I am confused. I read here that property prices are stagnant and that the output for future price appreciation is gloomy, and yet I read elsewhere in this esteemed organ that prices are boisterous and up 11% for the quarter.

See this article from yesterday and compare with the above article from today.

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=775452007

outlook gloomy as scotsman tries to destabilise snp government.

#3. Bien E. Bien

Those stories are only ads for the property markets ... favourable releases from the espc & the rest to bolster sales ...

Time for everyone to take a brether and the prudent to keep their powder dry for the next advance, in the future.

Its about time there was a fall, but I can't see it happening.

Banks have upped their lending multipliers increasing the availability of money, and new buyers now are paying three times more than previously for the same houses, while income has increased by less than 50%.

Increasing housing costs by such a multiplier has reduced living standard with such a large percentage of income now diverted towards housing costs.

The only real winner is the banks who now have a stranglehold on those entering the market for the first time recently, or this requiring larger houses.

Wait for the interest rate rises - yes plural.

#10 - what's your point?

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=7767...
TRy this! Don't know why it didn't take you where it should have.

#10 ???? you've posted this on practically all the forums Leon, but the link is to all the international news. If you want to sa something, please be clear.

I own a house but many in my area of Fife cannot afford a roof over their heads due to prices caused by second homes. I welcome the slow down and perhaps it will put off some second home buying.

Has somebody changed how we do sums?
The prices show an INCREASE across the board from 7.5% to 28.1%.
A small dip in the percentage rise doesn't constitute a fall; it's still a rise.

But if the media write this sort of thing often enough, they may manage to create a panic, everybody will start to try to sell before the "crash", and we'll have a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And the papers will all say "see! told you so!"

Is this "Let's read every other paper but todays" day?

The story is about negative equity, a very scarey place to be.

What is bad news for a seller must be good news for a buyer No?
I think its inevitable that people will stop buying at some point, and thats in itself a regulator.Its okay to shout invest in property ,get rich quick,but its not much use to the first time buyer trying to get on the lowest rung of the ladder.

Our concern should be adequate housing both in terms of cost and quality.
WE seem to be obsessed with fat cats getting even fatter!What about the kittens?

Does that mean ma wee hoose(single-End) in Govan isnae goin be worth £600K in a few years?

How is this a bad thing? We are due an HPC, and the one's who will get burned are greedy multiple, amatuear buy-to-let's, the financially stupid who borrowed 4x 5x their income to get on the 'ladder', on the premise that rates will stay low (when they have been artificially / historically low for 5 years - the historical average is 7-8%), and the fact that 'property only ever goes up'. Really, what happenend in 1992 then?

"Oh but it's different now", How? Cos you owe £200k on a FR 3% mortgage, as opposed to £70k on a 10%? I kn ow which I'd rather have..

Go to www.housepricecrash.co.uk (run by a scotsman!), & have your eyes opened.

oh yes, and all this under a Labour gov't, under good old Gordy eh? Don't even THINK of blaming this on the SNP. It's been brewing since the BOfE cut IR's by 25 basis points in 2005 (at Gordy's request??), instead of increasing them, so as to head off a recession. It only stored the problem up for longer, and now the chickens are coming home to roost. And all under the stewardship of Gordon Brown, make no mistake in that.

Miracle Economy my ar5e..

Yet another prediction of doom and gloom looming - but it never happens. The experts vener seem to be quite so expert.

#23 Two things: the Bank of England Monetary Committee is independent of the government. Perhaps you missed that little policy change in 1997? And second, the SNP is in government in Scotland, and while there will be a period of legacy from the previous administration, I hope that they will be putting forward their proposals to help the economy and not just pointing down south and telling us a bigger boy did it and ran away. This decision to attack Brown at all costs is beginning to smell like an excuse.

#29 Jacqueline Hyde

House prices are also important to banks/building societies because a crash could hit them quite hard. Their fault perhaps for having helped feed the frenzy but even so it will make life for them "interesting" as they try to recoup their losses and it will inevitably make them cautious about future lending.

It's also important to owners with large mortgages who risk diving into negative equity territory.

dunno why folk do not switch to and banks do not offer 25 yr fixed rate mortages. With a fixed rate that long you know ow much ur place will cost you to own for years.

