Property Auctions

It did 10-15 years ago, then again before that.

The economy follows cycles, boom is followed by bust .. its always happened - and it always will.

People seem to think that just because they have money in property that somehow this time nothing bad will happen.... nobody likes to think they are going to face tough times in the future. Its human nature.

Unfortunately there are a load of things on the horizon that spell 'recession' - Its areas like the north east that always suffer the most.

Yeah so its worth mortgaging yourself up to the hilt and feeling the strain for 10-15 years NOW, rather than wait a while, save up, enjoy the benefits of renting ... and THEN buy a house when they are at realistic prices.

Just knowing that boom follows bust doesnt make buying at the top of a current boom a good idea. If your house is in negative equity the bank can and WILL ask you to cover the difference between what your house is worth and what your mortgage is - if you cant do that .... repossession.

i personally know a few people who were stung last time - its not pretty.

i rent a 300 grand apartment, for 800 quid a month. Plus bills of course.

The mortgage payments on that alone would be 1700 odd quid for interest only, or 2k+ for a proper mortgage.



you have to be earning some serious wonga, to be able to afford a house down here - and woe betide anything ever go wrong in the house, like a boiler going or whatnot.

even a 1 bedder is 200k odd.

obviously salaries are higher, so property prices are ... the same principle is true around the country.


.. what stays the same though, is a house price as a multiple of your salary - the average value will change as we go through booms and recessions.

In booms, people are paying silly amounts like 5-8 times their salary for a house, and in a recession, it goes down to about 2.7-3.0 (past figures).

..... personally i see no point in being a slave to a mortgage by buying at the top of a boom and spending the rest of the next 25-40 years regretting it. Your a long time dead and people bang on about property being a great investment ... for what exactly? You have to live somewhere so i fail to see how for the average working person that this great 'investment' actually benefits them, apart from it costing a massive portion of their take home pay.

What goes up... will come down.

I'd say the trick was not to buy into a falling market. People talk about 'investment' ... but if you were buying shares, people would do the exact opposite and advise people to buy low and not at a peak.

Nobody can afford these quarter of a million quid flats, its quite obvious - notice how the news stories these days arent exactly rosy.

Still, people love to tell themselves property will only ever go up in value.

very true.

although its worth pointing out that if the rent you pay on a property is less than the interest portion of an equivalent mortgage - it makes more sense to rent. At the moment that is pretty much the case with alot of people (who have a 100% mortgage).

The good thing about renting is that rents dont go up as quickly as property prices do - since the market always includes people who have rented out properties since before a boom, and this keeps things (slightly) sensible.

renting is not 'dead money'.

you need to stop taking stuff you overheard a guy down the social club saying, as gospel.

what do you think the majority of a mortgage payment is .... interest..... which is 'dead money' by your reckoning. Only a tiny percentage of what you pay to the bank is actually going on your 'investment'.

Every ten or fifteen years