House Prices – Latest!

Nicola says: I dont’ really need to comment do I?  Should I email to friend’s bf or just not bother? LOL

28/07/08

The National Housing Federation have forecast that house prices in England & Wales will rise by 25% by 2013.

The federation states that while there will be a slight reduction in 2008 of 4.4% and a smaller reduction of 2.1% that house prices will quickly recover and will be rising by 9% in 2012 and 2013.

It states that one of the reasons for the growth bounce-back is that there is a great demand for housing and this demand has not diminished but in fact will grow. The demand will be partly prompted by the cutback of new houses on the market as house builders mothball and delay projects during the current housing uncertainty. People are also living longer and the high rate of divorce continues to prompt demand for even more housing as couples split up and need two homes instead of one.

The Federation predicts that the cost of an average home in England by 2013 will be £274,700.

Therefore investors need to consider 2008 as the window of opportunity to buy property as cheaply as possible. There are still a large number of motivated sellers but as soon as the market starts to recover then these sellers will be more tempted to wait or increase their prices. It is probably that the current buyer’s market will only last for another 12 months so investors should consider buying now rather than paying higher prices in future years.

http://talkbuy2let.woofti.co.uk/news/

4 Deadly Myths About Property

Peter Stanley, ex Business Bank Manager, professional property investor, author and great friend of The Money Gym, has written a great report that puts some perspective on the property market which by all media reports is “crashing and burning” at the moment (July 2008). We had a long chat after I read it, and he has given me permission to share it with you.

Peter says: “Regular readers will know how much I dislike media reports on the property market, as they’re often based on a single piece of data, or an opinion that’s passed off as fact, when most articles closely resemble works of fiction.

You only need to watch the evening news to realise that good news is in short supply, not because good things don’t happen, but because bad news sells. Sad but true. If you don’t believe me, next time you’re listening to the news, make a note of every good story – you won’t need a big piece of paper !

So, for anyone who’d like to know what’s really happening out there, here’s the most common myths;

Houses aren’t selling / people aren’t buying

Whilst there was a lull for a couple of months, houses are selling again.

That isn’t an opinion, but fact.

As you can imagine, I get to speak to a lot of estate agents and watch a lot of houses, waiting for the sellers expectations to reach mine and I’m seeing more and more houses bought between those times.

In fact, I was surprised recently (and not much surprises me these days) when I overheard a conversation between two estate agents about their sales figures. One of them had sold seven houses in ten days, which would be a good result in any market – perhaps someone should tell the Daily Mail & The Express.

It gets better though, as seven sales was for one of the estate agents in the office, not the whole office, so even if the rest of the staff had only sold another three houses, that’s a house sale a day !

No-one can get a mortgage

Whilst mortgages are harder to get than they were, there are still mortgages to be had.

If you haven’t got a deposit, or have a poor credit record, then you’re likely to struggle, but this is a knee jerk reaction to the Banks’ over eager lending policy of recent years.

I recently went to see a house where the owner was about to get repossessed, to talk about a deal……

Read more..