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Looking at the thread re big discounts in Spain apparently involving Aifos etc and what looks like panic selling on the Costas, prompts the question, ‘is anyone experiencing similar problems here in the UK or elsewhere?’
We complete on the sale of our house in the South West this Friday. We had one viewer only but he paid about the full asking price. Our neighbour put their similar house up for sale for £5k more and had no luck and has dropped the price £20k but still no takers yet. A local agent has just reduced prices in his window on 8 properties out of 20, another agent has said the market has almost died other than for the half million plus country properties, and also says most Developers in this region have halted their build programmes.
Apart from London, is this regional or a sign of things to come generally here (is it panic setting in) with another expected interest rate rise? If so, this will further impact on the Spanish and other Emerging Property markets I would think.
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Hi Paul, You are right I cannot work out what is going on I am also in the West Country ,and have been trying to buy a plot or old barn ,but have been outbid on every occasion ,so maybe the second home market is beginning to
feel the effects of the interest rate rises,whereby the development projects are still commanding hope value,it will be interesting to see if we get the proposed next rate rise how things will pan out then?.Oh for a crystal ball ,in a years time !!
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Gary, I’m beginning to think that there is an element of panic setting in here, and when agents are advertising lots of price reductions, and Developers giving stamp duty incentives and other things away it reminds me a bit of previous times.
If the Gov’t take away the tax incentives from ‘buy to let’ investors as recently mentioned, I think that too will result in lots more property coming on the market, but it is all very confusing because the Nationwide states today that prices rose in June. If so then the B of E will almost definitely raise interest rates again to curb this, the last rise has not filtered through yet.
I know people selling as we have, either to buy abroad or rent for a while to see what happens. A crystal ball is definitely needed.
I wouldn’t buy in Spain (if at all) for quite a while though with all their property problems and bubble.
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@Paul wrote:
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Looking at the thread re big discounts in Spain apparently involving Aifos etc and what looks like panic selling on the Costas, prompts the question, ‘is anyone experiencing similar problems here in the UK or elsewhere?’We complete on the sale of our house in the South West this Friday. We had one viewer only but he paid about the full asking price. Our neighbour put their similar house up for sale for £5k more and had no luck and has dropped the price £20k but still no takers yet. A local agent has just reduced prices in his window on 8 properties out of 20, another agent has said the market has almost died other than for the half million plus country properties, and also says most Developers in this region have halted their build programmes.
Apart from London, is this regional or a sign of things to come generally here (is it panic setting in) with another expected interest rate rise? If so, this will further impact on the Spanish and other Emerging Property markets I would think.
I own properties in both London and in the Midlands and no, there is no panic selling in the UK and I doubt (in the foreseeable future) there ever will be. The UK housing market is very different in so many respects to the situation in Spain especially the Costas.
There, there’s a huge glut of vacant properties and few buyers chasing them. Worse, new development appears to be continuing unabated. Add in the emerging scandals many unfortunate folk on this forum have first hand experience of and you can start to draw your own conclusions.
To give you a feel, earlier this year I spoke with a chap who runs a property maintenance company in Torreveija (Costa Blanca area) In the UK he used to work for social housing in Kent. There he said, the main problem they had was too few houses with far too many folk chasing them. In Spain, the problem is the opposite. Too many houses and not enough folk chasing them. He described driving late at night by many large developments to see only one or two lights switched on the remaining apartments being empty.
If you were thinking of buying as an investment, I’d say that would be very risky right now! If on the other hand you’re buying to live in Spain then that’s altogether another matter 😉
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The equation is simply in both Countries. Demand and supply. This situation will persist in UK as we are building around 30k units less per year than the expected demand in Uk. Besides we have very high employment. We may argue what some of these so called employed people are doing !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The people buying £500k above are less affected the silly level of increase of stamp duty than under the £250K limit. My own property a flat is on the market is for £250k, last week three people raised the price to £275k, if I can pay the stamp duty. I am not willing to pay this to add to chancellors coffers and my money than get miss used is bombing or keeping civil paper pushing civil servants employed etc,etc.
The buyers were interesting one had their parents helping out with the deposit, the second one with had £80k deposit to hand. The third one was a cash buyer as she had sold her house.
The market is very different outside the M25.
On the buy to let front before the world War II ( dont mention the war )the british housing stock availible to rent was 50%. Today it is nearer 13%, so there is plenty of milage keeping in mind the population increase of around 15 million +/- -
The problems in the US and Southern Spain are now well documented. The clever bit is accurately predicting the future thus allowing your self the best chance of wealth creation/preservation.
