youcanhandlethetruth

Brown WILL talk around it - he'll blame the global economy and the sub prime mortgage crisis.
He didn't create the mess, but he, like everyone else involved, knows the credit bubble created it is being engineered to ensure a crash and to allow the bankers to consolidate the assets.

Brown has nothing to lose except popularity - PM's come and go, and all of them are puppets for their corporate masters......

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Before tyranny and television, "conspiracy theorists" never existed.

cointelpro/halfwits(in order of Porkpies) Clippo,Wowbanger TIP,agni,Akria,Besoeker,Bear,Eurosceptic Antlantacist

kernow

If you're a property speculator, I think 30% is wishful thinking!

Mikeuk

So are you going to sell your house at a 30% discount Bear?

'Negative equity' is not a problem in itself, and the ease with which this phrase is bandied around shows how much most of these people know what they are talking about - ie zilch.

It was sky-high interest rates and high unemployment levels which caused the last price slump. Of course some people are suffering now, but the repossession problem is marginal.

Now I have seen a repossessed flat today which was sold new for a supposed price of £197,000 two years ago and which will make only £150,000 today, but the £197,000 was a Mickey Mouse figure bulked up by incentives, cashbacks, deposit paid etc. Pity any fool of a surveyor who accepted the headline price as gospel, but cases such as this should not be taken as in any way indicative of true market movements.

Prices have fallen marginally, which means that now is a good time to think about buying. I shall start looking for a new holiday let over the next few weeks.

brian pearson

I really think people have wised up to this sort of desperate talk.

If prices have fallen last month then they may fall next. Average house price less 2.5% is about £5000.00. People aren't stupid. There is a glut of houses out there for sale now and the chances of them being more expensive in 6 months time is small.

As to the 'incentives' of cash back etc. Well people may have been stupid to go for it, but go for it they did. If the house was sold for 197 K and ten grand handed back the mortgage could still in theory be 197 K. More if you were a NR customer. So yes, they may have been unwise to enter into neg equity immeadiatly the day they signed on the dotted line but sign they did. In their thousands.

UK subprime crisis? Could be just round the corner!

brian pearson

Thirty percent would take the average house to somewhere near it's true value.

Mikeuk

That must rank as your most fatuous comment yet. Who decides the 'true' value of a property?

When we got married 27 years ago we paid £17,500 for our first house. I suppose it is worth 10 times that amount now.

Had I been less lazy and bought the house a few years before I had a wife to look after it I could have had it for around £3,500 (the average price of a 3 bedroomed terraced house in Portsmouth when I started working in 1971)

And no doubt had you bought the house when it was built in 1902 you would have paid around £300/400.

So which is the 'true' value? I know which price I would prefer to pay.

brian pearson

Ok then. A 30% reduction, sorry correction would be where the price would be if the pwoperty get rich quick and do **** all at the same time greedy speculators hadn't stoked all this nonsense up.

House price inflation is one thing but the 'prices will always rise' attitude within the industry and the outright greed of people have placed the average house at a ridiculous price.

The real criminal is the government for letting this go on for so long but of course they knew that without HPI fueling consumerism the house of cards will fall. Even now Brown is talking about shared ownership and all sorts of ********. Whats wrong with saving for a deposit and buying a house at a realistic price?

The way you have jumped on me Mike since I first asked a simple question shows your nervousness. You know it can't go on but want to keep on talking it up for as long as you can. Maybe you need to offload your portfolio.

I think (maybe wrong), ........that will be quoted no doubt, that we are in for years of slow grinding price reductions. I have no vested interest in prices going up or down but look forward to when young first time buyers can afford a decent home and we get away from seeing houses as sure fire way to quick easy money.

brian pearson

The bit where Gordon says he will not let house prices get out of control and put the economy at risk is really funny.

BBC Budget 97

Mikeuk

The only reason I 'jump on you' as you put it (no thanks!) is because of your endless ill-informed obsession with this subject. I know you are just longing for your dream of a house price 'crash' to become reality so that you can go round proclaiming 'I told you so'.

As my borrowing represents a very small proportion of the value of what you grandly term my 'portfolio' I am very far from shivering in my shoes, as you would love to suppose. As a matter of fact, I think I will pay off the remaining mortgage on my home this year. Can't claim tax relief on that.

I welcome the end of 100% mortgages and I will be glad to see the downsizing of buy-to-let and other potentially inflationary products. I think the market will remain flat now for two or three years and that will be no bad thing.

I've been involved with the domestic property market on a day-to-day basis for the past 37 years. You haven't. That's why I know what I'm talking about and you don't.

The Bear

Time will tell. I now wonder what the government will do as their expenditure on social care rockets and its income falls. Any bets on where the stealth cut backs will fall?

My guess is that pensioners will be amongst the first to feel the pinch as grants for insulation become harder to get and even the winter fuel allowance will be subtly cut back, probably by being “targeted” at “the most needy”.

Next will be a subtle “tuning” of the RPI shopping basket and “really important” things such as air fresheners get added and useless things like bread get removed so allowing the government to claim that inflation is lower than it is and so allowing them to reduce the pension increases for the elderly.

Even now “spinning” the pay offer to the NHS as being 8% is an example of distortion to the extent of being a bare faced lie as the offer is actually 2,75% AND a tie-in to subsequent increases.

Increases which over the next two years are going to be way below the REAL inflation rate which incidentally taking the RPI, an index that is far more important than headline inflation, is presently running closer to 10% than the claimed 2,5 % being put around.

Let’s face it, the lower paid a person is the more significant the RPI becomes.

House prices? Anyone with a mortgage that is over 70% of the present value of the house should be getting worried. Very worried indeed.