Hi all,

not sure if anyone else is keeping an eye on Fife (except myself of course!).

In any case, i have stats etc. going back to January 2007 if anyone want's them.

Currently, rightmove have >1200 properties listed - which is about the peak from the whole of 2007. So it looks promising on the supply side. ESPC counts are looking to be slightly ahead of last year, but not by as much as I'd expect. By April we should know a lot more.

Have also started collecting propertybee stats from 29th Jan 2008 - which i believe can be loaded into anyones PC.

Some recent pricedrops to note:

http://www.espc.com/Buying/236417.html has dropped from fixed 240k to 219k fixed.

This one in Dalgety BAy http://www.espc.com/Buying/244516.html has INCREASED in price by 20K in January 08 after having been on the market since July 07!!!

I'll try and keep the thread up to date with any further increases(!?) drops on the properties in Fife, as well as being able to supply the propertybee CSVs to anyone that wants them. (I'll go through EVERYTHING in Fife around once a week)

Anyone else out there looking at Fife?

Here's another: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-191...=1&tr_t=buy A wonderful modernist house originally marketed late last year at an optimistic o/o £1,000,000 , now a bargain at o/o £875,000. Still a lot of dough for a three bedroom house, however beautiful it is.

Difficult one to value I guess, but surely it cannot be worth more than £600,000 ?

I've been watching over the whole of scotland on ESPC and tracking the % of fixed price. This time last year 26% of listings were fixed price, compared with the current figure of 34% . A possible indication of slowdown, given that fixed price typically comes as a last resort after offers over marketing has failed.

Hi SE, thanks for taking the time. That Cupar house sure does still look expensive. Amazing considering something like this House in Cupar is close by, has a paddock and is 300k cheaper!

I recently moved back to Scotland after a few years of travelling, and don't understand who can afford to buy anything! Ex-council houses go for around 100k around Dunfermline - it's unbelievable. Having seen the prices, i decided to rent - and am renting a big 5 bed house for 1k/month. The interest on my money in the bank covers 3/4 of that, so the real cost to live here is ~250/month. To buy it, i would use up all my money, and still need a 200k mortgage! So i'd be 1000/month worse off by buying it.

On another note, I used to think the ESPC was always 1st choice for looking for houses in Fife, but since I started collecting the stats, Rightmove are WAY ahead. Admittedly, they do include new builds which ESPC don't seem to.

Currently for Fife, Rightmove have over 1200 properties, whilst the ESPC are ~470.

Cheers for now,

F

Also in Fife, looking to buy again at some point. Need to find another rental property this summer.

Presently 5 bed, 3000 sqft, £875 per month.

Hi S2R,

you're looking at >50% drops to make buying cheaper than renting with those figures! Thats how crazy things have got.

I have plenty of priced out friends, kicking themselves that they didn't buy 5-10 years ago. It's pretty dire for them, i do try and cheer them up by spouting the HPC mantra, and believe it's only a matter of time.

Latest drop 21 Bridges View-Dunfermline originally (10/07) on at offers over 245k, moved to fixed 265k, now it can be yours for 249k or less!

I sold on the same development in 2006. Had to reduce the price and fix it to sell. Didn't even get viewings until it was reduced.

Went to look at a house yesterday. New build, previous sale apparently fell through, and IIRC it was built at least 2 years ago. The price has been dropped by about 25%, hence our interest. We like the house and considered making a cheeky offer of about 10% below that.

However, even if that was accepted I think it would be financial suicide.

Adding up the difference in price in renting a similar property (lost interest from sell to rent fund and also paying out a mortgage, buildings insurance, repairs), and then applying a quarterly drop of 1.6% to the price, it would mean that I would be working simply to support the difference in price between owning and renting!

Then do you buy yet? Do you ****.

Fife prices are hilarious. Even the Edinburgh commutable areas. The 'in the sticks' stuff around 'Coaltown of Councilscheme' etc. is dutch flower craze type overpriced.

I sent this to the agent, who will probably laugh:

Thanks for arranging the viewing of .....

We like the property and have considered putting in an offer. We have already sold our house and are presently renting. Based on the asking price, we have a 67% deposit available, and the required mortgage would be less than 1.4 times our joint income. Our moving date is at present totally flexible. We also note that the property has already been reduced in price.

Despite the above favourable factors, we feel that the offer we would make in the current economic situation would be too far away from the asking price to be acceptable to the seller.

