UK House prices: News & Views

[Fishfinger]

GASP! Does this mean that that certain BTL professional investors in Ashford might have to cough up?

[G0ldfinger]

GASP! Does this mean that that certain BTL professional investors in Ashford might have to cough up?

Bigtime.

[InternationalRockSuperstar]

http://gold.approximity.com/since1968/UK_H...es_in_Gold.html

 

do you have any pre-1914 house price data?

 

I've been googling for it, but no luck.

[G0ldfinger]

do you have any pre-1914 house price data?

 

I've been googling for it, but no luck.

No, but here are some considerations going back to 1912 (in the US).

http://goldismoney.info/forums/showpost.ph...mp;postcount=69

[InternationalRockSuperstar]

No, but here are some considerations going back to 1912 (in the US).

http://goldismoney.info/forums/showpost.ph...mp;postcount=69

 

ta.

[Concrete Jungle]

GASP! Does this mean that that certain BTL professional investors in Ashford might have to cough up?

One can only hope so!!!

[InternationalRockSuperstar]

No, but here are some considerations going back to 1912 (in the US).

http://goldismoney.info/forums/showpost.ph...mp;postcount=69

 

do you think we'll see average UK houses go for 1000oz silver again, or do you think 1980 was an anomoly?

[G0ldfinger]

do you think we'll see average UK houses go for 1000oz silver again, or do you think 1980 was an anomoly?

Yes, I would expect that.

[wren]

Yes, I would expect that.

Wow. And 1000 of silver to 50 of gold is a ratio of 20 to 1, closer to the historical c. 15 to 1.

 

I'm targeting 100 oz gold and 2000 oz silver, trying not to be too optimistic. But even those would be great for gold bug house buyers.

 

[lowrentyieldmakessense(honest!)]

 

irelands new budget has this interesting snippet

 

http://www.budget.gov.ie/2009SupApril09/Su...icyChanges.html

 

Restriction in Interest Relief Rented Residential Property

 

The level at which interest re-payments can be claimed against tax for residential rental properties is being reduced from the existing 100% to 75%. This measure will apply to both new and existing mortgages. Commercial properties are not affected.

[marceau]

irelands new budget has this interesting snippet

 

http://www.budget.gov.ie/2009SupApril09/Su...icyChanges.html

 

Some of the announced cuts are brutal. I think the overall result of this will be positive, everything I see here will wring speculative excess out of all aspects of Irish markets. The problem is that the speculative excess is so big that the short term pain is going to be absolutely monumental.

 

Tough times ahead, and a sign of what is to come for the rest of us.

[G0ldfinger]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/persona...-recession.html

Number of grown-up children returning to live with parents triples amid recession

 

Oopsy. --->> OVERSUPPLY!

[G0ldfinger]

Oh dear!

 

http://gold.approximity.com/since1968/UK_H...ces_in_EUR.html

[marceau]

Oh dear!

 

http://gold.approximity.com/since1968/UK_H...ces_in_EUR.html

 

 

My god, what a collapse. Medium term that looks set to go sub-100,000 for sure.

[G0ldfinger]

I think we can apply this to possibly the whole of the UK.

 

Las Vegas braces for commercial foreclosures

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/apr/1...l-foreclosures/

“I think we are just getting our feet wet from a commercial standpoint,” said Kevin Higgins, senior vice president of Voit Commercial, a brokerage firm. “We are not even at our ankles yet. I think the general public for sure has no idea. People on Wall Street aren’t even talking about it publicly. This isn’t just the local banks’ money. This is big money, Wall Street money that lent on this stuff.”

[lowrentyieldmakessense(honest!)]

how come all the idiots are running the show

 

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/busi...icle6111932.ece

 

Bank's Barker backs 'risky' 100% mortgages

Grainne Gilmore

 

A member of the Bank of England's rate-setting committee said that mortgages which leave buyers with an immediate risk of negative equity should not be banned and that bank demands for big deposits from homeowners may have been "overdone."

 

Kate Barker, who was commissioned by the Government to write a report on the housing market several years ago, said “I’m not personally convinced I want to say we’d absolutely never have 100 per cent mortgages.

 

"You might want to have rules about the averages across the book — all that kind of thing. Rather than saying 'no never' because personal circumstances vary enormously," she told The Spectator.

 

Her comments fly in the face of the Government's pledge to crack down on riskier home loan deals which offer buyers 100 per cent or more of the value of their property. Gordon Brown recently suggested that 100 per cent mortgages should be banned.

Related Links

 

* House price fall sends 900,000 into negative equity

 

* Housing bounce may take year, say economists

 

* Signs emerge UK economy is 'turning corner'

 

Some 900,000 homeowners have been plunged into negative equity — owing more on their mortgage than their home is worth — after near 20 per cent falls in property prices, figures released yesterday by the Council of Mortgage Lenders showed.

 

A further 1.1 million homeowners have seen the equity in their property whittled down to less than 10 per cent.

 

Three in four of those in negative equity have an average shortfall of between £6,000 and £8,000, but nearly a quarter of a million borrowers have a shortfall close to £20,000. A further 13,000 homeowners are in negative equity by £37,000, it said.

 

Ms Barker also suggested that the banks had over-reacted to the credit crunch by withdrawing many mortgages for borrowers with small deposits.

 

Banks and building societies now only offer the most competitive mortgage deals to those with at least a 20 per cent down payment, while the very cheapest deals are reserved for those with a 40 per cent deposit. "The big slide down to 75-80 per cent [loan to value requirement] may be overdone," she said.

