Hi All,

I have been reading on this forum for quite a while because I was worried about what I was supposed to do with my flat. We wanted a house and we could buy or sell. After a lot of thinking, we visited about 15 houses and loved one whith a lot of work to do but a big potential.
So we put ours for sale just slightly below what the estate agent recommended (they said 180k , we put it for 175k). During the first two weeks, we had 2 viewings, not good. That was end of October. in the last 3 weeks, we had 10 viewings and 2 offers last friday, one fomr a FTB, one from someone buying for his daughter. They offered at 170k, less than 3% below asking which we were happy to accept.
I then thought I was lucky and I checked the status of the other 14 properties we visited but did not offer on and all but 1 were either sold or under offer. I then phoned my estate agent saying they seem to have been doing well recently and they told me they sold more houses in the last 3 weeks than in the last 3 months before that.
Whether it's gonna crash or not is still a mistery to me but things have definitely picked up where I live.
I live in South west London just at the border with Surrey. It may be very different anywhere else though.
New builds, however, don't seem to be selling well but after visiting one, it's no wonder, they're small and expensive, have electric storage heater (there's nothing worse than that) and a £1000 a year maintenance cost.

What town are you in?

the troll force is strong in this one, master

I believe it, certain areas in London definately seem to be picking up (unfortunately ).

A while back on HPC I reported that E/A contacts told me the London market in summer was booming (20% more sales than this time last year).

Dr Bubb, said this was just 'market noise' and down to some E/As mopping - up business from the hugely larger number going under / fairing badly.

I went on to say many B2L people were adding to thier portfolios, some with the aim of flipping for a profit in 2006.

Looks like my fabled 'anecdotal evidence', much dispised by HPC grapgh loving bears, has once again proven usefull.

This topic was started by the same poster

Seems to me the the general public have decided that prices aren't going to fall a lot unless interest rates rise a lot.

I mentioned a worst case scenario a few weeks ago. It bears repeating:

1) Sufficient activity in housing market Oct / November for VIs to report a healthy market.
2) In December and January VIs trumpet the expected rate decrease in February.
3) Rates decreased.
4) SPRING BOUNCE

I'm now reviewing this idea and I think we'll have a spring bounce next year in London, SE and south Midlands even if rates rise (so long as there aren't predictions of multiple rises).

Prices have been stagnant or falling in the south for a while now I think many people think prices are now "reasonable".

If I was an STR in London - I'd buy.
If I was an STR in SE - I'd think strongly about buying
If I was an STR in Oxford - I'd think about buying
If I was north of Birmingham - I'd not buy.

I have been posting regularly (last 2 weeks) about SW London - things most definitely picking up. Especially the properties over 2m - which is not relevant to FTB's I know - but it is relevant about city money & bonuses.


The point I have tried to make is this:

if all the FTB's wait & wait to pick the exact bottom of the current slowdown, what is going to happen when everyone decides it is the bottom?

Well- anyone who wants to buy will pitch in & the prices will move up - or they will all be chasing around after properties & not able to buy what they want when they want.

I personally would prefer to buy when it is a buyers market - which it is at the moment - but (round here) apparently not for much longer.

Honestly, I have no interest one way or the other for the property market to go. If it falls, I can buy cheaper my next home(percentage descrease as long as I upgrade this is true), if it does not change, It will cost me a bit more but I will not have to worry about negative equity or anything like that.

I live in West Molesey, this is near Hampton Court, Kingston Upon Thames and Surbiton. It is an area that's been growing in the last few years as the ones mentioned above became unafordable for most people.

The estate agent had no interest in telling me rubbish as I know her quite well. She'd told me how the FTB market was slow or inexistant when I told her I wanted to sell.

Completely agree with that strategy

Outside SE - think they are slightly behind SE - SE has been static/falling for 2 years & now (IMHO) bottomed out.

LL has a point, but in most parts of the country most FTBs are still expected to stretch to ridiculous levels of debt to get on the first rung (without any prospect of being able to ever live somewhere other than the first rung pokey flat, since inflation won't erode the debt), so I would expect any 'bounce' to only consist of FTBs on very large salaries (i.e. it will be limited in size, and followed by declining prices) - it may also be geographically contained, since there are more people on high salaries in London than elsewhere.

People talk about affordability (both in terms of house prices and rental prices). Well, disposable income is declining. However, the point about the City bonuses and rich people on high salaries (including rich young FTB people) in London makes it seem as if the market there could be quite different.

And in-between his house has turned into a flat!!!


The housing market is MAGIC!!!

So you're saying it only took them 6-7 weeks to sell?

Mmm, that would tie in nicely with what the surveys tells us.

and ?