Closer to home in the UK. Prices in Eire have now fallen for 4 months in a row. IMHO In the UK it looks like the bubble will burst first in Northern Ireland, an area which has seen crazy unsustainable growth in house price inflation recently. The supply demand balance has been turned on it head presumably as speculators break for the exit: The sales inventory for N.I. is now over 11,400 units, up from around 6000 back in March.
UK interest rate will probably go up .25% in July and in my opinion they will go up at least once more before Xmas taking rates to 6%. Whether UK rates top out at 6 or 7.5% (as has been predicted) they won’t be coming down any time soon. This will be good for the £ v $ exchange rates and savers no so good for people remortgaging. Also Euro zone rates will keep rising into 2008.
Don’t forget a lot of demand in the Uk is discretionary, not underlying. Well see how many over streched BTL’s hang on in there when their 2 to 3.5% 2year deal ends and they go onto 7.5% SVR or 6% fixed.
My predictions for the correction in UK property market by regions will start NI, NE, NW and East and West Midlands. The South East and South West will follow and London will be last. This will be virtually the opposite of what happened last time.
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In the Sunday Times there was a review of a book written by John Gray ,Titled Black Mass now to be honest this would be too cerebral for me ,however I got the gist from the article about where this book was heading ,there is also another book titled Black Swan ,on a similar theme,basically a lot of economists are having to come around to the view that human endeavor can mitigate against events ,take interest rates for example ,by almost every measure the UK property market ought to be slowing down ,it may well be but certainly not at the rate it should be.
Privately the view making the rounds now is that in the main people are more adept at financial survival than at first thought ,we are to some degree becoming more feral in our handling and understanding of financial matters,and it is also apparent that the previous models used when making economic announcements will have to be modified to take account of this much less uniform way in which a large number of people are going about their financial affairs,
This clearly would begin to make sense to me as I wait for the effect of interest rate rises to slow the tide of money that is biding silly amounts for a total wreck,but the dynamics of having 25 people chasing their own bit of green heaven have a force all their own.
I feel that the slow down when it does come will be a lot more diverse and unpredictable ,with areas sailing on regardless and others in the do do,
the one thing that is certain it will not not be anything like as bad as Spain where the economics of the play school reign supreme ,there the basic law of economies of scale will definitely play out to brutal effect -
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Interesting to read some comments re the different regions, however there are some very sticky markets even in the more affluent S.East.
Tenterden in Kent, (The Jewel of the Weald) always rides out bad markets apart from the big crash in the late 80’s, however there are quite a lot of properties for sale that have been on for over a year and, now being reduced. One chap I know had his 2 bed townhouse with garage close to High Street on for £285k but now reduced it to £249k, but certain properties still sell well.
The largest ‘buy to let’ investors (the awful Wilsons) own over 700 properties in and around Ashford Kent. They created a bit of a false market by getting huge Developer incentives but took properties away from 1st time buyers and forced up the prices on subsequent phases. I doubt they will sell, but if they did it would certainly rock the Ashford boat since they are not the only ones.
IMO the market will slow here when these interest rates bite, it’s happening in 4 out of the 10 UK regions already we’re told.
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Rightmove = asking prices
The land registry show some areas falling -2 to 3% add ‘real inflation of say 5% to this and you have real fallls of around 7 to 8%.
Don’t forget the stats are lagging indicaters. Florida has only fallen 10%? ye’h right you can buy property’s today at 30% below peak!!!
And the last time (89 to 1994) prices in the UK only fell 17%? ye’h right, but if you drew a line across the country all property south of Yorks/Lancs fell 35% and propert often took up to 3 years to sell and in many cases was sold 50% below peak prices.
Every one under 40 has only seen Low/falling i/r, rising prices and ‘stable inflation’. Therfore many don’t understand the risks they have taken. The market will out!
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UK Housing Market grinding to a halt:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/30/nhomes130.xml
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I think there maybe a number of people in the more affluent areas like London, Surrey and SE in general who are expecting the market to continue to rise even strongly, heads in the sand who don’t or won’t remember previous crashes which can happen suddenly despite the same chestnut being often mentioned of ‘too many people chasing too few properties’.
Many though (wise maybe) are selling now thinking the market has topped.
There is definite evidence of some of the provinces slowing down quickly including Wales and parts of SW etc.
The market is not made up of £1mill plus properties in the home counties as some seem to think, they are not immune to crashes either.
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Paul ,I think overall you may have a point in that like generals who go to war with weapons designed to fight previous battles ,You have to re adjust your thinking on how the current situation is developing and not on the last property slow down.This where several interesting dynamics come in to play ,principally the main difference between now and the last property slow down is that whole tranches of mortgages have been resold on the money markets,these re bundled investments have been purchased in the main by highly geared Hedge Funds who it is suspected will not be as tolerant of potential defaulters as the original lenders,added to this is pressure from government gilts and bond issues and you begin to see a whole different threat emerging if the property slow down starts to bite, this from situations that did not exist until recently.
