When/Will house prices cool down?

[princeperch]

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgllrdljj57o

8 grand a year service charge will get you out of bed in the morning

[Fastpedeller]

Puzzles said:

I was looking at flats recently and even the most basic blocks seem to be £200 a month in service charges.

It seems mental to me but I probably have to update my expectations.

Indeed - avoid anything leasehold (from very bitter experience)!

[KingGary]

havoc said:

* Well, not short of closing the borders, kicking millions of immigrants out and implementing a birth-rate cap policy...but that'll (a) fk the economy anyway; and (b) take 20+ years to bear fruit.

Don’t need a cap, younger people aren’t having kids because they aren’t in a position to put down roots and cannot afford a house or the children to put in it. It’s a global problem.

[Shnozz]

princeperch said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgllrdljj57o

8 grand a year service charge will get you out of bed in the morning

This made me chuckle when coming from the developer himself.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/m...

[Puzzles]

KingGary said:

Don’t need a cap, younger people aren’t having kids because they aren’t in a position to put down roots and cannot afford a house or the children to put in it. It’s a global problem.

Surely one of the reasons, or they are only having one or two because they don’t have space or can’t afford more.

[Puzzles]

Just from browsing it still seems very centrally located victorian properties in large towns and cities are still suffering.

I guess people aren’t rushing back after the escape to the countryside.

[soupdragon1]

KingGary said:

havoc said:

* Well, not short of closing the borders, kicking millions of immigrants out and implementing a birth-rate cap policy...but that'll (a) fk the economy anyway; and (b) take 20+ years to bear fruit.

Don’t need a cap, younger people aren’t having kids because they aren’t in a position to put down roots and cannot afford a house or the children to put in it. It’s a global problem.

Looking at Dublin and all the far right chat about immigration and house prices, it's a similar story.

I think people fail to step through the logic:

All immigrants removed means more housing stock available. Not really true once the next steps take place which are:

Jobs now need filled in Dublin

Irish people from a few counties away think I'll move to Dublin for the higher wages and cheaper housing

Demand for housing goes back up to where it was and all we've done is spent a fortune on dumping skill and creating more of the skill we've just dumped

Meanwhile, outer regions/counties have even less population than before and begin to struggle

So all we've achieved is spending a fortune on skill replacement in the City, making the rest of the country worse and reduced the tax take overall, so literally everyone is now worse off due to having to fill the tax gap.

Yeah, I get the counter argument, people born in longitude x and latitude y are probably all rapists etc, but I've never seen the stats to back that up tbh. Pretty weird why these far right groups aren't calling for all the white Catholic men to be abolished from Ireland...

After all, the priests were fiddling with our kids for decades and they were almost exclusively white Catholic men....so it's weird that there is no anti white anti Catholic movement off the back of that.

[DonkeyApple]

soupdragon1 said:

Looking at Dublin and all the far right chat about immigration and house prices, it's a similar story.

I think people fail to step through the logic:

All immigrants removed means more housing stock available. Not really true once the next steps take place which are:

Jobs now need filled in Dublin

Irish people from a few counties away think I'll move to Dublin for the higher wages and cheaper housing

Demand for housing goes back up to where it was and all we've done is spent a fortune on dumping skill and creating more of the skill we've just dumped

Meanwhile, outer regions/counties have even less population than before and begin to struggle

So all we've achieved is spending a fortune on skill replacement in the City, making the rest of the country worse and reduced the tax take overall, so literally everyone is now worse off due to having to fill the tax gap.

Yeah, I get the counter argument, people born in longitude x and latitude y are probably all rapists etc, but I've never seen the stats to back that up tbh. Pretty weird why these far right groups aren't calling for all the white Catholic men to be abolished from Ireland...

After all, the priests were fiddling with our kids for decades and they were almost exclusively white Catholic men....so it's weird that there is no anti white anti Catholic movement off the back of that.

What also makes it harder is that a typical immigrant is a human who is one of those people who has had the balls and effort to leave their country due to a lack of prospects suitable to their ability which makes them likely to be able to outcompete more local labour that is less motivated to win or has less fear of failure. The key being to import the right sort of immigrant and to ensure they are located where they can do the most good for the recipient nation. That's the art where we can easily fail.

[Puzzles]

98elise said:

It's something that should be addressed by government. A lot of people are getting ripped off.

I used to own a studio flat (so pretty much one room) and the charge was £1500 a year, yet the place was very run down. The management company wanted to up the charge to 5k. It was a low rise block of 100 flats so someone was making a lot of money doing very little.

It's mental.

A freehold house I looked at had a service charge of £675 for up keep which I thought was steep, until I saw a freehold house from Berkeley which had a charge of £1,729 in the first year and you know that's only going to go up.

[Fastpedeller]

Going back 35 when I made the mistake of buying a flat the rising (and fraudulent) service charges were already happening. Any attempt to join as a group (24 flats) and even ask for second quotes for jobs was immediately scuppered. The management group just wrote to each of our mortgagees saying we were causing trouble. For example a scope of works and quote for decorating was challenged because it included cleaning, preparing and painting a wooden ranch-style fence around the car parking area - The fence had never existed! We were shrugged off with "The price is correct because as you say there is no fence so clearly it isn't being charged for". "But it's included in the quote" was just ignored. Approaching my mortgagees, I explained the situation and stated we were trying to protect the property value as the management co didn't carry out work to a good standard and certainly not value for money, and we wished to have the support of the Mortgagees to get the job carried out properly. Their response was that it was a condition that we didn't withhold payment of any service charge, and any breach would mean forfeiture. Any attempt to challenge them in law would have meant the sceptre of a 'dispute or previous dispute' would have meant the property was unsaleable as no BS would give a mortgage to a buyer. We realised we were beaten. I used a local 'legal eagle' who handed the keys back to the BS and used the Mortgage Indemnity Insurance to escape the problem. The BS made threats to me and others, but we beat them in the end. I'm sure the scheming thieving management companies (backed by the Freehold-owning Landlords) are still using every trick.