Trying to buy a house in this area is near impossible

[KidKruger]

"I reckon easily ?100k over priced"

More like ?450k over priced !!!!!

[hellosailor]

I have friends who bought a 4 bedroom house in ED 18 months ago, have not made any changes to it, and it is now valued for 700k more than they bought it for.

18 months.

[Penguin68]

70k surely.

[tul]

My flat has recently been valued at 50% more than I paid for it 10 months ago and I haven't really done anything to it. And they are selling at the price it was valued at. Ridiculous.

[Jeremy]

Yeah I think prices of flats didn't really go anywhere for a long time, then started shooting up about a year ago.

[simonethebeaver]

Our house has just been valued at a shade under 100% more than what we paid for it 18 months ago.

[????]

Unless you're in the big city bonus rich plus, huge numbers of people are thinking 'it's now or never'...and I don't just mean first time buyers, I mean everyone in the chain...people wanting to move from a flat to a house, people wanting a bigger house etc.....i work with a load of pretty well (but not extravagantly) paid 30 somethings, at lunch they are practically all on the phone talking to estate agents/solicitors/vendors...it's really noticeably accelerated since christmas even

[*Bob*]

We bought our house for ?4 - just this morning.

This evening, we've had it re-valued at just shy of ?1.2m

Not that it gives us any pleasure at all, of course.

[ultraburner]

You wont find a 2 bed for 350k round here though will you...

Arse end of Peckham or the bit between ED and FH maybe, but it wont be pretty. Its nuts.

[StraferJack]

I would back up quids's post by saying same thing is happening where I work

My take on that is that it underlines my whole point - people who can are now behaving as they always do before a crash, with a herd-like mentality. It may make individual sense for them (then again it might not in the near future), but it's very panicky behaviour

[Blackcurrant]

Same where I work too. The more prices rise, the more desirable houses are and the stronger the urge to buy. According to classical economic theory demand is inversely proportional to price but the opposite can happen with status symbols (Veblen goods) and that's currently the case with London property. Rises of 50% a year can't be explained by a shortage or population growth and aren't sustainable.

[El Pibe]

bbc news reporting london housing market exhibitng bubble like behaviour.

In other news the pope shits in the woods.

[StraferJack]

isn't that a bit laissez faire EP?

yes London housing market is always ferociously active, yes a bubble isn't news

But the amounts of money involved, the number of people pushing/stretching because "now or never" and the ramifications of this particular bubble bursting are what make the current situation so troubling

[El Pibe]

"isn't that a bit laissez faire EP"

errm, not quite sure what you want *me* to do about it. It's obvious there's a bubble, just pointing out least newsful headline ever.

Not sure this one's any more troubling than the last one, just the timescales are shorter.

The normally disturbing think tank civitas suggested placing limits on foreign investment which seemed sensible to me.

Though not sure foreigners buying up acres of riverside penthouses and chelsea mansions is really the root cause.

[Calsug]

???? Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Unless you're in the big city bonus rich plus,

> huge numbers of people are thinking 'it's now or

> never'...and I don't just mean first time buyers,

> I mean everyone in the chain...people wanting to

> move from a flat to a house, people wanting a

> bigger house etc.....i work with a load of pretty

> well (but not extravagantly) paid 30 somethings,

> at lunch they are practically all on the phone

> talking to estate agents/solicitors/vendors...it's

> really noticeably accelerated since christmas even

Very true and exactly the position I am in. It isn't a property ladder as such anymore - its a ladder with missing rungs. Once you're on, it doesn't mean you can easily move up to the "next level".

[StraferJack]

heh - not suggesting anyone on here be responsible for doing anything

But if you think it's less troubling then last one then I guess we dffer on that point. I see the attractiveness of that argument (if it's cyclical we've been here before and will be again) but as I said, the amounts of money this time are of a different order of magnitude.

In 2008 most of the western economies were interchangibly affected by the global nature of events. There was a motivation to look at global solutions. But this is entirely local and self-inflicted. And with too much resting on it

I think the fall out of this crash will far exceed the 2008 one

suggestions about what to do? Pick any measure you like, but if the population with property is too self-interested, or the powers in charge too in-denial then any discussion is moot. It will just play out to it's natural conclusion

But off top of my head, the usual controls - much stricter lmits on borrowing multiples, multiple home ownership, buy to let etc. - seem entirely sensible

[Twirly]

Purely anecdotally, but I think that more properties are coming onto the market now in the area in which we have bought, as I am still getting alerts for Wallington, Carshalton and Cheam. I seem to be receiving more alerts, and more with two properties on. Luckily of us, I've not seen anywhere else I prefer the look of! I wouldn't say the market was flooded, but I have been wondering if people have heard that the market is more buoyant, and therefore post-Christmas have put their properties up for sale. Presumably this will have an effect on the supply/demand/price equation. Are many more properties coming on the market in ED yet?

[Cyclemonkey]

It's madness out there. I viewed a three bed maisonette in Nunhead at the weekend. It had been advertised as "needing cosmetic work" and was on at ?285,000. The reality was somewhat different and instead if the paint job and new carpets i was imagining, you would need to gut it totally and spend a good ?15,000 to ?20,000 to make it somewhere you would want to think about living.

When i said to the agent that at that price we simply wouldn't have the immediate spare cash to do the work the place required to make it habitable she replied - "oh if you buy it it will gain in value in the next two years even if you do nothing"

It didn't seem to have occured to her that we were looking for a place to live in not an investment.

[StraferJack]

"It didn't seem to have occured to her that we were looking for a place to live in not an investment."

in a nutshell right there

Everyone is viewing it as an investment market and not a residnetial market

[Jeremy]

I think that more than ever, a lot of local estate agents are really taking the piss, i.e. 3 bed houses in SE15 in uninhabitable condition, with ludicrous asking prices which they will surely never acheive. Just because some smug git with gelled hair says that your house is worth a million, you shouldn't necessarily believe it. It's not indicative of the wider London property market, which is currently increasing at around 11% year-on-year.

[Otta]

For lots of people (like me) it really is "now or never". I am never going to save a 20% deposit. This Help to Buy Scheme won't last forever, so I've had to jump.

I am well aware that in a couple of years time, the mortgage payments may well get nasty, but it's this or keep renting til our parents die (which hopefully won't be for a long time).

[El Pibe]

the rental market seems just as bad.

We've had a few prospective tenants come through and they all say the same story about the horrible condition of pokey places with weird layouts going for a fortune, especially in SE22.

[Earl Aelfheah]

If you look at asking prices vs actual sold prices, there does seem to be a big inconsistency. There is of course a lag in terms of published sold prices and current asking prices which may account for some of this (assuming prices have actually soared over a period of just a couple of months), but I suspect that asking prices are pretty optimistic in some instances.

[Cyclemonkey]

You're right rahrahrah. To be honest we could probably have pushed this vendor down by at least ?10,000 - ?15,000 and funded the work that needed doing but the i didn't like the place that much to do the work and live in a building site for a few months (as we can't afford to rent and pay a mortgage at the same time for any longer than a couple of months). It would have to be a real project - the boiler was broken, the bathroom was a health hazard and it had been disconnected from gas and electricty, and oddly all the internal doors had been replaced by those odd temporary chipboard doors locksmiths use. Not for the faint hearted!

[Otta]

East Dulwich is lovely, I am not going to slag it off. But people paying current prices to live there are just stupid as far as I'm concerned. No area is THAT nice.