Rob Morton-Jone

11 months.......i bet you were pulling youre hair out! :scared:

Paul2004

I was just thinking that, altho just shows it only takes the one offer! ...

JAYMAC

We have now had our house up for sale for exactly one year (how time flies!) we still dont have the visa and were trying to be one step ahead, planning on renting or moving in with in laws. Anyway houses in our area arent selling very well and as a result we have ended up reducing the house from 220K to offers over 189k - which is really bottom end of what we need to make the move to Oz.

In the first 11 months on the market we received half a dozen viewers, we have just reduced again in August and are now getting 2 - 3 viewers per week. we have just refused an offer of 185K ??? this afternoon and dont know if this was the right decision so now consuming large amounts of wine (australian) to deaden the pain!

Good luck to everyone in the same boat. (We expect that we will get news of our visa shortly - meds done and assurance of support paid on friday)

Jaymac

teach

almost bald, mate!

odaat

good grief !!

I thought the penny would have dropped by now that selling houses in UK and hoping to start out in Oz flush with cash was a thing of the long dead past.

Has one not heard that house prices in Australia are overpriced as they are in UK, that major house price falls across the east coast of Oz have already begun.

That the Australian dollar is far too strong to be sending large quantities of Sterling over right now.

That mortgage rates in Oz are almost 8% and climbing

I will not go into the subject of work practices - just do not expect open arms, bags of money and promotion for washing up on Ozzie shores from windswept UK.

On my part - I have done the full circle, sold up in UK, Bought in Oz, sold up in Oz and now back in UK

FWIW - I would stop listening to smarmy estate agents and the bull on TV about house prices "never falling", and that the "lift" in house prices are just round the next corner. I would start listening to what the buyer is willing to pay and accept the fact house prices have fallen month on month across country.

We are now in a house price falling cycle, it is going to get nasty as more and more people are stung with job losses in UK. Credit debt increases, divorce and family breakup occurs, business bankruptcy and the death of the newbie BTL landlord. All these factors are going to cause prices to fall rapidly.

At the bottom end of the property ladder - cheap state housing projects and housing association "deals" will remove what is left of the FTB group from the housing market - stagnation followed by house prices plummeting are the obvious next step.

Selling at the price buyers are willing to pay in hard cash / mortgage in line with today's buyers in your area is the only way to go, swallow the loss if you have to and start out again in Oz with renting.

Put the money in the bank and wait out house price falls in Oz and buy up when the price is right.

As for those who are utterly mad enough to withdraw equity on a house and then watch the house prices falling month on month will really get to understand the meaning of the word negative equity D-E-B-T.

I can just hear it now .... "teacher" what do you call those people who go into debt re-mortgaging and then going to a new country and getting into more D-E-B-T at this stage in the property cycle when house prices have stagnated and ready to fall ?.

BTW - recovering debt via Australia is easier than you think

I sold off 2 houses in UK in '98, and bought houses and flats in Oz over the last 7 years "WHEN PRICES WERE A THIRD OF WHAT THEY ARE NOW, I sold the lot last year and returned to UK.

Take it from me, it is the guy with cash in the bank who is king in UK as well as in Oz when it comes to house buying - and will be for the next few years.

I am starting to cherry pick buying quality property again in UK for letting purposes, I am offering 20 - 30% below the offer price and I am getting results.

I have never regretted the move and the selling/buying property. Thank god I did it while property prices were in a sharp rising market in Oz with capital used for the purchases from sterling at a time when the Ozzie dollar was crap.

Those times are well and truly over.

The dread of falling house prices and related debt misery will seem like an endemic plague to homeowners with large mortgage DEBT and little capital and plummeting house prices - save yourself the hassle of negative equity and try thinking outside the box.

It takes balls migrating, and it takes cold hard reasoning to ensure financial freedom.

The A Team

BRILLIANT NEWS

Gjn200

Accepted offer today at -£3500, hope it goes through........

Rooksie

isnt cut and paste brilliant !!

JAYMAC

Sure I have read this before somewhere today! At the end of the day I am sure every individual weighs up the pros and cons of their own personal circumstances and at this moment, we have 2 - 3 viewers per week and still no visa so I think its sensible to hold off for another week or two to see whether we can get anywhere near the 'lower end price' that we have set for ourselves.

