The value of our home here in San Diego has taken a 20% haircut since last summer.
It’s the second time I’ve done it Mick, I paid my previous mortgage off early in 2015 then decided to move again in 2021 so took out another one. I knew it would only run for 17 months as I had an investment mature at the beginning of this month. If I had secured a fixed rate mortgage I’d probably have let it run until the end of the period but once you reach 60 and want no redemption penalties the choice is pretty limited.
The value of our home here in San Diego has taken a 20% haircut since last summer.
We sold our house last week at an exact 25% gain on what we paid in August 2019.
We have saved a few quid over the last 2 years and as a result should be able to put 25% down on our next house (which will have a 70% higher value than the one we are selling). We fancy a house which is on at a price “offers over” which represents a 28% gain across a similar time period. Sounds fair as in a much better area and we are being bought by cash buyers with no chain. Will spend all day wondering if it’s worth offering the top end of our budget which would only represent a 21% gain on their ownership, but we should be fairly easy buyers.
Market is in a weird state at the moment but we hopefully see our sale through and Bank the gain even if prices do tumble.
I understand from this that you have agreed a sales price and you have not sold, but good luck and there is generally less risk with a cash buyer.
Unless you are selling to rent and hope you can buy in cheaper, excessive house price rises are really doing you and anyone else climbing the ladder no favours, except equity building helps when taking larger mortgages.
Making a random assumption that your house was bought for £250k in 2019 and now worth £313k, the house you aspire to was worth £425k in 2019, but now £544k going by your relative increases.
So in this example and in 2023 you have to pay another £56k (plus £6k extra stamp duty) for that move when compared to 2019.
It is only investors and the elderly down-sizers that benefit from rapid house price escalation.
We know Scotland has acted, but Bristol is trying.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-64175888
Thin end of the wedge if cost of living does not come under control.
I don’t follow the concept of rent controls, we don’t have controls to cap the cost of housing for home owners so why should tenants expect their housing costs not to be impacted by interest rates and property prices?
BTW are redmonaco and noTAGlove the same person, looks like it to me.
Last edited by Montello; 29th January 2023 at 15:55.
Rent controls are counterproductive. Not all current tenants want or can afford to buy. Some landlords will sell up and that’s fewer properties for the same number of tenants putting upward pressure on rents. The problem of high house prices and high rents is failure to meet increased demand.
I listened to an interesting Freakonimics podcast about rent controls in the US. They don’t help medium or long term.
Thought it was odd the Scottish government capping rents but not food or utility prices - or council tax.
Exactly, it’s more than just rents that are squeezing the finances of tenants.
When the government meddles with markets they always make things worse.
Rents are going up because landlords are selling up, and I don’t see that resulting in property becoming more affordable.
It was the ending of the rent control act in the late 80s that encouraged private individuals to become landlords. I owned estate agents at the time so have first hand experience. Small private landlords have added to the pressure on market prices since then.
No, by the way to your last question. Although maybe we both have a social conscience??
So why should a small section of the UK housing stock be subject to cost controls but not the vast majority?
... and why would the government single out housing as an area for cost controls rather than food, energy, water, transport etc etc??
(Indeed so. Oxford and Cambridge are housing micro-climates to which the property headlines scarcely apply - Cambridge, people say, is an even tougher market since it's smaller. I was chatting to a Cambridge estate agent recently and he said they'd not experienced any slowdown. He instanced one house that week which was marketed at £825k; within a day the bidding was at £875k ...)
There's plenty of data out there to the same effect, e.g.:
https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/new...ntrys-25854938
Nice to see mortgage interest rates are coming down though!
Yes, I noticed my iShares Index Linked Gilts put on a big spurt today.
5 year mortgage rates will probably average just under 5%.
Two year bonds are 3.16%, so likely over 5% if you want to tie in for a shorter duration.
5% +/- is better than 6%, but still a lot more than the 1-2% you could have got 12-18 months ago.
Those on trackers are the losers today.
Indeed. I have a £200k tracker mortgage that I've had since 2007 on a BTL.
2% over base for the entire term. It started off at 6% and has just got back to the same level after many years of being very cheap!
The increase in payments over the last 14 months has been harsh. Not so much of an issue for me as it's a rental and has just been sold, but for people on tracker rates and fixed incomes I can really feel their pain!
The increases I've had are as follows.....
Jan 22 - £347
Feb 22 - £372
Mar 22 - £414
May 22 - £455
Jun 22 - £497
Aug 22 - £538
Sep 22 - £620
Nov 22 - £703
Dec 22 - £828
Feb 23 - £910
Mar 23 - £982
So you can see it's gone from a very manageable £347 that it was at or about for years previously, to nearly £1000 a month now. Bonkers.
I really feel for those on trackers, although most should have been advised to switch to a fix many months ago.
Funnily enough, our own mortgage comes to the end of a 5 year fix (1.89%) in August and I intend to go onto a 2 year tracker as they're currently the cheapest rates available and have been getting "cheaper" with each of the last 3 rate rises. In December the trackers from HSBC and Nationwide were base plus 0.69%, in Feb it was base plus 0.49% and today they've dropped again to base plus 0.29% in HSBC's case. So as and when the rates start reversing, these products will become much better value than any 3/5/10 year fix available today. And also, you can pay them off or switch to another product at any time with no early repayment charge.