Factor in the Sad Numpty People having the First Minister and a lame duck Government - what can you expect?

There is no "property ladder". The notional value of any asset can go down as well as up. Housing is not magically exempt from that.

and "those who gamble on sharply rising house prices " are greedy fools who are going to get burned when the market inevitably falls. A speculative bubble is not real money.

Suggestions:

More below-market rented housing would help all those people who have no hope of getting on the magic 'ladder'. I.e build more housing association and council housing.

Do NOT implement the extension of the Right to Buy to housing associations in 2012.

Use the Local Housing Strategy and Planning system to make more sites available to housing associations to build mainly rented housing but with some Shared Ownership/Homestake.

Allow new council housing to be built by adjusting the Right to Buy Cost Floor up to 30 years from the present 10 yars. This could be done by Statutory Instrument so no primary legislation required.

Use housing association experience to help councils build decent houses, not the high rise rubbish they did in the past.

Is this not good news? Most of us have bought a house to live in - if it goes up, it is a bonus. But all the other houses in Edinburgh have gone up by a similar amount, so we will only benefit if we move to a cheaper area.

If the first time buyers can't afford to buy the houses at the bottom end of the market, the market grinds to a halt. If you are really unlucky, the value of your property could fall (a bit of a bummer if you bought your house just before the drop).

Ask anyone who had a house in the south of England in the eighties - negative equity was a common problem.

Houses are to live in. The people who use them as money making machines look like they might get their fingers burned .... 'scuse me if I don't burst into tears.
Negative equity is only a problem if you want to move, stay put long enough and the problem goes away. People panic too easily when they find out their house is worth less than they paid for it ... doesn't seem to bother anyone that nearly everything else we buy devalues the moment it's out of the shop, from cars to tv's.
We are obsessed with property prices. As long as I have a roof over my head, it's warm and comfortable, sod how much it's worth to anybody else!

Concentration of population and employment in Glasgow and Edinburgh is leading to growing social and environmental problems. We need to free up land to build more houses. People should be encouraged via cheaper housing to move back into the countryside, with companies also being encouraged with lower business rates to move out of the two main cities.

I have reason to beleive that house prices have reached their ceiling lvel, from now on we should expect house prices to crash leaving a lot of buyers grovelling for a living. Bankrupcy galore, and it is not before time either.

good lord i can taste the bitterness in here from the house renters !!

Ian from Gala has made the best point so far. Given 96% of us live on 4% of the landmass and given around a dozen individuals own around 80% or so of Scotland, it makes for expansion an impossible reality.

Instead, what we have is a population increase by way of immigration and therefore the indigenous population of the UK aare scrabbling for the best bits of the UK. Therefore we have a lot of folks from Southern England (and this is with no offence, it's merely an observation) selling up and brining their inflated money bags to Scotland and artificially raising the worth and value of the housing market. Not their fault at all, we'd all do the same.

Therefore, as Ian suggests, we need to loosen up the land tenure of Scotland and allow more people the opportunity to live and uild in the countryside - affordably! We are not short of land people!

bill inch

Agreed. Somebody has a problem and it's detracting from the debate. Beat it Leon, please.

37 Peter:

People forget they can go down as well as up. We made 25,000 in two years on my first house. We then paid 62,000 for a two bedroom house for my family (we couldn't afford an investment). We then had to spend another 10,000 as it was a bit of a wreck. Interest rates climbed up to 15% and the payments required 70% of my wages at the time. It used up all our savings, and then the housing market crashed.

We were lucky to sell it for 49,000 four years later. And it was still falling in value.

#25 (and others ) - " Two things: the Bank of England Monetary Committee is independent of the government" - yes pull the other one !.

Where is the proof for this ? , Who appoints them , Who are their paymasters ?, In what statute is this written into ?

Fact one : The treasury appoints, fires and is the paymaster of the MPC committee members.

Fact two : There is no statute or Act of Parliament . All they have to do is publish the minutes of the monthly meeting.

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/minutes/mpc/p...

Fact three : Their published remit is to target CPI at a 2% +/ 1% , which it has signally failed over the last 12 months inflation rising every month to peaking 3.1% last month.

