An easy way to get depressed is to never buy your own home and then to take a peek at a graph of house price growth. Let’s see what we could have won!
house-prices
The UK house price crisis has been a long time on the boil. Here’s a suitably long post on ways we might constructively burst it.
The stock market isn’t convinced all is rosy in the UK housing market. Is this an opportunity to profit?
Curious about the government’s new Help to Buy scheme? Have I got the infographic for you.
Like an Empty Nester cocooned in equity in a four-bed detached house overlooking the Green Belt who frets about what his daughter will do to afford a £200,000 bedsit in Brixton, I’ve got a split mind when it comes to UK residential property. UK houses still feel expensive, not least by the traditional measure of [...]
Are UK house prices going to stay elevated compared to their old incomes or rent measures, and why does it matter?
I’ve a hunch that listed house builders will do a lot better than an investment in housing in the next few years. Here’s why.
The house price predictions for 2011 are mainly for modest 1-2% falls, although a couple of bears expect double digit declines. Nobody expects prices to rocket.
First time buyers will pay no stamp duty on houses up to £250,000, but spending £1 million costs more
Funny how one of the world’s richest men understands how young first-time buyers have been impoverished by crazily high house prices.
A frozen chicken would cost £47 if the cost had risen like house prices have since 1971. Does it matter?
All the major UK house price predictions for 2010 in one spot. This way, they can all be wrong in the same boat!
You can’t live in an equity portfolio, however much it helps you sleep at night. Should I follow the rich kids into property?
They say even dead cats bounce, and that’s equally true of markets. While I wouldn’t be surprised to see this week’s stock market rally turn into something more substantial over the next 18 months, I’d be shocked if UK house prices are higher in 2010. I write this in the light of yesterday’s report from [...]
(Image by: magnus) What has the UK government got against young people? Why is it obsessed with pulling up the drawbridge to anyone who’d like to buy a home but who can’t afford (or won’t pay) credit bubble prices? I will declare my interest: I rent, having decided several years ago that housing was too [...]
Following my recent post on the Government’s urging banks to help reckless (sorry, ‘hard-pressed’) borrowers, a reader alerted me to this excellent article from Vince Cable of the Liberal Democrats in The Independent pointing out that banks played their part in pumping up prices: British banks, in particular, lent too much, too quickly, too carelessly, [...]
Not content with lending billions to the banks and bailing out Northern Rock, the UK government has set its sights on homeowners who are struggling to pay their mortgages. According to the BBC: Homeowners will have enough support to ensure that their homes are not repossessed, the government says. The comments came after key mortgage [...]
The newspapers are full of stories about the rapid inflation in basic foodstuffs like rice and potatoes. We’re warned of social unrest, new global inequalities, and even the selfishness of speculation (which you can engage in via an agricultural ETF, although I prefer to think of it as insurance against my escalating grocery bill). Yet [...]
Things are looking ever gloomier for those who see the latest stalling in house price acceleration as more a speed bump then a socking great wall being hit by a Great British love affair that’s been drunk at the wheel for years. According to the latest Royal Institute for Chartered Surveyors (RICS) survey for March: [...]
In gloomy accord with Nationwide seeing UK house prices falling across every single region for the first time in 30 years, Halifax has now released monthly figures for March estimating UK house prices have dropped 2.5%. Some areas are down twice that. House prices have now fallen year on year. In March 2007, Halifax had [...]
More evidence that house prices are really falling comes from the Nationwide building society, in its latest official house price index. While it tries to draw attention more to annual figures in the accompanying commentary, which are still very much up, the quarterly figures for January to March 2008 are dreadful. House prices haven’t fallen [...]
Ireland is falling. The US is plunging. After 15 years of house price growth and five years of house price bubble, is the UK housing market aksi turning downwards? Will Elvis finally be spotted on the moon? Prices are certainly stalling, with a drop of 0.4% in London last month according to the Land Registry. [...]
While many people have made a fortune out of property in the UK over the past few years, some have lost a packet – even as prices continued to rise. These are the so-called ‘Sell-to-Rent’ brigade, who attempt to time the peaks and troughs of the house price cycle by selling their home at the [...]
New government statistics reveal home ownership in the UK is the lowest it’s been for a decade. In London there are an incredible 110,000 fewer home owners than in 2001 (not that surprising if you’ve seen London prices recently). Blame buy-to-let.
“A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.” Robert Frost Whether to buy your own home or not is a tricky question for anyone wanting financial freedom. Now that might seem to some a mad statement; in most English [...]
Buying a house in Britain today costs a lot more than renting it. Fair enough, you might think: Home owners have seen prices triple in the past decade, so it’s understandable that it should cost more to buy your suburban castle and so potentially profit than to merely rent it. But wait a minute: If [...]