 

Speaking about the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee's (MPC) remit, Ms Barker also indicated that targeting inflation alone was not sufficient to ensure economic stability. The MPC is tasked with keeping inflation close to a target rate of 2 per cent. But last year it soared to 5.2 per cent, and is now expected to plummet close to zero.

 

“Do I think we should have perhaps looked a bit more at some of the money indicators?’ Yes, possibly that’s true.”

 

Yesterday, David Miles, the chief UK economist at Morgan Stanley who is set to join the MPC in summer, said there were signs that the worst of the country's recession may be over and that were now reasons to be guardedly optimistic about the economy.

[lowrentyieldmakessense(honest!)]

posted by crown over on hpc

 

but well worth a read

 

FSA good for purpose?

 

link

Following the Dunfermline Building Society collapse, I was approached by a well informed source who describes the way in which the sector was regulated. The attached commentary is a scathing indictment of FSA regulatory practice. This may not surprise you given the institutional self criticism in your report, but what may surprise you is the extent to which the problems continue and pose a threat to other societies like XXXXXXXXXX and XXXXXXXXXX.

The individual concerned does not wish to be identified and I have edited the text accordingly. It is worrying in itself that people who wish to act in the public interest should feel that there is a climate of fear and vindictiveness in the FSA. You should, I think, consider how to ease this fear; otherwise problems which you should know about and act upon will remain hidden.

I would be grateful for your reaction.

Yours sincerely,

Vincent Cable MP

 

 

To give but one example of the abdication of regulatory responsibility, in 2005 and again in 2006 there were "Thematic Reviews" of mortgage books purchased by building societies from wholesale lenders. One XXXXXXXXXX book that was XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX contained several thousand loans categorised as "full status" - i.e. mortgages with properly evidenced income - but on which not a single loan file contained any proof of the borrowers' income from payslips, P60s, audited tax returns or bank statements. We had unearthed incontrovertible proof that societies had been paying high prices for what were ostensibly the safest residential mortgages, but were in fact risky self-certification loans. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX FSA management turned a blind eye to that particular abuse, as it did to many others. XXXXXXXXXX was not reprimanded or sanctioned, and the societies who bought its loans were not directly contacted. The FSA's only action following the thematic review was to send a general "Dear CEO" letter to all building societies reminding them of the need to conduct thorough due diligence in advance of purchasing loan books from wholesale mortgage lenders.

[tinecu]

Where's the bottom?

 

Looks at these sales volumes for london (bottom graph).

 

http://www.home.co.uk/guides/house_prices_...mp;endyear=2009

 

Jan was just 20% of the peak volume (Aug07) and the trend is still down...

[G0ldfinger]

The following is extremely dangerous bu11$h1t. How affordable are these houses at 15% interest?

 

http://www.ftadviser.com/FTAdviser/Mortgag...ifax-200-DW.jsp

Falling house prices and shrinking mortgage rates mean home affordability has improved significantly since mid-2007, according to a new Halifax review.

[dietcolaaddict]

 

[Eiji]

 

 

The Daily Express are known to be property rampers and their headline is derived from Rightmove's Asking Price data and it isn't sellers who determine a house price but market forces and banks.

 

All it shows is that sellers are still in denial and are taking this "green shoots" business too seriously. I don't expect a dead cat bounce, if anything, it'll be a dead cat ledge.

 

This one is from May 2007:

 

 

Can you say "duck, duck, goose"

[dietcolaaddict]

The Daily Express are known to be property rampers and their headline is derived from Rightmove's Asking Price data and it isn't sellers who determine a house price but market forces and banks.

 

All it shows is that sellers are still in denial and are taking this "green shoots" business too seriously.

 

Hi Eiji

Of course, but it's such a classic piece of daily express-ism it needs preserving (so we can have a laugh at it in a year's time).

[gabriel959]

Hi Eiji

Of course, but it's such a classic piece of daily express-ism it needs preserving (so we can have a laugh at it in a year's time).

 

May be so, but to make things worse, houses are selling like hotcakes here in Cambs. A friend of ours put their house on the market for £195k (from a peak price of £200k?!!??) and they have just Sold STC. There are loads of properties in Sold STC state in Cambridge.

 

I just wish this house price crash hurried a bit, I want to get a house for my wife and kid at a reasonable price

[G0ldfinger]

Finally someone from the BoE gives Darling some reasonable advice on the property precipice.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11...ns-Darling.html

Don't try and stop the housing crash, Bank of England official warns Darling

A top Bank of England official today warned the Government against trying to prevent the housing crash.

 

In a controversial call, Markets Director Paul Fisher said it would be ‘dangerous’ for policymakers to try to stem the relentless slump in the value of property.

 

He argued it is also ‘sensible’ for families to be forced to save up for bigger deposits, rather than returning to the days of near-100 per cent mortgages.

...

‘We have to allow the housing market to find a new level at which people can afford to enter it.’

...

‘There is a danger that policy intervention in the housing market stops these sorts adjustments from happening.

 

‘We have to be very careful with policy intervention that we don’t actually make it worse.’

[ziknik]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/persona...age-scheme.html

 

Some of the biggest high street banking names have refused to take part in the Government's scheme to help distressed home owners avoid repossession.

 

Barclays, HSBC, Nationwide and Santander – including Abbey and Alliance & Leicester – have opted out of the Homeowners Mortgage Support Scheme.

…

The Conservatives suggested that the major lenders which have refused to take part covered 55 per cent of the mortgage market.

…

Lenders that have signed up to the scheme include Lloyds Bank Group, Northern Rock, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Bradford and Bingley, Cumberland Building Society, and the National Australia Bank Group.

…

 

I’m surprised that National Australia Bank Group (Clysdale + Yorkshire Banks) have joined the scheme. They appear to be the only non-nationalised bank taking part.