If the most recent 1.6% quarterly drop in Scottish prices were to continue, then taking into account rental costs on similar value properties, and setting that against lost interest on our deposit if we were to buy, as well as mortgage interest, maintenance and buildings insurance, we would be approx £x000 a month worse off by buying this house at the asking price than we would be renting something comparable.

I wish you the best in selling this property. If for some reason it continues not to sell and there are further price developments I would be happy to reconsider our position based on a further assessment of the rental market and changes in the price of housing in the wider market.

Sock it to them s2r!

I've been wavering a bit recently, some great mortgage deals available with first direct. I prefer to go down the flexible offset route, and they are offering either a 4.75% fix for 2 years, or a 5.15% fix for 10 years! The 10 year deal almost sounds too good to be true on an offset.

In any case - i've found my biggest drop so far:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-165...=6&tr_t=buy

It's been dropped by 50k today!!!

Fife inventory is currently looking great with ESPC totals of 533 (almost up to last years max!) and Rightmove at 1340 (higher than at any time last year).

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-165...=6&tr_t=buy

I almost spat coffee on the keyboard when I saw that price. Average wage in that place the whatever a Giro is these days. It's not really Edinburgh commutable either. For that money, you could purchase a slightly smaller house on the southern Edinburgh outskirts anyways.

Dream, dream on. That will be a 240k house in a years time. Or maybe even less.

The house itself has a certain appeal, but the location is woeful.

I'd be very worried about being burglarized or violated in some other unimaginably horrible fashion by crack heads.

Indeed, i had a thread sometime last year discussing the ludicrous effects of HPI, where the non-desirable locations end up costing just as much as the desirable ones. There are plenty of crappy places in Fife, where you wouldn't want to live, but most of these places now have new build 'schemes' and their prices are the same as the better/safer places. That in turn feeds it's way down to even the council estates where a 3 bed ex-LA semi is ~100k in all the Fife towns just now.

If we have a serious downturn in the economy, crime will go through the roof in these areas - and you'll see the prices in all these villages/towns be reduced to more realistic prices. >50% drops...

Another Repo just on the market in Duloch today.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-100...=1&tr_t=buy

I went to see 3 Caithness Drive (just round the corner) a few months back. It was on at OO 270k (Sold for 303k in 2004)

Here are the details Click to view attachment

It needed some work doing on it, but it was HUGE - tiny garden though, and located right on the 'main' road. We offfered 250k as it was a repo - and the previous sale fell through.

This new one looks like they've ripped the carpets up as well.

I wonder if some of these houses were bought on lie to buy mortgages? I could never figure out how they could sell so many of them over 250k back in 2004/2005. I mean where were the people getting the money from? I doubt there's many folk that can service that big a debt for long - especially if their fixed rates are coming to an end. Am expecting these sorts of houses to fall back to around their original 2004 prices - maybe even a bit less. The few that manage to sell this/last year have been VERY lucky.

There are quite a lot for sale in that particular development. (All over 300k - for now!)

Love the fact they are still trying to sell these. My wife and I looked at Sovereign last August, and I thought they were wildly overpriced in the market as it was then. Not a hope now unless they reduce the price. Which they haven't. So it looks like stalemate.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/buy/clackmannanshire/dollar

If they get real, I'd buy. Otherwise, good luck to them. They'll need it.

Did you see that 2 bed flat for 615k? Is that a misprint?

If i had that sort of money to spend, i'd almost certainly be building my own place. Plots are hard to find, but they do come up - and there are always steadings around.

Incredibly, not a misprint. Thats the price.

The sales lady wondered why I laughed my head off when she told me the prices. They're asking London prices, and high end London prices at that, for frickin' Dollar

On the houses, they dont even turf the back yard. Even if you drop a million plus on the biggest one. Oh right, thats value for money indeed.

Having. A. Laugh.

OK, the figures are coming on nicely - ESPC has 6941 properties listed which is ~3% higher than the June peak last year, and 13% higher than this time last year.

Fife is coming on much better with 615 listings on ESPC and 1451 on Rightmove. Thats a 46% increase on numbers from this time last year!!! With the coming mortgage resets throughout this year, and the resulting hike in peoples payments, i'd expect to see a lot more houses coming onto the market this year. The forced sellers will start to grind the prices down, and i'd expect the ROS figures to be YOY negative for the oct-dec quarter.

Was speaking to a local estate agent, and he was telling me that they usually had a peak of around 100 properties in the year, but they currently have around 140. He still thought that prices would only drop ~5% though. I did manage to keep my thoughts to myself on that one!