Hi All,
I have been lurking on this forum for quite a while because I was worried about what I was supposed to do with my fast crashing property. We wanted a house and we could buy or sell for profit. After a lot of thinking, we logged on and decided to troll out a tall story about the market picking up again ect. missed the boat, this time its different. in the hope to lever opinion back to the impossible.

sorry if i have posted this before under a different name.

London Landlady,

When the market really bottoms MOST people (especially the average FTB) will not want to know about buying property.

No it took them a lot longer than that as most of them had been on the market for a while when I visited them. What I meant was that they all sold in the last 3-4 weeks, nothing about how long they've been on the market

Makes perfect sense. I have been looking at East / West Molesey at the moment, as I am priced out of the better parts of Kingston / Surbiton. The difference in price between these two areas has gone down dramatically in recent years, and the decent (well-priced) properties certainly seem to be moving pretty quickly.

I would be interested to know what you think of the area? It looks great to me, near to the river and plenty of open space with the only downside being the poor train service from Hampton Court.

Well, it has never happened before and history does tend to repeat itself.

However, if you use your argument, and if no-one wants to buy - this will mean that they............rent.

Which is good news to anyone renting out properties.

Hold on hold on there just a minute 'undecided' - in your rubbish thread about 'aren't you all upset about not being able to buy' (duh, yeah, that's why we come to HPC to bitch and see if things might change) you bang on about your house.

"We have lived here for 5 years, we made this house look eactly like we wanted. When we come back from work and get in our house, it feels like home, it feels good and I feel proud about what we've achieved in it. If we'd been renting, we would have been in someone else's house, we could not even paint it the way we wanted, let alone changing the kitchen or bathroom and we would have people coming to check our place regularly to make sure we did not make too many holes in the wall or made the ugly carpet dirty."

But here you're talking about your flat. OK, Undecided, the jig is up, you're plainly not undecided at all, you're plainly some foxton's estate agent who fancies themselves a sneakster.

Isn't this the point at which one says AWOOGA?!!

I then phoned my estate agent saying they seem to have been doing well recently and they told me they sold more houses in the last 3 weeks than in the last 3 months before that.

Hardly convincing.

EAs always tell me business is good. They're like Parrots.

Also don't forget that unfavourable sales data compared to poor/no sales can always be spun into something it isn't...

Well sorry for the previous post, it was a flat and not a house.
But I am sure that you can explain what difference it makes to the topics in question.


as for what I said here, if you don't believe me, ignore me but don't try and say that I am a liar as I have no interest to lie (but I am sure someone will find a good reason). I am just reporting what I have seen in my little world (5 sq miles). It may well be very different 10 miles down the road but I have not visited any houses there.

Except if actual disposable income is decreasing, people will not have more money to spend on rent - so more people will share, more people will stay at home, more people will emigrate (and the people emigrating will be the young workers who drive the economy).

I'm seeing a funny thing with rents at the moment - the obvious recent BTLs are trying to inflate rental asking prices, but since you can rent a 3-bed house for the same price as a (new build) 1-bed flat, you see the asking rent gradually decreasing by £50pcm over time.

The rich always get rich off the back of the less well off, but if (because of taxes etc) the poor have less money to spend - there is a limit to how far you can keep squeezing people until it all implodes.

Are you serious? That there is only one Bullish person in the UK or should I say - on this forum? you cannot accuse everyone who is bullish of being the same poster - it is utterly bizzarre.

Yes Undecided lives in SW London/Surrey

Yes I live in SW london

There the similarity ends.

Yeah, easy slip of the tongue that one, house and flat, particularly when you've lived in your house for 5 years as you claimed to have done. Hang on, what's this I'm living in, is it a flat or a house, shit, keep forgetting.

The difference it makes to the topics in questions is that you're making it all up because you're a big and not very clever TROLL!!!

Well I am glad someone who knows the area believes me.
To answer your question, the area is great but you have to be careful about where you go.
Hurst Park and anything around new road is great as close to the thames and close to the good schools.
Anything below walton road is to avoid (high street, First Avenue with the flat roof houses). The schools there are not good and there's a lot of concil, ex-concil houses. I'd advise you to check upmystreet.com for any street you view as I found it to be very acurate as far as what is there.
Hurst Road is a bit noisy but close to the thames, Walton road is alright (traffic is slowed down there) and the closer to east molesey you get, the better but the higher the prices.

a new Tesco has been build there which has definitely added value to the area, the surgeries (wine medical centre in particular) are great and I have never had to wait for more than 1 day to get an appointment. It is part of Kingston Hospital which has great reputation. we had our baby there and they were great.

As for the train service from Hampton court, there are plans to make it better as more and more people working in London are coming towards there. If you look near the station, they are building some flats there and that will be for commuters. The best when commuting to London (I did it for 3 years) is to take the train up to Surbiton and then change for a fast train into London. That will take you around 25 minutes.

