How far will house prices fall [volume 5]

[NickCQ]

MX-6 said:

As PHer's and presumably folk of the petrolheaded persuasion, I wonder how do you London guys manage the parking situation, or lack of?

In my street the terraced houses are c. 4.6 metres wide, which is conveniently about the length of a car, so there is on on-street space per house. I would say car ownership is about 75% and none of the houses have been converted to flats, so never any problem finding a space.

I don't have a 'fun' car in London (the E30 lives elsewhere), but looking down the street now I can see a couple of 911s, Vantages etc along with the family wagons / SUVs.

[MX-6]

NickCQ said:

I don't have a 'fun' car in London (the E30 lives elsewhere), but looking down the street now I can see a couple of 911s, Vantages etc along with the family wagons / SUVs.

I was wondering whether keeping a fun/weekend/classic car outside of the city was something that people did. I like my retro motors but I find that you really need to keep them garaged ideally, as parked out on the street they can deteriorate fairly quickly in my experience.

[kingston12]

MX-6 said:

I was wondering whether keeping a fun/weekend/classic car outside of the city was something that people did. I like my retro motors but I find that you really need to keep them garaged ideally, as parked out on the street they can deteriorate fairly quickly in my experience.

I'm out in zone 6 and there is a set of about 20 garages a couple of roads away used to store all sorts of relatively interesting cars. I get the impression that people either have their 'standard' car parked on the road outside their house and something interesting tucked away, or just use Zipcar/public transport for day-to-day travel.

Even out here in the suburbs, driving and car ownership is more habit than necessity for a lot of people these days. I've never driven my car more than 2,000 miles in a year, have about four Zipcars within a few minutes walk, but I still never really consider getting rid of it!

[V6Alfisti]

ooid said:

I could not really it is nearly impossible imho. I had a car, even when I was living literally in the city (Clerkenwell, EC1). Street Parking was way to go, and there was a massive discount for congestion charge as being resident in central area. Things like Zipcar of course quite handy but it is hard to get one near by, as they are quite popular.

It depends on how you use it, i.e we have two cars for various reasons (mostly we both like cars!), oddly my 911 is the more practical of the two, as at least I can get a suitcase in it.

Use it to visit friends in/out of London i.e if we want to pop up to Hampstead it's quicker/easier by car
Visit clients outside of London, again quite often it’s far less grief to use a car.
Visiting friends or personal trips outside of London is vastly easier by car

However if you are going within the congestion zone it simply isn't worth taking the car.

Also with London it depends on where you live/parking situation, for some of the harsher bumper to bumper type parking quite a few people run the older Merc’s/Saab’s with rubber bumpers or cheap cars, all the way up to millions of pounds worth of cars parked up on one street.

[NickCQ]

The perfect travel solution for London would be a series of cars parked at strategic railway stations outside the M25, that would allow easy escape to Devon/Cornwall, Cotswolds, Solent etc.

Starting your weekend away in Central London traffic at 6pm is not my idea of fun.

[stu67]

My son and girlfriend live in docklands and until recently used zipcar, but it does get quite expensive in the long run so have just bought a little Hyundai i10 but it still sits there unused most of the time in a very empty underground car park beneath their flat.
I think the bigger issue in London or any large city going forward is EV charging as it becomes the norm, I work in construction myself and know most of the large developers are still supplying housing with piddly small electrical supplies. If I were building my own property at the moment I'd be more interested in a 3 phase supply to allow for high speed charging and building batteries etc.

[NickCQ]

stu67 said:

think the bigger issue in London or any large city going forward is EV charging as it becomes the norm, I work in construction myself and know most of the large developers are still supplying housing with piddly small electrical supplies. If I were building my own property at the moment I'd be more interested in a 3 phase supply to allow for high speed charging and building batteries etc.

The street I used to live on in Oval had chargers installed in the lamp-posts - seemed to be the beginnings of a workable solution.

[okgo]

Zipcar flex is a gamechanger, the old zipcar is ste. The flex ones, are essentially like Lime bikes, and barely cost anymore.

[Timberwolf]

Weirdly I found parking in London better than it was out in Surrey. In Limehouse our flats had parking underneath them, obviously actually going anywhere you ended up trying to find the one safe route through suicidal food delivery mopeds, homicidal pharmaceutical delivery BMWs and an army of Priuses that may as well be driven by a random number generator. Plus the occasional more exciting thing like a 20 year old Celica and Impreza having a contact-allowed race down Commercial Road.