Jaymac

odaat

Its the message not the messenger you want to be paying heed to.

Try moving from or to

odaat

More cut and paste , this time the message is from a most respected investment house in the oil rich gulf - I have been using this investment advice for years and they have not missed the "next big thing" yet.


"Is real estate yesterday's asset class"?
In the mid-1970s a global real estate bubble burst under the pressure of high oil prices and rising interest rates.

Are we about to see the same thing happen again in the oil consuming nations; and what about the outlook for real estate in the oil producing countries?

United Arab Emirates: Saturday, September 24 - 2005 at 10:58

This is not an original thesis. 'The Economist' magazine has been banging on for the best part of a year about the extent of overvaluation in global real estate markets.

Markets have indeed begun to cool: most notably in Australia and the UK over the past 12 months. However, the US housing market is still charging ahead, albeit with new housing starts showing some weakness in August.

'The Economist' reckons it is only a matter of time before the same forces take hold in the US as in the UK and Australia.

In part this would represent a natural fall from unsustainably high prices - which means just higher than buyers can pay - and in part due to revised buyer circumstances: vis-�*-vis rising interest rates, high energy prices and a less certain economic outlook particularly for jobs.

Lest we forget, global rental yields on property have fallen to record lows on the back of a long period of low interest rates.

For yields to recover to normal levels either rents have to surge or property prices must fall.

Given the pressures on consumer spending right now, an adjustment through real estate prices looks far more likely.

Global real estate in the past few years has acquired all the characteristics of a classic investment bubble.

For a start everyone has done well, even the dimmest investor is showing a profit; and any person that you meet will tell you that you can not loose on property, especially those with zero expertise.

This is surely the classic sign of an investment boom at the top of the cycle: universal optimism.


Yields must reflect prices
What people forget is that the very forces that have driven property prices to levels way beyond that justified by rental yield - which is the only true measure of value in property - also work in reverse.

You get an upward spiral in property prices, and a downward spiral in property prices.

The UK property scene, for example, is in a state of denial.

The fact is, pure and simple if you want to sell a property today you will need to knock 15-20% off your imagined peak price. Otherwise, you will not get a single buyer - and indeed that is why many would be sellers report waiting months without a single enquiry.

But as soon as somebody does sell at this new, lower price a benchmark is set for the next seller - or the person who just has to sell because they are moving to another area.

And so prices continue on down, as the seller who took a lower price will expect the same when they buy!

From the perspective of 'The Economist' it is obvious that a long period of abnormally low interest rates has gradually puffed up a house price bubble of historic proportions.

Indeed, this almost certainly is the biggest investment bubble in history.

The rational investor in oil consumer countries would sell, if possible.

In the oil states the position in less clear as local liquidity is surging.

Standard Chartered Bank forecasts a $75 billion current account surplus for Saudi Arabia next year, similar to this year!

Thus in the short-term at least, real estate - which is a great absorber of liquidity - should continue to rise in value.

The danger, of course, is that this is just a time-lag behind the global real estate bubble, and that once oil prices cool on lower demand from the industrialized world - due to a recession - then the real estate boom in the oil states will go bust in equally spectacular fashion.

Eeyore

We sold our house after seven months on the market and a fair bit of nail-biting, but after reading some of the replies here, I think we had it easy...

We had an offer after two weeks, but our buyers pulled out two months later (after all the searches etc had been done) after admitting that they couldn't get a mortgage. Thankfully, one of the people who'd originally viewed the house when it first went onto the market came back to us; we became part of a five-house chain and I was convinced that it was going to collapse, but we completed at the end of August, and we only had to drop £4000 on the asking price. I think we were definitely bloody lucky!

mandi248

That's brilliant Sarah! About time too Are you going to hand in your notice now or just leave? Have you booked those flights yet?
Mandi x

possoms

Congrats to you Sarah and also to Gin200 hope it all goes well

kevinl

Does anyone know is it just the East coast that has dropped?

We are going to Perth in January are the prices still rising ?
We are looking at Secret Harbour or South of Bunbury, yes I know wide choice, neither of which doesn't seem that cheap.

Kevin