Boy, the housing market has tanked here in GA and Florida. Thank God I'm not planning on selling soon. Almost NOTHING is selling.

What pxsses me off the most is so much of the news of the GROWTH of the CONSUMER spending economy was obviously then and now proven, a bunch of lies. All of the consumer spending over the last 5 years has been from borrowing against property that gets revalued every 12 months. Now everyone wonders why the consumer is in DEBT. They were ALWAYS in DEBT!!

Been here before, twice in the UK and it will recover. The only problem I see here is a perfect storm to an unavoidable recession - IMHO. Sorry ladies and gents to be the deliverer of bad news, but hang on to your belts. You ain't seen 'nothing' yet. IMHO.

It pretty much puts a ball and chain on anyone who might think about moving back to the UK anytime in the future. I bought a house here in 2003 when the rate was $1.63. $163,000 house cost exactly 100 grand in pounds. If I were to sell it today (yeah.. right) and convert the money back, I've lost £23,000 on the exchange alone.

Looks like we are staying put for the foreseeable.

alex

I knew we were f***** when I started meeting people who re-mortgaged their homes to buy expensive cars and now are having their utilities turned off because they can't pay them.

I think you are not wrong......

WHAT? I thought the whole point of owning a home is so you can buy a BMW convertible with the equity?

It is just ridiculous isn't it?

CitiCorp? Merril Lynch......I think we're in for a very rough ride.

In a few months, you'll be able to pick up property in FL for little.

It's good news for me - we'll be in the market for our first house in the US in a few months. One of the reasons we left Britain was the artificially inflated housing market.

And you don't think it is the same here?

Yeh, seems like a classic case of out of the frying pan into the fire!! Admittedly he will get a lot more house for his money in Phili, but he's probably going to be buying a depreciating asset in both £ and $ terms, particularly the former. With the Chinese now suggesting that they will move money into "stronger" currencies, I see only one direction for the dollar at this point.

But if you don't want to move back to the UK at any point, and you're willing to own through what I suspect is going to be a very protracted housing bust in the US, I guess you can argue that it may not matter.

It'll be Ohio, once I finish my training in Philly. Since we moved from the south-east (where my parents 3 bedroom semi is currently valued at over 350K), at least over here there's a slight chance we can actually buy something - rather than living with parents forever. Yes, it's likely to be a protracted housing bust...but it won't last forever. We hope

I see what you mean:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1770

and house prices are falling in the UK as well as the US:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...EWS&ICL=TOPART

I know a few people who are returning to their home countries in the near future. They all intend to leave their house sale money in the US and rent until the exchange rate becomes more favourable and then will move the funds across.

They could have a long wait!

Not bad for those of us who draw our AOP. Mind you it could go the other way ...............................sometime. $2.10464 at the present time.

bollocks, bloody goddamn exchange rate if I reckoned up the amount of money we've lost over the months I'd cry....

wouldn't be surprised if M.L goes under and CitiCorp will probably get broken up, TDBank North and BoA are looking to sniff parts of it, but we'll see.