Good luck and thanks for supporting me.

I was actually answering someone else (in my own ironic way) who was accusing you of lying. I was pointing out that your first post could have been part of the decision making process to sell & now you have a buyer.

So for some posters, you may need to explain why you said you had a flat, now a house, before you couldn't convince your girlfriend to sell, now you're selling suddenly.

These people are paranoid, you have to explain everything to be believed.

Thanks for that Mystic Meg

These people are not paranoid, TTRTT! If someone keeps saying 'I live in a house' and then several times refers to selling the flat they live in it looks very much like they're lying. I've never accused anyone else on this forum of lying before but this was really very obvious. I don't like being lied to. I similarly disapprove, by the way, of HPCers going onto other forums and lying there. It's a comprehensively crap thing to do.

http://www.findaproperty.co.uk/agent.aspx?...prop&pid=153259
http://www.findaproperty.co.uk/agent.aspx?...t=prop&pid=8280
http://www.findaproperty.co.uk/agent.aspx?...prop&pid=344347
http://www.findaproperty.co.uk/agent.aspx?...prop&pid=254306
http://www.findaproperty.co.uk/agent.aspx?...prop&pid=392170
http://www.findaproperty.co.uk/agent.aspx?...prop&pid=203862
http://www.findaproperty.co.uk/agent.aspx?...prop&pid=153290
http://www.findaproperty.co.uk/agent.aspx?...prop&pid=203814
http://www.findaproperty.co.uk/agent.aspx?...prop&pid=344390
http://www.findaproperty.co.uk/agent.aspx?...prop&pid=212275
http://www.findaproperty.co.uk/agent.aspx?...prop&pid=153341
http://www.findaproperty.co.uk/agent.aspx?...prop&pid=335450


There are two I can't find anymore, I'd need to look again when I have more time.
But,as usual, most of you will say that I just picked them at random.
Why don't you phone the estate agents and ask them when they sold as some of you have nothing more to do that worry about my use of house or flat !

Sorry London Landlady, what is it that has never happened before?

Are you saying the market has never bottomed before or that when the market has bottomed before people FLOODED back in to buy so it never happened that people were put off buying property at the bottom of the market?

Last time around (using the 'real' value of London houses based on Nationwide quarterly data deflated by RPI) the peak was in Q3 1988.

A £1,000 (real terms) investment in London property at 30/9/1988 fell in value (in real terms) to £540 by 31/3/1996 (that is, almost half of the wealth tied up in London property was wiped out over this seven-and-a-half-year period). But you could have bought for less than £600 any time fron 30/9/1992 through to 30/9/1996 (four solid years).

In fact, you could have bought at less than 5% away from the ultimate low (in real terms) for an entire three-year period. I can only assume you were not active in the London property market back in 1993/4/5 if you believe people were desperately buying up "cheap" property. I remember being very well aware at that time that people did not want to touch property.



As for your "renting" argument, we seem to have found ourselves back at the same argument you couldn't stand up the last time around. I am already renting, if I don't want to buy how does that provide any extra support for the market?

I'm still waiting for you to logically explain why people not buying will provide support for landlords (other than what is already there).

so you haven't sold it yet then. you have accepted an offer. didn't your friend "the estate agent" explain the difference? ...

I am very sorry I am creating so much craziness. Would that help If I tell you that English is not my first language. I meant home when I used house but I am sure that you are not going to make this mistake if I ask you to tell me this in French, Spanish or German.

I am glad people worry about such important things in life as the calling of a home.

Thanks for the info. The area looks of interest and is certainly a whole lot cheaper than Surbiton!

Undecided,

Can I ask you to go a little easy on such over-excited responses - it's just that a LOT of tedious people from websites like Singing Pig do come over here to post rubbish that doesn't actually hold up to scrutiny (so when someone sees you posting about your house and then sees you change you mind to a flat they think it is just yet another wind up).

I hope you'll stay and make your opinion known (and be prepared to argue/back them up - as you seem entirely happy to do and capable of doing).

What will not happen is people not wanting to buy property.

Yes I was active in 95 - I viewed & offered on a property & exchanged in early 1996. My 1st BTL. The market was still a buyers market. I bought again in 1997 - prices had moved up and I bought again in 1999 again - market had moved again.

The properties people bought in 1988 did drop by 20% and then over the next 15 yeras went up by 200% - so not a bad investment even if they did buy at the peak of the market.

The argument for renting is that if FTB's do noy buy, the potential FTB population will increase - people live longer - immigration etc - so if FTB's don't buy, they will rent & there will be more of them to rent so demand will go up.

Whoops are u not in tune?