However I still maintain that many more people will get by, albeit only just ,as in the UK there does appear to be greater resilience to financial shocks ,I agree that there will be a slow down but it will be more diverse and not as pronounced or as severe as it might be.
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Gary, I think you are right about the ‘resilience to financial shocks’ here in the UK compared to previous times, and, I doubt there will be a big crash.
Just a bit worried about these large numbers of pretty big Buy to Let people whose rents may only just be covering motgages and other costs, and possible tax incentives being removed that may end up with quite alot of property coming on the market at the same time that interest rates rise.
One of my points is that anything here will still impact on Spanish and other property markets negatively on top of all their problems.
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A flood of properties coming to the market could be devastating.
A “big Buy to Let” operator with over 400 units in their portfolio, is now a guest of HM.
When the court case finished, a decision was made by funders (many) not to offer all properties to the market in one go, as they considered that the affect on property prices in that region could be devestating, therefore, they decided that the best policy was to offer a few at a time, which took some 12-15 months. -
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“Where is this buy to let investor Uk or Spain”
UK
“Surely having 400 units is not a good enough reason to be at her majestys pleasure”
No, it is the fraudulent methods used to obtain funding.
He was convicted and sentenced and although had much of the assets confiscated, due to the increase in CV, still managed to keep the odd million.
That is not the point, it is to show that flooding the market with properties could cause a slump in prices. -
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Received 2 UK Developer brochures today for S. West and both offer £10,000 off prices, No-stamp duty, free legals, carpets and white goods, mortgage incentives (for 2 years) etc. This is for All these offers , not just one from the list.
I’m sure it is beginning to slow in the UK once Developers give away so much, and many are halting their build programme.
A Director of Stags says ‘now is a good time to sell’ as he thinks the future is uncertain.
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Having spent 10 years with a large (UK) housebuilder on the sales and marketing side of the business, the incentives being offered are nothing new.
Barratts have built a very successful business by increasing their asking prices to account for the offer of various incentives.
Many thousands have bought houses from Barratts that could potentially be viewed as “over priced” but because they make it simple by offering Part Exchange, carpets, 5% deposit paid etc etc people get hooked into the sale.
It does seem that this company are offering a few more than usual but it really depends on their business model – it may be that they offer vitually the same level of incentives in a bouyant market.
It isn’t simply to do with price, it also makes the properties more attractive to those that want a “hassle free” move.
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Paul – my Mother is trying to sell her flat in the S. West (Devon) – uninterrupted seaviews, balcony, in a good development etc. Has been on the market for nearly 3 months now, and just two viewings. I think things are certainly slowing down in this region at least.
An interesting article in today’s Daily Mail, plus ‘A Warning from the US’ at the end of it. It’s not looking good, especially if/when this all ricochets across to the Spanish market.
The added scenario of parents shelving buying abroad in order to help their children with their mortgage? -
The article in the daily mail link states the average wage for a FTB in £35k!!! We know the average wage in the uk as a whole is arround £23k. Obviously there are more self cert ‘liar’ loans out there today (where people pick a number to get the mortgage as they dont wan’t to miss the boat!!!) and that along with the average age of a FTB being arround mid 30’s this time arround (as opposed to circa 26/27 a decade ago) must be the reason for this.
Prediction, the UK crash will be more evenly spread this time, as unlike last time (1988 to 1995) prices in the North have lost all relationships with the fundimentals that can support them.
The discretionary demand which has been fueled by artificially low I/R and lax credit managment will soon disappear (anyone who dosent understand that the mort/credit meltdown that has only just got started in the US will affect all bubble western markets is in my opinion not interperating the data/market effectively or is simply in denial).
When the newbie (last 4 years) “I’m in it for the long term” BTL’s start to trample on each other on the way to a narrowing exit, the game will be up! The fact that the BOE lowered i/r in 2005 restimulating the market means that 100’s of 1000’s more people have been sucked/suckered in at the top, then last time.
It is going to be a disaster for many, but no one can say they wern’t warned and couldn’t see it comming!!!
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Disaster ,Mm I am not so sure It will be a disaster ,one thing is certain we have not seen the full effects of the interest rate rises yet , these will take at least 6 months before the full effects are felt ,but I do not see a mirror image of the last crash ,the fundementals are still strong wereby last time the world economy was in the doldrums and all the main global economies were experiencing problems.