Office of national statistic latest inflation numbers : note the trend.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=19

How can / does the treasury through "Prudence Brown" manipulate Interest rates
a) By packing the MPC with "doves" or "Bulls".

b) By simply not renewing contracts of the individuals

The Institute of Economic affair (IEA) shadow MPC interest rate predictions has seen a divergence from the MPC over the last 12 months as Interest rates have increased.

MPC (IEA) predictions ( scroll bottom)

http://www.iea.org.uk/browse.jsp?type=minutes&pageID=56

Even their own supporters doubt the credibility of the MPC

London Times Business editor criticsm

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anato...

Finan

Well it was forecasted in 1998 that the next property crash would be around 2010. I suppose it's around 2010 now, eh?

Better sit tight, it's going to be a bumpy ride me thinks!

This article shows the skewed value system we have. It is NOT bad news when prices fall. It is not bad when computer prices fall, or when car prices fall or when house prices fall.

The only way to achieve this is by getting the government off the backs of builders & letting them build. Imagine the price of a car, or computer, if you had to get authorisation from your local authority & if it had to be handbuilt in your back yard, with a government inspector insisting you use 10% wood & make pointless design changes.

Technologically it would be simple to produce good, inexpensive housing. Politically you would have to face down so many vested interests.

Who exactly does high house pricing suit?
It can't be the first time buyer.
It cant even be the young couple who find their starter flat cannot accomodate future life plans.
and its not even the end user - who finds there "investment" plundered to pay for residential care or pilaged by the Goverment in taxation.

I can only think it of benefit to banks, estate agents and child care facilites and if we see a hike in interst rates of the proportions of 1980's - pharmaceutical companies selling stress treatments, divorce lawers and auctioneers.

#248 - You are so right, it only suites those mugs that overpaid for their houses. If no-one is joining at the bottom then the whole thing will collapse (and its only a matter of time before it does).

We moved out of Edinburgh in the early 90's because we didn't want to be subjected to this craziness, but it will still catch us out in the sticks when we want to move.

#48 AJR: Well said. The banks benefit. Should make us all a bit more sympathetic towards the debt plights of Africa, Mexico etc!

Peter, on this thread, argued pretty convincingly a few weeks ago that this is a direct consequence of the loss of value of pensions - one aspect of Gordonomics! People choose to invest in property instead of pensions, as there is has been money to be made from first time buyers, buy-to-let etc. I used to think, those sodding baby boomers, here they are bleeding us dry, but on the other hand, I would have invested in property too if this looked like providing the best return.

People need property like they need food - the banks have been able to exploit a very basic need.

Nothing gloomy about it. They should be over the moon.

#51 - Private Eye did a wee comparison of the amount of money lost to pension from GB tax on dividends and those companies who took contribution holidays - it was the latter that had the greater effect (but only just). I'm no GB fan but to try and pin it all on him is absolute drivel. The biggest factor was and still is the widely variable stock market!!

It is mainly GREED - plain and simple. The saddest thing is that when the crash really hits home the really greedy people that kick all this off will still be sitting on a nice wedge, and the poor mugs that paid 40% asking prices will be sitting on massive negative equity.

*10 Leon: The Nazis shared your book burning philosophy of banning anything that they did not agree with. You may find Conan's comments distastful but remember what Voltaire said: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Sorry 52 refers to 50!

47 Neil says "Technologically it would be simple to produce good, inexpensive housing. Politically you would have to face down so many vested interests"

absolutely spot on.

I am currently working on a housing project which has been in development for 6 years!

The hoops the local authority concerned has made us go through would be unbelieveable to anybody not in the industry. We're just about to go on site, but that has taken 6 years and a million quid! Grrrrr.

it would take all day to describe how difficult it is to get housing projects through the Planning system.

What would happen if we passed a law allowing ownership of only ONE house per individual/family- except in the most unusual circumstances, forcing investors to go elsewhere (stockmarket,pictures,wine,etc)?

Would there be a glut of cheap housing?

#10

People always object to things they percieve as racist slights. However history would demonstrate that races do not nor have ever lived in harmony and the path of civilisation is about war and conquest. What Conan seems to be saying is that is what is going on here. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that there will never be peace there until the opposing factions are all dead.
But who care anyway?

You can't stop people fighting and frankly are they worth it? I mean really, fighting over a rubish bit of desert. The entire population of the middle east deserves a Darwin award as far as i'm concerened.

