Times they are a'changin' part 79
Today's Sunday Times (don't worry I didn't pay for it, I just picked one up in the coffee shop) is full of doom and gloom in the property sector. The wheels do seem to be coming off. This is the domestic story. There's another, commercial story, which is potentially much bigger, but I'll talk about that tomorrow when I'm thinking about the state of retail in Guildford.
So, when we bought here, we were told straight away that we needed to be very active in our property search because there's a massive buy-to-let community and most flats and houses in the range we were looking at would also be prime rental opportunities. We found that to be true, again and again we heard of houses being sold before they'd been widely advertised, buy-to-let landlords jumping in with cash. In the end, we were lucky (oh so lucky!) and saw this place the day they were taking instructions and were able to put in an offer straight away.
So it seems that a mix of regulatory and tax changes are making it more difficult for ageing baby-boomers to play this game, plus they're getting older. There's another couple of articles elsewhere about people getting 50-year mortgages in their late sixties as a way of releasing more of the equity that is increasingly concentrated at the older end of the population.
No-one knows whether this is just a blip that is helpfully filling column inches or a fundamental change in the market place. As usual, we'll have to wait and see, but for now I'll keep my preferred scenario of booming crypto and falling property prices so that we can have our mini-mansion sooner rather than later :)
The market is beginning to adjust in Southern Ontario as well. A bubble has been forming.
It's already happening in Redhill/ Reigate, there's so many two bed flats on the market.... I had to accept an offer £15K less than I'd anticipated, but fingers crossed it goes through and that the downward pressure continues.
If property prices do fall significantly in the next month or so I might just have to go digital-nomad for a year or two and then buy cheap in 2020.
Actually, it's bound to happen, fortunate things like this always happen to me, I was born lucky.
Best of luck with holding out for the mansion! Or you could head west and upgrade to a palace? (Castle?)
heh! there were some nice gaffs in Windsor on the telly yesterday morning for some reason. I'll have to keep powering up!
Even at the current SBD conversion rate, or am I just kidding myself hoping it's going to get better?!
I'm not bothered about a mini mansion @lloyddavis. I'd just like John to be able to retire. 😁
House prices UK wide are laughable. Fortunate to live in Wales where they are not too high compared to the cities.
But the jump from council rent to private is huge and the jump to buy is even bigger.
Hahaha.. that's awesome you didn't bought it dear. Long live coffee shop
My dream is a little place in the UK so come on lower prices!