The fact is that for most people it is a question of adjusting their asking price and lets face it there is more than enough fat on the bone for this to happen (in the majority of cases) ,and may even result in reverse negotiation which I experienced the last time this means that the whole chain accepts a lower figure in order to hold the chain together ,this turned out to be no bad thing as we all benifited from lower mortgages.
I do not doubt that the next few months will prove to be rather illuminating as various factors feed their way into the process ,however whilst the wall of money continues to make its way into the City of London and the global economy continues to perform ,perhaps a pause and slight adjustment of UK property prices might not be such a bad thing in the long term.
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Aunty Val, the incentives offered by the companies I know of, are completely new, and a result of a rapidly slowing market in the S. West and possibly rest of UK. They were NOT offering them a short while ago so I have to disagree somewhat with you. Charlie, GSB and others add further substance to what seems to be a looming problem, and there was a disturbing headliner in The Independent yesterday about Mortgage Misery, Repossessions and overpriced property generally.
As GSB says, the recent rate rises have also not filtered through yet either. There are many sub-prime mortgages in the UK too as well as the US.
Large incentives from Developers are a sign of a difficult market.
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The Article mentioned with further links in yesterday’s Independent.
http://money.independent.co.uk/property/mortgages/article2753390.ece
Whatever happens here and the US negatively will further impact on overseas property markets including Spain’s.
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something else that bugs me, anyone trying to buy a house in the UK for £200,000 will face a 1% £2,000 stamp duty bill. That’s bad enough, but why oh why does it leap to a 3% £7,500 bill for anything over £250,000? What happened to 2%?
If they dropped stamp duty under £250,000 to half of one percent and made it 1% at £250-500,000, it would help many people with a first buy and encourage a step up, to release more first time buyers houses, without a massive stamp duty increase, and the government would still make a fortune out of it, and look not quite so greedy!
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It looks like the US crash is going to be big
http://www.gata.org/node/5208/print
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article2056501.ece
Meanwhile in the UK (it won’t happen here, they’re not making land any more, the government wont let property prices fall and it’d different this time) not only does the sub prime market continue to grow but already highly mortgaged home owners continue to extract equity (MEW) to fund their lifestyles. The record mewing of the last 4 years means that many more property owners in the UK are susceptible to negative equity than last time.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/mortgages/article.html?in_article_id=422185&in_page_id=8
If you class liar loans (self cert), 100% + loans, 4.5 x income loans, loans taken out by newbie BTL’s in the last two years on interest only and all BTL’s being subsidised by the LL in the hope of capital growth rather than rental yield being the main driver: the UK could have a sub-prime problem bigger that the US.
First the US, Spain, Ireland, France and then UK. Forget Cape Verdi, Bulgaria Morocco and Dubai, in the coming squeeze all ‘sub prime’ sorry up and coming locations which have been subject to speculative hype, will be trashed to cents on the dollar.
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P.S. or Lead, I do think there are many similarities (maybe on a different scale) between the UK and US Sub Prime mortgage lending, the Lies as you say. Loads of UK buyers have either inflated their earnings or just over borrowed on up to 5 or 6 times their earnings (same thing I suppose), many brokers have helped them do it. It’s a possible disaster in the making.
Property prices here remind me of both the US and Spain’s, maybe overpriced 20-30% and what goes up quickly can reverse quickly.
Agree with you Goodstich about Stamp Duty here, another factor to reckon on is the 1st £160k is Free of SD on only those properties. The Gov’t here are having a laugh by not giving it on all properties ie 1st £160k should be free on all properties.
It may not happen here to same extent but IMO I think it not a bad thing to sell now and bank the cash for a while at the same time earning more interest on deposit.
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I must admit this is a facingnating thread and one which is certainly engaging the thoughts of some of the best minds in the financial world ,my money would be to watch what is happening with the Hedge fund community as their lives depend on getting the betting right on the future outcomes of financial instruments ,and at the moment they do appear to be edging more towards
P S & Leads view point, however just to temper things a little the Basic economic fundamentals do appear to be holding up well and there is a large body of opinion in the City that suggested the last interest rate rise was unwarranted and excessive. Ultimately I do not think we will have to wait to long to see if it is to be a soft or bumpy landing for the UK property industry -
GSB/All
The reason for the position I take is that I only see credit tightening as defaults at all levels start to increase (which they are).
Along with this I only see i/r rising to combat global inflation (fiddled Uk inflation figures may dip before rising again) caused by oil staying high and going higher, weather related food shortages and the Indo/China affect going into reverse as they suck in more of the worlds raw materials, grow their own consumer middle class and start to export inflation (as opposed to ever cheaper goods and labour) so….