#55 - All the local authorities are trying to get houses more environmentally efficient, something the building industry have failed to do for themselves, therefore regulations had to be imposed to ensure compliance. You have to be aware of all the rules when in the design process, and I'm sure the panning process would be smoother.

(We have just had an extension built and thankfully our architect and builder knew the rules pretty well so we had no problems with getting through planning and building control)

#56 - this is not likely to happen. I would be interested to go the register of Members interests at the Houses of Parliament and see exactly how many MP's in the UK own 2 or more properties. It may be well more than half of them.

#55 (contd) But then again I think the amount of planning changes (for environmental reasons mainly) in the last 6 years have been huge and for the best.

Sorry ,but if half of Europe and Africa is heading here ,and automatically go top of the housing lists regardless,whilst more and more jobs head to the East,Q1 ,Where are we all going to live ?

Q2,How are we supposed to be able to afford it

Shanti towns arn't very far away, were already importing polio,aids etc drugs, crime, THE 0NLY WAY IS DOWN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the new building regs are a definite step in the right direction. Will actually improve space standards quite a bit - some of the private builders are panicking about it as their space standards have been atrocious. Don't have problem with that, but it's all the other infinitely regressing steps you have to go through to get projects approved which are so frustrating.

e.g. to build a housing scheme you usually need Roads Construction Consent from the local authority. But Roads won't START looking at the RCC until Planning has been granted. There are supposed to be 3 month timescales for both Planning and RCC these are rarely met. One part of the project I mentioned above had outline planning approved in 2004. The detailed planning application was rejected so it was redesigned and another detailed application submitted in November 2005. Still not decided, 2 and half years after that. 3 month timescale? Hopefully it will be approved and then and only then will the council formally consider the RCC.

Third party consents also take forever - the local authority has to get formal comment from the likes of SEPA, SNH, Scottish Water on planning applications. Flood risk assesement can be a particular problem because councils, SEPA and SW all pass the buck. Ditto sewerage capacity.

Takes forever. Even getting comment internally from various council departments can take ages.

The project mentioned above needed a formal view from HSE because it is near a distillery. HSE wouldn't speak to us directly, and wouldn't give a timescale for a response. That took nearly a year to resolve and we had to go to the Minister in the end to get a reply. Aaaaargh!

I very much welcome the suggested review of the Quangos - there has got to be a simpler way of doing things than the present guddle.

correction
one and a half years. seems longer though

Calm down, calm down.

There isn't going to be a 'crash'. Prices are going to level, that's all. Surprised that has taken so long to be a headline, it's been happening since the start of the year. Certain properties still increasing in value and will keep doing so for a while yet, including first time buyer properties, former council stock and houses in very sought after areas. Everything else will level off now. The cities may drop a bit here and there ut nothing in the extreme. Unless we have a nuclear war or the First Minister decides to try to hammer property owners with some form of absurd local tax.

61, don't be such a f@nny. I've sold properties this year to a number of Polish folk who speak better English than the locals, work longer hours & have a work ethos that plenty lazy layabouts in this country no longer have (we all want something for nowt). These folk bought lower end of the market property to modernise it themselves and make it liveable with money made from working in jobs that noone here wants to do (we're a nation of managers and certificate holders, noone wants to do a hard days graft any more). Bringing good folk here to work damn hard and improve property that the lazy high flyers here don't want can only be good for the economy in the log run.

I admit I live in one of the most expensive parts of the south east of England, but prices have shot up so much here over the years that if I was newly divorced as when I came here, there is no way that I could even consider the Richmond area.

The banks could well bring the property market under control if they would have strict rules as to how much to lend, and not keep bringing in higher and higher multiples, which do not seem to allow for increases in rates. This would help force prices down as buyers would be restricted and a property is only worth what someone else is prepared (and can) to pay.

If you have a job and so can keep paying your mortgage payments, I do not think that negative equity matters. If I remember correctly, last time this happened, lenders brought in a scheme to bring in a person's negative equity and add it to the mortgage on a new property if the person required to move. Last time when we had a negative equity scenario, interest rates were vastly higher but most people managed, but then many people did not owe so much on credit cards, rates on houses was vastly less etc.

