[Anonymous]

I see Mark got a quote and a mention for the site in this article on Saturday.

It would be good if anyone following the link found some current views on the market.

I realise it’s all been said here before and there are some entrenched positions, but the comment on Taylor Woodrow is interesting:

“(they are)slashing prices. Officially there are 20 schemes with 35% discounts but buyers can haggle further”.

(Dare I suggest any connection with the current leading article on the blog??)

The article also picks up on Mark’s very useful “trouble hotspots”.

The article ends up by identifying the uncertainty that dogs all of us who might buy, have prices stopped falling?

Well there will be plethora of views on that, and as I commented on another thread, the precise bottom of the market doesn’t really matter if you’re buying mainly for own use and for the long term.

However, there’s one point which the article doesn’t mention at all which seems bizarre in an article in a British newspaner and that is the Sterling/Euro exchange rate.

Of course this has been consdidered here often in the past, but one house the price of which I’ve been particularly following was 945,000 Euros with an exchange rate of 1.45 Euros to the Pound two years ago, a Sterling cost of just over £650,000. Now it is advertised at 765,000 Euros with a rate of 1.15 (give or take), a sterling price of over £660,000.

Now, this is in an area where there are lots of Euroland buyers (though I daresay the Irish aren’t so evident as two years ago!) and I’m sure there would be further negotiation,but the bottom line is I can’t see the British coming back to the market in numbers unless and until the rate goes back to about 1.25, when the sterling prices would at least start to look lower.

The Guardian article would have been a different read if the prices had be written in Sterling, throughout!

I’ll see what this thread produces then maybe run the poll I was contemplating on who was ready to move.

Carosfella

[Author]

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