Inflation up = i/r up = defaults up = credit tightening = defaults up (as people and corporations find it harder to re-finance their way out of trouble. Bust like booms create their own momentum/self feeding cycle.
Looks like we’ll know for sure whether it’s going to be a hard landing or a very hard landing by the new year!
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I also think by the New Year we’ll know what’s likely to happen.
Can’t help thinking that many Buy to Lets are just wiping their faces now on income to mortgages and, with the possibility of little or no capital growth for sometime they might be better selling up and earning a gross income on deposit of some 6% plus now, whereas most returns on Buy to lets seems to be 4% approx if no mortgage in place.
Anyone else think like me that it could still impact further on buying in Spain and elswwhere thereby adding to more doldrums there?
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I must say that I find P S & Lead’s postings highly informative ,even though I have to read them 3 or 4 times first ,I do begin to understand the detail in what he is saying ,which is making more sense than the usual information that gets released into the mainstream media,the thing is, as an individual you naturally set all the inputs against what is happening in your own orbit ,and over the last two weeks both Paul’s and P S Lead’s comments are beginning to have relevance in how things are playing out generally in the property industry both in the UK and Spain .
Paul, I think you are right about Spain ,but to be fair the dye for the mainstream Spanish property industry was cast over 3 years ago ,but Spain is a big country the Costa’s in land mass form only a small but now important proportion of the equation ,most things move in cycles and the property industry is no exception ,but make no mistake as things stand now for the mainstream Spanish Property Industry It is now stopped dead in the water holed beneath the water line , the huge over supply of flats and apartments and off plan villas is playing to a market that has moved on ,not for nothing have 3 major Spanish Provinces announced huge Greening program, sustainable and Eco development long since seen as a alternative option are rapidly becoming the norm ,next year will see all developments subject to a sustainable audit ,Solar panels, Rain water recycling ,the list goes on ,Times are changing Paul but perhaps not in a way that we are anticipating ,what will happen to the row upon row of now rapidly out of fashion blocks of flats and off Plan villas ,to be honest I do not know ,but wind forward 3 or 4 years and you begin to see the picture as better informed and educated purchases enter the market ,and seek a more sustainable form of living ,the Spanish property market is changing and under pressure from many sides ,but one thing I will suggest is that due to Spain’s huge land mass ,it is more than able to encompass these changes ,your question I think is ,will the change happen without pain , the answer is no , but also the other answer is will the Spanish Property industry be able to adjust to these changes , in the long term Yes. But you are right in saying the next 5 to 6 years in between will be Grim
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Gary and Goodstich, whilst I agree that Spain’s huge land mass can absorb continued building, I hope it’s not to the detriment of the beautiful countryside. Personally I think they’ve completely destroyed the Costas Blanca and del Sol with high density, often ugly development, in some cases literally cutting the top of hills off that once had avocado farms etc.
Will they always bear these ugly scars on their coastline?
If the UK market goes pearshaped for a few years then far fewer Brits will buy 2nd homes there, nor be able to sell easily for high prices and relocate, and I think this will apply to other overseas destinations.
It will be interesting to see how the UK’s property market actually does hold up and affect other issues.
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Interesting article in the FT today:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/bb270f7e-31a3-11dc-891f-0000779fd2ac.htmlIn part:
‘Spain is having the mother of all fiestas, paid for with other people’s money. Real estate and construction groups are on a debt-financed acquisition spree, offering overvalued assets as collateral for borrowed funds.Timid warnings from the Bank of Spain have been ignored. “Spain is different!” the over-borrowed say. There won’t be a property crash – foreigners will always want a place in the sun. And who cares about the current account deficit? We are all in the euro now.
But in recent weeks, the flight from risk in Europe and the US – triggered by turmoil in the US mortgage markets – has brought the Spanish fiesta to an abrupt halt.’
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Looking at the market in my local area of Lincolnshire there seems to be an enormous amount of property entering the market however there are an awfull lot of sold signs going up generally within 1 month. The average property price around here tends to be in the 100-150k region.
I personally feel there is a fairly good market in Spain if the property is in the correct location, problem is that developers seem to buy land inland then build and build which creates a new village with around 1000+ properties this is out weighing demand, still selling the idea of “Off Plan”
Sadly greed is ruling the market and while the government are still making money they will not put a stop to over developing, even if it happens now it will be too little too late. -
I think the property that will hold its price in Spain will be small apartment blocks with 3 beds and generous gardens and modest villas with garden. These are the type that constructors have not been building since the present boom started (CDS). All the apartments built recently do not have gardens/pool large enough for occupants, can in no way be considered residential and villas built have nearly all been in the million plus euro bracket.
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