I think we will see a lot of burnt fingers and genuinely feel sorry for all those people but before things get worse, they need to critically examine their finances and decide what do they need as opposed to what they want.

For several years we have had buy to let people and so often the argument has been forget the rent return just wait for the capital appreciaton when you sell the property. How many times did we read of Mr X sitting on a property empire worth millions, ignoring his multimillions owed on mortgages. It is these people who have helped push up prices. OK they do have a function in that they can buy property to let to those who cannot afford to buy. I would suggest that the lending criteria for buy to let borrowers should be tightly reined in so that their activities do not help force up prices.

I don't see a crash from these figures. Once there's a levelling out all the first time buyers who have been locked out for so long will come back on the market and start the buying (and the price rises) all over again. There is still a huge demand for houses.

I am a faithful BBC watcher and after seeing the prices of homes in England realize I couldn't afford to buy the dogshouse... More power to those who can Pay the Cost!

The Scotsman has done very well in representing the interests of property developers, estate agents and lenders.

It is about time it represented the interests of the Scottish people, with sound and impartial property analysis.

I love some of the theories put up for rising house prices. In the end it is all about greed. Buyers will pay more and more in the belief that their investment will rise rapidly and score them a fat profit. For the most part the only ones who care about the struggle to get on the "property ladder" are those doing the struggling.

And while 66 has a point, the work ethos in the UK can be patchy at best, that is no reason to condemn every native Briton. You might also consider that the immigrants we see here tend to be the best and the most motivated, that is why they are here. Every country has its fair share of layabouts and ne'er do wells.

I am very wary,I did not think these crazy house prices can go on for ever.

As for someone who says not to worry there wont be a crash,well they didnt think that interest rates in the eighties would go so high and I remember those days and it was scary.My hubbie and I literally lived on a fiver a fortnight as that was all we had left after paying our mortgage,bills and buying our groceries.We only had one income as I had just had my (then) baby daughter and could not afford childcare.

We did come through,but it taught me a few things.Among them not to be complacent about your monetary situation,never feel too comfortable and have some savings behind you,at the time due to our circumstances we had no savings but we changed that very quickly when our circumstances improved.

I agree with many on this board that much of todays situation is brought about by greed,especially with those who have more property than they need and who exploit others less fortunate.

I also heard somewhere correct me if I am wrong,that USA is very near to recession,if that happens everything will be thrown into turmoil,it will affect ALL countries.

Dont worry , there wil be a story tomorrow talking of unprecedented rises.

Rip off Britain , I cant believe the prices some of you will pay for a summy flat.

Dont worry , there wil be a story tomorrow talking of unprecedented rises.

Rip off Britain , I cant believe the prices some of you will pay for a scummy flat.

Greed alone doesn't explain things. If there were no house shortage people wouldn't be able to charge more for the existing ones. Equally anybody foolish enough to sell their house at merely an inflationary increase of the price they bought it at (I have never met such a person) would have no serious effect on the market because the person they sold it to wouldn't resell it cheap.

Nitton 58 said "All the local authorities are trying to get houses more environmentally efficient, something the building industry have failed to do for themselves"

This is to misunderstand what "efficiency" is. It is doing things at the least cost for the value achieved. When John Large the BBC's favourite "independent nuclear expert" spent thousands on a windmill that he found saved him 9p a day his house may have become more "Green" but this was not more efficient. Anything that has to be subsidised or enforced to make people willing to pay for it is likely to be the antithesis of efficiency.

Derrick thanks for your comments. I have been saying this for some time but somebody in the industry who knows the background is obviously more convincing. These rules provide gainful employment to hordes of regulators but harm everybody else. Unfortunately the regulators are in control. http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/

The Bank of England is not finished raising interest rates yet.
Should it get to 6% you will see thousands of foreclosures.

it is very dangerous to stick you collective heads in the sand and say there will not be a crash. The rises are not sustainable!

If the number of joiners continue to fall as even the most basic house cost > £100,000 (and average salaries are < £20,000) then the whole system will collapse. It is basic economics.

#76 - There will not be many (if any)more rate rises this year if the inflation rate falls, which it looks like it will, as the dometic fuel rates fall.

#75 - ???? I was referring to environmentally efficient, not cost efficient. The new regulation restrict the number and size windows and demand better insulation. (also demand that when boilers are replaced a more efficient boiler must be fitted) Whats wrong with that?