One of my stipulations buying our current place was off-road parking, so we have a garage. They're a lot more common than you'd think, but as most are tucked away behind houses and at the bottom of gardens you tend not to see them until you actually start house hunting. I think our driveway is technically counted as a theft prevention device to the point that if my reversing camera broke it's 50/50 whether I'd just abandon the car to be a future barn find, but at least I have the comfort any gouges and dents would be my own fault.

The on-street situation is also a lot better because controlled parking is done properly: you don't get the stupid thing Woking Borough Council loved doing where a CPZ involved taking away half the parking, arranging the bays so badly you wondered if the original planning document had a title like "The Gauntlet", and leaving out all the cul-de-sacs and side roads so they were full of cars abandoned over pavements and across driveways. Instead permits are reasonable, there's still a space outside every house and you can actually drive down the road without having to do an impromptu elk test every 30 metres.

[NickCQ]

On-street parking with low car ownership is fine. On-street with every household requiring 2-3 spaces plus guests arriving by car is unworkable.

[gibbon]

The cost of the typical UK home has risen to more than £250,000 for the first time, according to the UK's biggest mortgage lender.

The Halifax, part of Lloyds Banking Group, said house prices in October were 7.5% higher than a year ago.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54838553

[marky911]

I see the “London property thread” is still going strong.
I think we need to start a new thread to actually discuss the housing market and the rest of country.

[PrinceRupert]

marky911 said:

I see the “London property thread” is still going strong.
I think we need to start a new thread to actually discuss the housing market and the rest of country.

You can talk about what you like in this thread. If nobody else finds it interesting, then nobody will respond and you won't have much of a conversation.

[number2]

gibbon said:

The cost of the typical UK home has risen to more than £250,000 for the first time, according to the UK's biggest mortgage lender.

The Halifax, part of Lloyds Banking Group, said house prices in October were 7.5% higher than a year ago.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54838553

End of thread. Answer to the question is, looking nationwide "they won't".

[MX-6]

marky911 said:

I see the “London property thread” is still going strong.
I think we need to start a new thread to actually discuss the housing market and the rest of country.

I agree that it's quite London-centric, but I guess people post about the market that they know about. We can't complain if non-Londoner's aren't really posting anything to be discussed. I've post about the market in my own town but I can't blame people if they either aren't familar with it or aren't particularly interested. We can all comment on the national picture and it's interesting to do so, but there is so much regional variation that can be less relevant to us individually that the local market conditions.

Edited by MX-6 on Friday 6th November 15:59

[z4RRSchris]

do the swings in houses prices really matter too much when the property prices are much lower, as the quantum is low?

[NickCQ]

z4RRSchris said:

do the swings in houses prices really matter too much when the property prices are much lower, as the quantum is low?

I would think so! Income multiples are not so different up North, so 10% of your salary matters just as much (or even more) if you have a lower salary...

[Shnozz]

z4RRSchris said:

do the swings in houses prices really matter too much when the property prices are much lower, as the quantum is low?

I do value your input over the years on PH, but that really has to be one of the most stuck up things I have read on here in some time. It's bordering on satirical.

[V6Alfisti]

number2 said:

End of thread. Answer to the question is, looking nationwide "they won't".

Apart from it isn't nationwide, there is variance all over the country ( this particular report is always the most optimistic and represents properties that haven't even fully sold, just passed survey) even that report talks of al l the head winds, resulting in many newspapers now asking if the mini boom is already over. The growth in the last month is already lower than last

All predicted months ago, as it's frankly obvious and basic market forces.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs...

[number2]

I was being tongue in cheek .

Housing isn't homogeneous, but we can talk generally, in line with the thread title - there's no nationwide panic/view of house prices falling on the long term. Prices are related to real interest rates. Outside of pockets of oversupply of flats in some areas for example, generally supply isn't a factor in pricing within the realms of reasonableness.

I'm a bit of a broken record but there will be no paradigm shift in long term prices as long as real interest rates are low.

Will there be variability on prices, yes. Will town centre new build flats increase in value over 5 year, maybe not. Will there be an aggregate fall in value of uk housing stock that doesn't recover, without a change in real interest rates. Very unlikely.