March 5, 2009
House prices will continue to fall throughout 2009
Story link: House prices will continue to fall throughout 2009
Prices are likely to fall through 2009, but I suspect there will be some kind of recovery towards the end of 2009/start of 2010.
If there is not some sort of recovery at this point then the property market could be in serious trouble in the long term.
House prices will continue to fall throughout 2009
House prices in the UK are set to decline on average 13-15% during 2009, according to Jones Lang LaSalle’s latest Residential Market Forecast, with the greatest falls expected in London.
The forecast also predicts that prices will fall by a further 1-3% in 2010, with the bottom of the market due to be Q3 or Q4 of that year before recovering by 4-6% in 2011. During 2012 and 2013 Jones Lang LaSalle expects growth to accelerate by a further 8-10%, while peak Q3 2007 levels will not recover until the end of 2015.
Home owners benefit from falling house prices
Story link: Home owners benefit from falling house prices
Home owners who took enough time and effort to research the shared appreciation mortgages will be giving them selves a big pat on the back as the recession takes toll on the value of their property.
Home owners benefit from falling house prices
Falling house prices may worry home owners facing losses on their property but they are good news for first time buyers who stand a better chance of being able to afford their first home.
One small group of homeowners is not too unhappy at the collapse in house prices as they stand to be better off. They are borrowers who took out shared appreciation mortgages (SAMs) in the late 1990s with Barclays Bank and Bank of Scotland, now part of the Lloyds Banking Group.
House prices down 10% year on year
Story link: House prices down 10% year on year
Rising unemployment and the possibility of deflation in the future combined with the squeeze the banks are putting on UK finances has caused the UK property market to drop in value by around 10%.
House prices down 10% year on year
U.K. house prices fell the most since at least 2001 last month as rising unemployment and a dearth of loans discouraged buyers, Hometrack Ltd. said.
The average cost of a home in England and Wales declined 10 percent from a year earlier to 157,000 pounds ($223,000), the London-based property market researcher said in a report today. Prices slipped 0.8 percent from a month earlier, led by Wales.
February 23, 2009
Northern Rock to offer 90% mortgages
Story link: Northern Rock to offer 90% mortgages
This could potentially be the make or break of the property industry. If their mortgages catch on with other banking outlets, then the property market could have a surge of people wanting to purchase property, due to the lower deposit needed.
Northern Rock have definitely proved themselves after reaching rock bottom last year to being one of the strongest banks around.
Northern Rock to offer 90% mortgages
Northern Rock sparked a new bonus row today by insisting it would reward 500 executives despite making huge losses.
The state-owned bank, which lost £1.4billion last year and will be ’significantly loss-making’ this year, said the bonuses would be paid to managers for hitting ‘performance targets’ and to help ‘retain good people’.
Statistics for house prices
Story link: Statistics for house prices
Statistics are just a generalisation for a market, so even if they turn out to be true, certain areas still may peform better or worse than others.
That being said, there are several positive signs that suggest we should see some kind of stabilisation towards the end of 2009.
The chartered surveyor’s latest Residential Market Forecast predicted that prices will fall by between 1% and 3% in 2010, with the bottom of the market expected in the 3rd or 4th quarter before recovering by 4% to 6% in 2011. During 2012 and 2013, the firm expects growth to accelerate by a further 8% to 10%.
Northern Rock hit UK mortgage market
Story link: Northern Rock hit UK mortgage market
If more companies offer similar deals to what Northern Rock are now offering, then properties may begin to stabilize in value once more, with more people being able to afford a property purchase due to the smaller deposit value.
Northern Rock hit UK mortgage market
Northern Rock is reversing its post-nationalisation strategy of running down its mortgage book and will begin offering new loans of up to 90% of a property’s value.
The move offers hope to the UK’s beleaguered housing market, which despite the recent rise in new buyer enquiries reported by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and property website, Rightmove, will not see any rise in transactions until mortgage lending frees up.
Global real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle has predicted that UK house prices could bottom out by the end of next year, forecasting more drops of 13% to 15% in 2009.
Build our way out of the recession
Story link: Build our way out of the recession
The actual build of the 100,000 new homes would create a huge amount of employment for the UK construction industry, as well as the property industry in general when the properties hit the market.
Of course the question is, if the property market is already flooded with sellers, will this just devalue the market even more?
Build our way out of the recession
The U.K. government should build public housing to help the economy emerge from the recession, a group chaired by Bank of England policy maker Kate Barker said.
Funding the construction of 100,000 new homes over the next two years would save 30,000 jobs and prevent a shortage of housing supply from inflating property prices in the future, the 2020 Group said in London today.
February 17, 2009
Skipton mortgage mistake
Story link: Skipton mortgage mistake
Skipton Building Society sent an email which explained it would no longer be taking out new mortgages for one bedroom flats.
According to the Building Society, the email was actually a mistake, saying there had been no modification to their current lending policy.
Skipton Building Society says an e-mail telling mortgage brokers it would no longer lend to buyers of one bedroom flats was a “mistaken communication”.
The e-mail was sent out to brokers early on Tuesday afternoon, causing much surprise amongst those who got it.
House price hope
Story link: House price hope
The last three months have seen the UK property market stand still, which 16 months ago would have been a disaster, as prices were sky rocketing, but now, this is an extremely positive sign for the future.
The housing market in Devon and Cornwall is showing “possible signs of improvement” surveyors said.
Sales were static for three months up to January, says the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).
House price forecasts are wrong!
Story link: House price forecasts are wrong!
The thoughts of property buyers will have a disastrous affect on the UK property market if they continue to choose to hold off a purchase, in fear that property prices may continue to fall.
My personal view on property prices is that we will see an overall, but slow decline throughout 2009, with stabilization of prices happening at the start of 2010. If you find a property that’s right for you, just get it, property is a long term investment anyway!
House price forecasts are wrong!
A LEADING Ulster estate agent has dismissed economic opinion that house prices will probably continue falling and attacked those who predict further falls in the housing market.
Keith Mitchell, a founding partner of Templeton Robinson, also said that UK-wide housing statistics should be ignored by potential house buyers, claiming that such reports could damage the “fragile confidence now developing” among potential buyers in Northern Ireland.