaining 40 years on it? Could kid them sell that, but surely it wouldn’t sell for £70k it’d be pennies to the pound like those odd flats you see every now and then or those retirement deals where a house is 1/3rd of market value cos you’re leasing it for 20/30 years?

 

[Boutros-Boutros Ghali]

The very vested savills now predict a 7.5% fall this year, before starting to shoot up next year. I'd double or treble their falls and no doubt they'll revise them again. To say they're biased would be huge understatement

View attachment 156115
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Of course there is no free market and it's rigged so no one really knows what will happen next year.


That sounds like your average hight street estate agent talk, asking prices have been going up but that's meaningless. What they sell for and the surveyor values them at matter. I know someone that accepted an offer of 320k. The surveyor came back to say it's worth 280k, all accepted back in Feb and the chains now fallen down.

Also a common estate agent thing to say about a big supply looking to move to area X to inspire confidence. End of the day it's a sales job with a low barrier of entry.

Ha ha I’m definitely not an estate agent....that’s not a job I’d ever aspire to....just saying the market may not be as badly affected depending where you live....we’ve recently bought and sold so am not moving anywhere for a very long time, we bought a home, not something to make money from!

 

[TheMeg]

What’s everyone’s thoughts on the housing market post COVID? Obviously no one can predict the future but wondering if there is likely to be a housing crash? Recession has been confirmed I believe.

Just seen there is already a thread on this please delete if needed.

 

[Kim Mild]

There are houses in our town ( on the cheaper end of the scale, where we are looking) being listed that are expensive/overpriced compared to recent sales of similar houses. We've been keeping an eye on prices as we've wanted to move for a while. We could do with selling up to get out of our existing mortgage and complicated situation, and our current house had previously been in negative equity when we had it valued. I am so desperate to move .

 

[Yel]

It's all just a bit crazy right now with all the furlough, bounce back loans and stamp duty holiday.

Only when these things end will we see where the chips fall.

 

[Holidaybobs]

Houses up in Scotland are going for 10-40k over the asking price, it's ridiculous

They are in the north west. We just put a house up for sale and someone offered 50k over the asking price, absolutely ridiculous.

 

[mindlessness]

Pay rise is approved of this month, doubt it will be enough to get a mortgage though. Maybe not even nans inheritance will help/

Congrats on the pay rise! But I'm sorry about the mortgage It sucks.

 

[Pixipoppy]

I don’t know much about buying houses in the uk in general but I thought the minimum deposit was 10% unless you’re getting a new build on a help to buy scheme? Maybe different in Wales where I am. I wouldn’t be surprised if banks start asking for higher deposits too which is a pain. We were supposed to start looking end of this year, and we were in the process of setting up a meeting with a mortgage advisor so this is all now on hold. I’ve been checking rightmove and nothing seems to be much cheaper, but nothing is selling. I’m scared that no one will sell after lockdown and we’ll be renting for years! Unless we get a new build which I am dubious about if I’m honest.

 

[Boutros-Boutros Ghali]

how funny. Id imagine they use pay as you go!! No i have kids and they have phones.

You’d be surprised…
I’d guessed kids or business…of the legitimate type

 

[mindlessness]

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.

Oh interesting! My experience differs - the quality has been much the same. But you're totally right, its the personal life and feelings which create issues.

 

[heretoreaditall2019]

The local agents might also know through the grapevine how much the neighbours place went for @heretoreaditall2019 ? In my experience agents are real gossips - may as well take advantage of that

Oh it’ll be on zoopla regardless as they take land registry data, it’s just more frustrating if any nice house that sold in 2020/21 never got listed online it’ll be very hard to understand prices? Like these are obviously not house prices as that’s tacky lol but say the most commonly available probate style properties go for a tenner but decent ones go for twenty to fifty there’s no way of telling where your property sits in that range because you don’t know which ones had extensions, garden size (which varies a lot even down the same street here), really nicely done (versus the 90s or cheaply fitted out ones), etc etc as the images just aren’t there?

It’s such a pathetic thing to complain about in the grand scheme of how bad the housing market/stock is but yet another thing that shows the insanity of this stamp duty holiday and properties flying off the shelf. Will be interested to see how the market is in 2022…