Englishmum

I've just read an interesting post on another website for expats. Last month 35,000 properties were repossesed.....but these are not going on the market as they did in the last house price crash; for example, in the early 90s we put our house in Essex on the market as we wanted to trade up to buy a larger house. Unfortunately our next door neighbour got into financial difficulties - as did a lot of people - and he and his young family did a 'moonlight flit'....we had someone from the council tax office knocking on our door asking if we knew where they had gone and quite a few other people too.

A few days later I was mortified to see the house next door going up for sale with a board from the same agent we were using....and the asking price for the house was much lower than ours...our agent never even notified us, so we promptly took our house off the market (we still have it and rent it out actually!).

The market was totally distorted....so what I read in this posting is that there are now two parallel markets.....properties being repossesed now go straight to auction and not included in the stats which say that prices are holding or increasing....

Anyway, I took a look at just one of the larger UK mortgage/estate agencies and see how low the reserve prices are (although of course unless you get the brochure or look at the property it's hard to guess the condition of it....on the other hand, my neighbours who did a runner left theirs in excellent shape):

http://www.halifax.co.uk/property/au...FEB-2005.shtml

(PS: these auctions are held throughout the UK, this was just one page I pulled up.)

spottydog

Its interesting if you look at the guide prices in your link and compare them to the actual auction sale prices (select results on previous auctions then Leeds from the same link). In all but one of those that sold at the auction they all sold above the guide price.

It wouldn't surprise me if the change between estate agents and auctions for responssions is due to the legal requirement for the repossesor to prove they got the best possible price.

Unfortunately buying from auction for anyone that needs a mortgage is very difficult as when you agree to buy at auction you have no get out clause so have to have all surveys, searches etc. done prior to the auction. This tends to mean most auction purchases are cash purchases and generally a bit lower than they would be via an estate agent.

Personally I think the respossesion figures are being slightly skewed by the DIY and doing up houses obsession that seems to be affecting the UK as all too regularly I hear about houses in need of modernisation selling for more than or about the same as already refurbished ones despite the costs to bring them up to modern standards and with the new electrical and windows regulations this cost is only increasing.

dugongs

these would still be in the Land Registry figures as they are based on completed sales and captured at registration which is now compulsary on all transfers.

are you sure about that 35,000 figure ? figures were recently issued by the Department for Constitutional Affairs. It said that county courts granted mortgage lenders a total of 19,687 orders during the third quarter of this year. That was two thirds more than in the corresponding period last year and the highest since 1996. The department's figures show the number of cases that lenders take to court and the number of orders granted by the courts. But these figures are much higher than the number of repossessions. In the first half of this year 54,344 actions were entered and 32,366 orders made but only 4,640 repossessions took place.