The planning and building control process is the only way the these thing can be enforced.

Micro generation is a fantastic idea, but you have load of cowboys out there wrongly selling windmills to people that don't get much wind. (Today I'd make a fortune out of it, if I had one!)

Derick fae yell has it right. I started my apprenticeship in an architect's office in 1953 and I agree with everything in his posts. Building control and planning officers number one objective is to look after their own jobs. Post number 58-- did your architect get your plans through building control first time without any objections? I bet they did not.
I started work when the bye laws were in operation and I knew the planning acts and building regs. backwards, but as each new act comes into play hordes of new staff are employed to ' administer' the requirements. The acts are all there for all to see but unfortunately each local authority has a different interpretation. If you disagree you can appeal and this can take months maybe years and when a local authority loses an appeal the local tax payer picks up the bill.

#78
I understand that in order to contain inflation interest rates have to be raised. I don't think that you are out of the woods yet with inflation. I see two more 1/4 basis point raises.
If household owners are on variable rate mortgages there will indeed be many foreclosures.

to be fair to the Planning Officers we have been dealing with - they have been been quite supportive. It's just that the system they work within is unwieldy beyond all belief, and my perciption is that the council concerned has a 'blame culture' so they had to tick every conceiveable box plus a few inconceivable ones, to cover their own backs.

Here's a suggestion for Nicola Sturgeon and Stephen Maxwell : Assuming the new Executive reviews the quangos as promised without being blocked by Ye Olde Numptocracy

I suggest they get together an advisory group of a few practicing structural engineers and architects, private builders project managers and housing association project managers (basically people who have recent/current experience of actually trying to get projects through the system) and see what reasonable changes to processes and agency responsibilities could be made to make the things work more efficiently.

The Homelessness Task force is a reasonable template, albeit that had a different focus.

The housing market will collapse because inflation has gone out of control. The MPC must hike interest rates to 5.75% for credibility alone next month. Even then the MPC's own prediction show they wont meet their 2% CPI target. A conservative estimate is interest rates will reach 6% by late summer. Energy costs are not being passed on the consumer as the Gov hoped either. When people cannot afford their monthly payments the banks will foreclose ( 2 missed payments by Northern Rock and the bailiffs are round) . Given this, and the unprecedented levels of personal debt a severe housing crash is inevitable as has occured in US and Spain.I believe there is now less risk investing in stocks and shares.

I agree with other comments suggesting the property market is driven by greed, but its only part of the equation. The Gov has skewed the supply demand/ equation , through the blocking of local authorities building according to demand. Other factors such as planning permission and a mass influx of 6 million immigrants are major supply and demand side contributers. The chancellors pension fund raid, and the prospect of cheap money from the banks are other significant factors, as people are seeing property in purely investment terms to augment their raided pension funds. Of course it will all collapse like a pack of cards, because all bubbles must burst , but no property market cheerleader can argue against the fundamental economic fact that the economy is overheating (for the first time since NL took over), and MPC have only one tool to control it.
Chickens coming home to roost.

Well folks, in the town where I live (Population about 36000 ) the cost of buying a house has just increased 27% in the last quarter!.
Can any town in Scotland beat that?
I am glad I purchased my house 39 years ago.
Peace and Joy

#66
"I've sold properties this year to a number of Polish folk who speak better English than the locals"

Where was this, and in what way was their English poorer?

One thing I have noticed on my trips home is, there is a lack of new homes being built in Scotland, I suppose a lot of the property increases are with older homes being upgraded. Around the cities, older tenements are being refurbished, bathrooms added and so forth.
When I lived in a tenement, it could have been considered almost a slum. Nowadays they are selling in excess of 100,000 pounds.

#72 Mop.
The US is nowhere near a recession, we are going into a slow growth mainly due to the housing market. We had to raise interest rates to curb inflation, petrol prices have aggravated this.
I agree that when the US market hiccups the rest of the global economy goes into convulsions.
I think that if you stand back and look at the financial shape of the world presently, you might say to yourself, I've never had it so good.

Jist a reminder that Sambo will be in Scotland next week tae staighten everything oot.

