Skip to main content

Please shut up!


 

Extracted from the BBC web site reporting on today's reduction in Base Rate to 2%


 

'I am dead keen to buy a flat or house. This is all good news, surely?

The interest rate on your prospective mortgage will probably be lower.

But, frankly, paying your monthly repayments will not be your big problem, so long as you keep your job.

The main way in which mortgages are being rationed is by lenders demanding large deposits.

Most mortgage deals now require 15%, 20% or even 25% as a down payment. And the best deals require deposits of 40%.

There is a good reason for this, by the way.

House prices are still falling fast and some experts think they could fall another 20% this coming year.

How happy will you be if our home has lost a fifth of its value in 12 months' time?

Think before you buy. '


 

What I'd really like to know is who are the 'experts' and how do they calculate the 20%? Quoting it virtually makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Well this 'expert' says prices will start to recover in early 2009. They will initially stop falling – even the Nationwide says that the rate of fall has slowed – then begin to bottom out. We have already had 14 months of falling house prices and difficult market conditions. Come on BBC, don't make it worse!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

House builders discuss 95% mortgages with lenders

So the house builders and the lenders have had a meeting to discuss how they can create 95% mortgages. Basically a good thing, as you would imagine most estate agents would say. But what proportion of the housing Market is represented by new homes sales to first time buyers? Also any first time buyer who purchases a new home is then a cost to the second hand Market of who knows how many sales! If I think back 30 years my wife and I as first time buyers were providing a deposit of 10%. To do this we sold her car, saved up by not going out as much and generally committed ourselves to the task of buying our first home together. Ah, you might say, but house prices were so much cheaper then. True but my salary was just under £2,000 per annum with the prospect of perhaps another £1,000 in commission from selling at lease 6 houses per month personally. The first 4 didn't count towards commission but were to cover my costs to my employer! I personally don't think 95% mortgages are ...
3 comments
Read more

2012: What lays ahead for homes and property?

I’m writing this on 26th December which some might say is a bad time for predictions as the stomach is still churning and digesting yesterday’s Turkey dinner and copious mounts of alcoholic beverages. On the other hand it may focus my mind on whether the next 12 months are going to give any of us that ‘full’ feeling. The danger with property market predictions is that they are generalisations.  When the Halifax or Nationwide make their comments they are talking about the UK as a whole. When I make a prediction I’m talking about our particular little area of the country - incidentally East Cambridgeshire made it to No.4 in the ten best places to live in the UK http://bit.ly/vf0C4v (according to Simon Ward of www.lovemoney.com   using Halifax Quality of Life survey data, and who am I to doubt him!) The London market is buoyant with foreign investors buying and some reports will say that prices moved up even in the closing months of 2011.  The north of the country has over...
Post a Comment
Read more