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UK House prices: News & Views


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On 11/23/2018 at 10:57 PM, drbubb said:

Sounds like you might have to wait a bit to find a distressed seller willing to take a realistic price

I thought I would drop by and provide an update. After selling up in 2017 with a view to downsizing and retiring, we lived with one of my sons until we found a place to buy. We bought a small bungalow in West Dorset in the spring of 2019. We rented a place down here for 3 months and basically viewed a property a day for 3 months. Despite virtually all of them needing work and having some major disadvantage (too near the A35 being the most common one), vendors would not accept offers. Sometimes they wouldn't drop by a grand, never mind, say, five grand.

The place we bought is in a nice town with amenities - shops, pubs, cafes etc and a nice community feel. The countryside is beautiful and the jurassic coast close enough to walk the dog there several times a week. Our bungalow needed lots of work - but it has great views from the back garden. I had a builder in for a while after we bought it - knocked down a wall to make kitchen bigger, rewired, replumbed, new flooring, new plastered ceilings, new kitchen, created an en-suite, refitted the bathroom, redecoration throughout. We probably spent £50k on it between the Spring and Autumn of 2019. We moved here in October 2019 and a few months later Covid appeared.

Once the lockdowns started I confidently predicted a house price crash! Again. (I have regularly predicted them before and rarely been right - and then only half right). I watched in amazement and astonishment as, despite estate agents being 'shut', property not only continued to sell but prices went up! Despite the widespread predictions of economic turmoil, job losses etc. - the market went up.

So, to sum up, it has become clear to me that a house price CRASH is an illusion. Occasionally the market stagnates. Occasionally prices harden - a little. Rarely - only once in my lifetime (late 1980s - early 1990s) have they actually, really fallen to the point where the market has reset at a lower price. Even the 2008 financial crash didn't really do much to lower house prices - certainly not if you take virtually any 5 year period. As long as banks can create money out of thin air and lend it as mortgages, the market will never, actually fall.

And, to top if off, as it were - our bungalow has gone up by at least 25% (on top of the 50k we have spent on it). Property is still selling quickly here as the exodus from the South East continues. I keep meeting people who have just moved here. The book club I joined has 13 of us in it - only one member has lived here for longer than a few years. We are all incomers - bringing money into the area.

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Hmm.

Weird ghost post here, from one of the Russian pests.  I cannot find it to delete it

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