Och! Poor Scotland. T'is the price of being run by a parcel of rogues..........the rogues which run the U.S.A. as so prominently shown by Chimp & Poodle this week. California is the the 3rd straight year of realty decline, I understand that the case is similar throughout most of the U.S.A., and you are now getting yours for the same reasons. I just read an article in The Scottish Banner called "Boom And Bust Market" with the standard disinformation line from H.B.O.S., almost echoed here by Scott Brown, reminiscent of the sibling line on Iraq.

House prices have gone far to high....about time that they would fall.
Banks have made it too easy to borrow money in the past few years, which has contributed to those high house prices, which have outpriced most ordenary people, who are on basic working wages.

All sellers want to get as much cash as they can, and all buyers are egged on by the mortgage/conveyancing industry to offer as much as they can. The only winners are the agents and solicitors. It costs no more time or effort to sell a 3 bedroom flat in the New Town as it does to sell the same in Cumbernauld (in fact it's probably a lot easier) so why should the agents get paid more?
A flat fee of £150 per property is ample for a solicitor who spends about 30 minutes filling out (or getting his secretary to fill out) the standard forms and checks that are required. If you stop the agents from benefitting from price inflation, then you'll stop their need to fleece everyone who wants to buy a house. Maybe then we can get to a more realistic set of house prices.

Notice to #21 C.U.Jimmy.
Just a warning, I've got my eye on your single-end in Govan, and when the prices really, really, drop, I'm going to snap it up for my 2nd holiday home.

We've got a wee place in the Highlands
just a wee but and ben with a view
on the shores of Loch Fyne, it could be a goldmine
but we still have a few things to do

It takes us an hour to drive from Milngavie
for the Jaguar's smashing, it really can fly
just Kirsty, Fiona, Gordon and I
and a building society loan.

In our wee bit Pied' a Terre
we can live without a care,
for the good life's abundant if you'r not made redundant
so why don't you call on us there

As long as unscrupulous lenders allow buyers to borrow more than they can hope to repay, then house prices will continue to rise. The greedy banks and building socities are fuelling this nauseating rise in house prices.

I find myself in agreement with what I take to be your refreshing libertarian and realist streak in your posts.

However, the reality is that foolish, lazy and/or ill-informed buyers and borrowers, who cannot be bothered to read and understand what they are signing, allow lenders to gain the advantage over them - then they have the temerity to complain.

In addition, banks and building societies, as well as insurers, lawyers, etc. are all in the housing sector for one purpose - NEWSFLASH - to make money for themselves.

This all seems like good news to me. If prices stop soaring (or even better... go down) I might actually be able to buy a home in a couple years rather then rent forever.

More poor or biased journalism. Story could be read as 'housing becomes more affordable'.

Why should prices keep rising? Nothing under the sun can grow indefinately without end, why should capitalism be different?

I am sorry to let you all know but there will not be a major property crash.

Why? Two interest rate hikes and another to come has made people have a look at what they already own and are now diverting their hard earned cash into improving their existing property. Take a wander down to your local B&Q or Homebase etc (if you can get in the car park!) or have a look at their projected profit statements.

This combined with a lot of new builds being completed this quarter in Scotland and this takes a little bit of heat out of the market up until end June.

Current figures show demand for new housing in the UK at around 240,000. UK house builders figures show that there will be about 170,000. A shortfall of 70,000. Some parts of UK particularly South England will continue to be strong and in Scotland will remain steady. Demand is still there and will continue. Stamp duty has had some impact on the higher end however at the lower end in the less deirable areas this is where the major growth in prices has been. In West Pilton in Edinburgh a standard two bedroom flat is now between £100k and £120k+ rising from £60k in the last two years.

There is too much inflationary pressure in the economy and the MPC must consider the whole economy not just one component. Most experts are predicting 6% interest rates by end of summer, and how many people could afford another average 120 pounds / month year on year increase in mortgage costs. Makes no difference what the supply side is, if the owner can't cover the monthly mortgage.

1995 all over again.

See comment 11

http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=53&id=370792007

Want the truth? There are so few properties available in the 300k+ price bracket that the average price os sale is reduced. I recently sold a 2 bed Edinburgh flat for 33% over the asking price, and double what I paid 5 yrs ago. This is the usual boom/bust newspaper speculation, though I admit the boom cant go on forever.

Infowar ... don't you just love it