I don’t normally discuss house price data, mortgage data, stats, Lies, damned lies and statistics, but I have been sucked into the whirlpool of despair that is the current housing market.
I can’t find it now, but I have seen stats for sales in January and I think I read it correctly when it stated only 10,000 properties were sold in January. That is 10,000 for a population of 60 million people, the percentage is too depressing to publish. The Halifax reported a small rise in property prices in January, but this has been largely dismissed as incorrect by commentators and economists. Indeed, the Halifax and Nationwide figures for February show a steady decline in house prices with figures resembling something close to 1994. Ironically, a hit song in 1994 was ‘things can only get better’. It was a bad song then and things will get far worse before they get better.
So these are the stats, but what about real life? Well, I met an old friend of mine recently who is a solicitor. Now don’t hold that against him as it gets worse, he is a conveyancing solicitor. He was happy, why? He had completed on a property, his second this year! Two in two months! His happiness was short lived when I asked how many he expected in March? “probably the same” he said.
Perhaps Seth Godin was right some time ago when he said it was time to quit.
If you insist staying in the business, rentals, repossessions and auctions are the only place where anything will happen.
I am off to write a song!
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2 comments:
I think there are the buyers out there it is just the banks that are scarying people off. People need to see the bigger picture about buy property and their long term property investment. The market is not what it was a couple of years ago but it is picking up.
Loads of buyers out there, they just can’t get a mortgage. Lenders are saying they are lowering rates but at the same time are just lowering the loan to value. Any loan to value above 80% isn’t a good rate, or if it is you won’t pass the credit score anyway. BTL mortgage's are getting worse and the lenders are just putting up their rates. Due to the fact that there isn’t hardly any BTL lenders left any one of them that does put out a half decent rate cant handle all the business so then has to put their rate back up again. The government needs to put pressure on lenders to lend on more BTL mortgages as who else is going to buy the one bedroom flats if 1st time buyers cant????
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