Comments on: Oil prices up, house prices down- the UK on Nightmare Row

By: christoff

christoff — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:43:04 +0000

I have sold my house in surrey and have Â£270000 in the bank,
I need advice on if to buy or wait and see if prices drop further?

any help much appreciated.

Reply: I am not allowed to give investment advice through this site. There are a number of surveying and estate agency companies that do make forecasts of future house prices. It also of course depends on whether you need somewhere to live and what your other options are for that. Your sums need to take into account transaction costs, rental costs if you need to rent instead of buying immediately, and the return you estimate on your cash, as well as incorporating a sensible forecast of future house prices in the area where you want to buy. There are professionals in the mortgage and property areas who could help you make this decision.

By: Letters From A Tory

Letters From A Tory — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 08:39:26 +0000

Although the fall in house prices has brought many buyers back into play after years of being in the wilderness, the withdrawal of mortgage deals has stifled the market. Once one bank makes a break for it and starts offering competitive deals again in the coming months, the housing slump will be turned on its head.

http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com

By: bill Quango mp

bill Quango mp — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:31:02 +0000

The carrier contract signing was imminent, but it does Labour no harm to ensure it is signed before the by election.
More worrying is where is this money coming from. Des says it won’t impact on other spending commitments, but it seems the military are not so sure.

Transport planes, spy planes, decent armoured personnel vehicles and transport helicopters are needed immediately.

The 2 carriers need the type 45 destroyers, the new nimrod anti submarine plane and the astute nuclear submarine to protect them. Seems like an awful lot of shipbuilding has gone on under Mr Brown’s watch.

232 Eurofighters planned for the RAF. 232!! who would we fight with that many air-to-air planes? America? China?

Iraq and Afghanistan..what is there aircraft capability again? Is it erm, zero? Yet we need to pretend that the Eurofighter is necessary so that it wasn’t another unbelievably enormously expensive Euro project failure. So buy enough of them that the unit costs go down.. even if 1/3 will be left in hangars unused.

By: Rose

Rose — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:49:42 +0000

Why are we so wedded to high house prices? They have turned women into wage slaves and made them get cars they wouldn’t need if they weren’t having to go out to work and rush around ferrying children hither and thither to get them off their hands. They have gobbled up billions in investment which should have gone into other more constructive things. They have lulled people into spending money they haven’t got. They have persuaded people to buy who would have been content as carefree tenants. In distorting the economy and the tax system (e.g. double mortgage tax relief was a disaster) they have made everything unbalanced, and if it weren’t for all of that we would be better placed now to cope with the world-wide difficulties we face. Or have I missed something?

By: David morris

David morris — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:44:03 +0000

John

You are clearly describing some other parallel world to Planet Brown. He seems to believe a group of hauliers merely fancied a day out in London.

By: Derek

Derek — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:45:43 +0000

Agree with all of this. I give it a maximum of six months before it’s openly discussed on the news how too many flats and houses have been built, contributing to the collapse in prices. Anyone can see any small bit of land in towns and villages has been built on. I’ve never been convinced the demand was really there in the absence of cheap money.

By: anon

anon — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:09:21 +0000

What do you make of Craig Murray? Have you read his book (Murder in Samarkand)? If so, do you have an opinion about it? What do you make of this article re Andrew Mackinlay?

By: Cliff

Cliff — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:10:26 +0000

Two observations;

1) We hear commentator after commentator telling us it’s all doom and gloom and that we are going to see house prices fall by thirty or forty percent. Now is it not the case that we are effectively talking ourselves into a recession?
If you were considering buying a house today, would you? Or would you wait to see if the prices fell even more over the months to come? If you bought a house today, is it likely to be worth less next month and the month after? If we believe the doom mongers then the likelihood is that it will be worth less so, no sensible person would buy would they? It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

2) The AA recently published a report about diesel cars and the costs of running one and owning one.
The report said that a couple of years ago, given the dearer cost of buying the diesel vehicle, (compared to a petrol vehicle) the cost of diesel and the increased miles per gallon, the diesel car was economically beneficial should you do 12000 or more a year. The figures for today suggest that you need to drive more than 40000 miles for a diesel car to be more economic than a petrol model.
The juxta position is that the green brigade say that diesel is better for the planet, and yet the government, that claim to be sold on the green agenda, continue to make diesel more and more expensive. Diesel was always cheaper than petrol as it was a by-product of the petrol making process.

One other thing I have noticed is this; Reporters on the BBC seem very gleeful when reporting the down turn in house prices or money being wiped off shares etc…….Do you think that is intentional?

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:45:50 +0000

I wonder how government reciepts are holding up with the reduced volume of housing sales. Surely this would be a good time to try and stimulate the market by reforming stamp duty last week RICS put forward proposals to make stamp duty less onerous by ensuring if you purchased a property of say Â£300,000 you would pay 1% stamp duty to Â£250,000 and the higher rate of 3% on the amount above Â£250,000.

Such reforms would ensure the distortions caused by the stamp duty thresholds are removed and reduce the transactional cost of buying a home.

By: APL

APL — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:14:27 +0000

JR: “Sometimes governments should be careful about what they ask for, in case their wish comes true. This blog said at the time the authorities would reap a bitter harvest ..”

Mr Redwood, at one point I was very concerned about inflation, not unreasonable (I think) since inflation has been a tool of government ever since I can remember taking an interest in such things and before.

What I think we need to worry about now is not inflation, but deflation. Yes, there is inflation in some things – oil (which may be a signal of tight supply) but the massive loss of ‘value’ in the housing market, and now in stocks and shares indicates a very large net contraction of money and credit not only in the UK economy, but across the western world.

Thanks to Labour we, as a country, could barely be in a worse economic condition to weather the closing storm since the last financial tsunami in 1930.

Within a few years, how much CO2 you produce will be the least important thing to the vast majority of people.