WBB

yes, it's official, we are now well and truly on the house selling merry go round.

we had our valuations done last week and decided which one to go with and we are now the proud owners of a "for sale" sign outside the house and we have a top spot in the shop window.

we waited for the phone to ring today and the offers to come flooding in but.......nothing, not a sausage.

it can only get better than this.

nosuchluck

it can only get better than this.


[/QUOTE]



mmmmmmmm!

fingers crossed for you, me and everyone else on the merry go round!

sj oldfield

You gotta be having a laugh WBB..our first agents were shite.
We did some ringing around and went with Mann & Co, and they were a lot more pricey and would not budge on those fees.
guess what They are just as shite!!!!

artep

Don't rope off bits off your front garden for everyone to form an orderly queue down just yet Billy ........if anyone's getting a buyer soon its me an' Sandra........we've been waiting patiently for bloody ages! So get behind us in the queue for buyers cheeky boy!

teach

Hope you all get buyers soon. Hopefully the agent I will use won't mess us around... it's my dad. After the crap we went through last year when we were selling our old house, I'm not taking any chances. Luckily we now live in my dad's selling area.
Hope all goes well for you.
Sarah

WBB

houses have been selling as quickly as they go on the market around here, same day and same week sales are the norm, we are still hoping to be in aus by the end of the british summer...2 summers in a row, cant be bad.

kong

You may have left it too late to sell in the over inflated housing bubble.

Global house prices

Hair-raising

Jun 3rd 2004
From The Economist print edition


Australia's housing bubble could be the first to burst. It won't be the last

SEEKING to cut through the tangle of statistical measures of Britain's housing market, the economics editor of The Economist turned to her hairdresser. Last year, he was convinced that “buy to let� was a sure way to make money. Today, finding it harder to cover his costs with rents, he has decided to sell. A sign that the residential-property boom could soon turn to bust? Maybe. Figures, not just anecdote, also suggest that in Britain and elsewhere, housing markets look ready to fall.






Two years ago, we launched a set of house-price indicators, backdated to 1975, for 13 developed economies. In our latest quarterly update we have added three more countries: New Zealand, Denmark and Switzerland. Our indicators, based on data from estate agents, lenders and official sources, show that house prices are slowing in several economies that had been looking frothy. In America average house prices rose by only 1% in the first quarter of this year, the smallest quarterly increase for six years. Prices fell in 39 of the 220 metropolitan areas covered. Even so, prices were still 7.7% higher than a year before (see table). California saw the biggest gains, with prices up by 18% in Los Angeles. But higher mortgage rates may be starting to bite: new home sales fell by 12% in April, the biggest drop for ten years.

The average house price in Britain, as measured by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), rose by 7.8% in the year to March, down from an increase of 25% at the end of 2002. The ODPM index weights price changes by the value of homes in different parts of the country and is considered to be a more accurate measure than other indices which currently show prices rising much more rapidly.

Australia's housing market has weakened. According to official data, average house prices kept rising in the first quarter, leaving them 18% higher than a year before. However, figures collected by Australian Property Monitors, which are more timely because they are based on prices when contracts are signed rather than at settlement, suggest that home prices tumbled by an average of 8% in Sydney and by 13% in Melbourne in the first quarter. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the slide has continued since then. Last weekend in Sydney only one-third of properties put up for auction—the most common method of sale in Australia—were sold, signalling that prices have farther to fall.

The drop in house prices in Australian cities undermines a popular argument heard in Britain and America that even if house prices do look frothy, they are unlikely to fall unless there is a big rise in interest rates or a jump in unemployment. Neither has been needed in Australia. Interest rates have risen by only half a percentage point during the past year, to 5.25%—less than half the level during the previous housing downturn in 1990. Meanwhile, unemployment is close to a 20-year low.

Instead, the main reason for the falls in Sydney and Melbourne seems to be that first-time buyers have been priced out of the market, while demand from buy-to-let investors has dried up as net rental yields have fallen below mortgage rates. This holds lessons for Britain, where the number of first-timers has also slumped and buying-to-let is looking less profitable.

However, not all markets are slowing down. House prices in New Zealand surged by 22% in the year to the first quarter, the biggest increase in any of the countries we track. House prices have also risen at double-digit rates in France, Italy, Spain and Ireland in the past year.

House prices have outpaced inflation everywhere in recent years except Germany and Japan, where prices continue to fall. Among our 16 countries, prices are now at record levels in relation to average wages and rents in America, Australia, Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Spain. The ratios of prices to incomes exceed their averages in the past 30 years by between 25% and 60%. A return to the long-term average could be brought about either by a fall in house prices or by a rise in wages and rents. The snag is that with wages in most countries increasing by only 3-4% a year, it would take years for inflation to erode real house prices to normal levels.






The chart to the right shows by how much prices would need to fall to get back to their long-term average, assuming that the decline takes place over four years and that wages rise at a pace similar to that in the recent past. House prices would need to fall by 10% in America, by 15% in New Zealand and by 20-30% in the other five countries.

Need prices fall so far? Maybe not: lower real interest rates than in the past would justify an increase in the long-term ratio of house prices to wages and rents, and would therefore require a smaller fall in prices. On the other hand, when past housing booms have turned to bust, prices have typically undershot their average by 10% or more.





Copyright © 2004 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

WBB

haven't they been predicting this since about 2001, it is bound to happen sooner or later but you have to be optimistic.

anyway, this is wales, we are in a better position than other parts of the UK.

kong

If you want to read an interesting forum on the subject check out this site.

Makes a change to hear real life experiences not the estate agents/mortgage lenders/Blairite wankers views with a vested interest in the bubble madness.

http://pub37.bravenet.com/forum/3174956598

WBB

an article from 2002

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2435763.stm

and from last week

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3752325.stm

kong

Like you said before, its a case of will it be sooner or later. Most of us have known that houses have been overvalued for 2/3 years, that old BBC news report shows that a bubble was identified, the trouble is trying to predict the peak. The rent to house price ratio is well out of whack. As for the income to house price ratio??? What need I say on that.

The longer a bubble inflates the louder the bang when it pops.

Crash positions everyone.

kong

Try this one fresh off the press, same site, doesnt look too promising hey???

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3806961.stm

WBB

from your link.

The RICS now expects to see the strongest house price gains for the remainder of 2004 in the North West and wales, while it predicts the market will remain static across southern regions.

thats me then.

swiss tony

Hey WBB - good luck with the house sale! I have just sold mine in SE London, think it may have been undervalued though as it sold within 4 days. Well I say sold.... you know what I mean, an offer accepted for asking price, survey has been done sofingers crossed!

Flipping agents though... somehow I let it slip that I was off to Oz so I asked the agents to make sure this was not mentioned to any prospective buyers. When the agent rang to tell me about the offer I asked if they were likely to want any of the contents... .he said 'Well I told them that you couldnt really take all your stuff to Oz and it is therefore up for sale as well'..... what a twat!!!!

I immediately complained and he is off the case! That'll teach him.... Just hoping it doesnt give my buyers any smart ideas about trying to screw the price down when we are near exchange!!

Regards

ST

ABCDiamond

Only problem WBB, is that prices are still climbing here too

In my area, Postcode 4165, the median price jumped from $339,500 at April 30 to $349,500 at May 30. The figure at the end of December, (when prices are said to have stalled, in most of the country) was $303,500. Thats a 10% rise in last 5 months.

It just goes to show that different areas of each country are different.