I've made many a bearish post this year but now I'm seeing (and have seen for a while) a far busier market. End of.

So, I am willing to adjust my view as the market changes, why are'nt you? Members might conclude you cant bare to face facts.

That just doesn't cut it - my job is knowing a second language and nobody who can write a foreign language as well as you write English would repeatedly mistake 'house' for 'flat' - it's impossible. And don't try to dismiss this as me being petty - the devil is always in the detail and the detail here says that you are quite simply a liar.

I looked up West Molesey on primelocation & there were 60 properties for sale 7 of which are under offer. I haven't counted the duplicate properties (on with more than 1 agent) - but unless you know how many properties were on 3 months ago it's not really relevant.

well, that' because you don't know the area and you don't know where the ones not selling are.
Look at how many town house style houses (70s) you can see for sale and how many are sold ( a few are overpriced I agree and not selling). They can easily be recognised to to the tiled walls and the large bay windows. These all are on a nice area close to the thames and the good school although, I must admit, the buildings themselves are ugly.
West Molesey is half private, half ex-concil or concil. You just have to know which end you want to be in and people wanting to buy will quickly figure that one out.

Very true. Glad you posted this as it's describing the nature of a cycle. The ftb masses weren't sitting tight with their borrowed money waiting to pounce at their perception of a bottomed out market.

So when exactly did the FTB's get active last time round? was it in 94,95,96? prices were moving up & what did they do? I don't kknow as I wasn't an FTB then.

so be it, I am a liar and you are the truth of the world. I give up on you but please keep posting these interesting analysis.

I am intrigued by this response, as a very good friend of mine is a commercial architect and he told me that the big developers are actually dusting off schemes which were on hold & getting them going. He has never been busier.

So, you started to become active pretty much right at the bottom of the market - well done. My point is it had been a buyer's market for YEARS (even if you were busy doing something else). If you actually see a graph of average London property prices (nominal or real terms) there is an impressive trough... it was not a V-shaped recovery as you imply, people did not fill their boots, slowly over time the market recovered before it took off again. Potential buyers had YEARS to decide whether to buy again or not, you didn't need to time the bottom of the market to the nearest week.

That property bought in 1998 was a good investment long-term (if a crap investment for MANY years though) assuming you were able to ride through the downturn. Many were not able to.

Without wishing to bore you too much with stats, the real £1,000 was re-gained in Q2 2001 (nearly 13 years later- that is 0% real capital return over a 13-year period on an ungeared investment). There was a lot of inflation and other things that make the nominal investment look fantastic. I'd suggest you'd be unwise to rely on it happening again.



On the renting argument you are saying that the number of new renters/immigrants will exceed the number of people dying/emigrating. I believe the UK's demographics suggest there are more elderly heading off to meet their maker than newborns coming through (this has been true for some time) so it seems you are relying rather heavily on new rental demand from immigrants. This may come through... but I'd encourage you to consider the opposite side of the coin in terms of the impact all of these immigrants are going to have on the wage levels that underpin the ability to pay rents.

Well , after a 3 year slump previously ftb probably did start buying homes again in this period. This is before prices started to balloon and it became a speculative market.

Unfortunately, if you are branded a Troll, you cannot use the PM service, or edit posts. or join in polls......................................................yawn.

Hit a nerve did I old boy?

BTW, the London market recovers well prior to the likes of West Mouldy. The recover I speak of is in London.

As for your 'dont patronise me in future', I'm shaking like a leaf.

This is very much how I imagined the town from my initial views of it.

A lot of towns are like this. For example, Surbiton is divided into two very distinct areas, Tolworth and Surbiton itself. If you were to look on rightmove without knowing the area it would be difficult to get a reliable view of it. At the moment, there is a 3 bed '30s semi on the market on Tolworth for £249k, and a very similar one on in Surbiton for £515k - a bit of a difference!

I have kept a close eye on both areas over the last couple of years - sometimes one is moving and the other isn't, sometimes they are both slow. Totally different areas within the same postcode.

Unfortunately, the general direction this forum seems to be taking at the moment is one of seizing every bit of good news as near-definite proof of a crash, and dismissing anything negative out of hand.

If undecided is an EA/VI he must be delighted that his thread has caused the most interest out of any on the forum today.

If he had posted one called 'West Molesey is crashing fast' I bet he would not have caused nearly such a stir.

Indeed, my sister-in-law had her flat in Thames Ditton on the market from January to September this year. She only had a few viewings over that period and gave up in the end and has re-thought her plans. I had better get on to her and tell her to stick it back on now that things have picked up so much!

Funny thing was the various EAs she was with said she should not drop her price.

I wonder what has happened in the last couple of months that has made property that was completely unaffordable suddenly affordable?