Fair play to you for quoting your real life situation. If nothing else it illustrates the impact on IO investor type mortgages.
The BoE has not had a good track record of predicting inflation and tackling inflation thus far.
But, if we all knew what would happen in the future we probably wouldn’t be tossing it off on threads like this.
There is an interesting dynamic at the moment. The BoE believe inflation will sharply fall and back 2% within one year.
Many others think that Brexit and the weak £ and lack of labour will keep inflation much higher for longer.
Place your bets.
I will be watching with interest. If nothing else because the U.K. housing market has had almost 28 years of unrestrictive growth, it feels like something has to give at some point.
The Nationwide survey has now published 6 months of price falls, and I am still a believer that falls while painful, is ultimately good for society and especially the young.
It does seem common for people to forget that inflation is a 12 month measure. It rose sharply in Feb/March last year, so will most likely see quite large falls over the next few months.
I work in the manufacturing industry and we’re seeing pretty notable price drops on many components and raw materials. Anything that has to be shipped around the world will be dropping in cost as the cost of global shipping has dropped back to lower than pre-pandemic levels. (I should say, the cost of shipping from the far east has dropped a lot more than from the US)
Did house prices officially actually fall yet? It seems they didn’t, they just increased at a slower pace.
According to Halifax they’ve now stopped falling. Things certainly picked up a lot in January after the lull at the end of last year.
It’ll all be back to normal in no time.
I blame the data centres nabbing all the electricity.
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-...ls-2023-02-07/
Now is the time to grab a bargain tracker mortgage at 4.29%. (HSBC’s latest tracker is just 0.29% over base for two years) Should be 3.29% by the end of the year and might be down to a lower interest rate than ever, before the end of the two year term.
If interest rates drop back to 0.5% next year, you’ll have a mortgage rate of just 0.79%!!
Panorama last night was about the environmental cost of data centres. Staines and a few other outer London boroughs have had to shelve plans for new housing projects because there won't be enough electricity to supply them and data centres. So the centres may well have an effect in house prices if they restrict new builds.
Currently 14% of ALL Irelands electricity goes to data centres!! And set to rise to 30% by the end of the decade when currently planned centres are built.
Similar problems and worse around the globe.
Lol … noTAGlove has definitely got a huge agenda here …
What I am seeing locally in my area is a slow market. The bungalow I’m selling for probate has had a few viewings and we are expecting an offer shortly. We have not dropped the price.
Data seems to be showing flat / slight decrease. Obviously data lags but I’m not seeing the 30% crash forecast.
Haha. It took 6 years between 1989 and 1995. That collapse started off slow and accelerated. I am certainly not expecting it to happen in 3 months.
Most people have yet to see their mortgages cost rise yet, but that will significantly change over the course of this year and next.
And try getting a sub 5% mortgage if you are an FTB with 10% deposit and less than stellar credit history.
I am in this for the long haul. Tick tock.
There was quite a good article in this weeks edition of The Sunday Times. Evidently the "experts" predict a 8% reduction in 2023 with a pick up in 2024 due mainly to lower interest rates and pent up demand.
One fact that I did not know is that 55% of properties are completely mortgage free. Therefore if you live in an area that has a high level of these properties then you may even escape a reduction as the lucky owners just will not lower their prices and will wait for them to pick up. Such areas are mainly coastal and in retiree favourites such as Devon and Cornwall plus any areas where people sold up in London to WFH.
If you live in an area where people are heavily mortgaged then expect prices to plummet. The heavily mortgaged may have to sell quick due to rising outgoings.
The main thing to remember is that price dips are nothing new and are all part and parcel of the joys of home ownership.
My next door neighbour is HR director for a large tech company in London.
I was speaking to him over the garden wall last week. He is in the process of laying off 21% of the company staff. And he said that the London tech market is pretty brutal and this is all recent developments.
And with banking M&A falling off a cliff and the big investment banks shedding, I reckon demand at the higher end which is much more resilient will begin to slow.
Pick any market and you will always find people predicting doom and gloom. People love to talk down markets and forecast crashes. It’s human nature.
But mainstream markets continue onwards regardless following the general progression of mankind. There is always peaks and troughs but very rarely reversals.
Diversify your investments and sit tight.
Ah yes, the joys for the 345,000 properties (so think more than half a million people when you take into account couples and families) that were repossessed in the early 1990s. And that was mainly contained to the SE of England. Nobody would have predicted that in 1988 when everything was booming.
The joys of having you home auctioned for 30-40% less than the value of the mortgage, and being in debt to the bank for the balance, forcing many into bankruptcy.
I get it. You won. But there is no guarantee in life. Caveat Empor.
Last edited by noTAGlove; 7th February 2023 at 12:04.
It's emptor...but yup Mick's on the final, home stretch and 'won' by virtue of his good fortune, the timing as much as anything.
And death, the only guarantee in life.
Last edited by Passenger; 7th February 2023 at 12:18.