Property prices thread

[Tamas]

Average UK prices fell 1.1% from December to January. Trust The Guardian though to take the edge off of such terrible news by focusing on the seasonally adjusted number and the year-on-year change:

Inflation in UK house prices has slowed, new figures from the Office for National Statistics show.

UK house prices fell by 0.6% in January, the ONS says, following a 0.4% drop in December.

This pulled the average UK house price down to £290,000 in January, which was £17,000 or 6.3% higher than 12 months ago.

The housing market cooled at the end of last year, after the disastrous mini-budget drove up mortgage rates.

[Zanza]

With interest at 4% instead of 1%, it's still significantly more expensive to buy a place though.

[Tamas]

I have been following the UK housing reddit. Most of the time when somebody posts about prices going down (like yesterday a bloke mentioning the official 1.1% monthly decline data) they get furiously downvoted.    I wonder if it is just a contingent of estate agents or they are reinforced by people who want to get out of their looming remortgage pains by sheer force of will.

[Tamas]

With interest at 4% instead of 1%, it's still significantly more expensive to buy a place though.

I don't remember if Germans were also stupid enough to load up on short fixed-term mortgages or if its allowed there to have the interest fixed for the whole of the mortgage duration?

[Zanza]

With interest at 4% instead of 1%, it's still significantly more expensive to buy a place though.

I don't remember if Germans were also stupid enough to load up on short fixed-term mortgages or if its allowed there to have the interest fixed for the whole of the mortgage duration?

I guess short term, variable rate mortgage also exist here. But the normal case is a fixed rate 10, 15, or 20 year mortgage. You will also typically need at least 10%-20% down payment.

[viper37]

Some graph for OCDE countries:
 

[Josquius]

It's amazing Canada has such high values.
Is this vancouver screwing up the national numbers with its insanity? Or in regular towns is it really so expensive?

From my experience in the UK this is a key stat where national numbers tend to be pretty pointless.

[Grey Fox]

Vancouver and now, Toronto have been killing the numbers for many years but since 2021, every other big city has joined in on the fun.

I bought my house in 2012 for ~200k, In 2019 I could have sold it for ~350k. In 2021-22 it accelerated to at min 500k.

[viper37]

It's amazing Canada has such high values.
Is this vancouver screwing up the national numbers with its insanity? Or in regular towns is it really so expensive?

From my experience in the UK this is a key stat where national numbers tend to be pretty pointless.

Regular towns have been catching up too.

[HVC]

It's amazing Canada has such high values.
Is this vancouver screwing up the national numbers with its insanity? Or in regular towns is it really so expensive?

From my experience in the UK this is a key stat where national numbers tend to be pretty pointless.

Regular towns have been catching up too.

Covid ramped up the house prices in the boonies as people moved out of cities thanks to remote work. Now work is trying to get people back into offices and these people are getting squeezed.

[Tamas]

Asking prices in our area are barely budging (mostly from "ambitious in 2021" prices to "massive mortgage burden in 2023" ones), but in the meantime there's barely any  mortgages being taken in the national background, so I hope reality will start setting in soon:

[Grey Fox]

How high are the rates for you guys?

[Tamas]

How high are the rates for you guys?

Looks like we could do around 4.2-4.3% right now at the top of what we are willing to pay.

[Grey Fox]

That's really good. It's really not that high for a 86% year to year drop.

5 years fixed?

[Tamas]

That's really good. It's really not that high for a 86% year to year drop.

5 years fixed?

yeah its for 5 years fixed