Are house price rises a good thing?

Over the past few weeks there have been a number of positiveindicators that the housing marketing is staging a recovery, or at the veryleast prices have stopped falling.

This may come as some as welcome news for the bewildered Britishbuilding sector and the countless pig like estate agents and greedy home ownerswho are dying to go back to the price rise bubble of the past 10 years.  However is this what we need in the UK.  Should out economy be so dependent on the residentialconstruction industry?

The resultsof the 2008 ASHE show that median weekly pay for full-time employees in the UKgrew by 4.6 per cent in the year to April 2008 to reach £479. Median earningsof full-time male employees was £521 per week in April 2008; for women themedian was £412.

It was the availability of cheap credit and lacks controlsof many of our financial institutions that got us into this mess.  This resulted in the average house price risingto 180,000 at its peak, whilst the average income roughly tracked retailinflation at a steady 2-5% pa over the last ten years.

"As a society we need to decide that if we want to live in a four bedroom house with a x5 parked on the drive it should be a question of how much money i can earn, not how much credit I can access." 

The government of the day seemed unwilling to say in publicwhat many of us industry insiders knew which was this housing bubble is unsustainable.  Instead what we got were ever more ridiculousschemes being announced to help first time buyer got on to the housing ladderand the banks lining up to oblige with ever more risky lending practise.

But enough of the past..

Looking to the future do we want house prices to rise?  Contrary to the current evidence, we at www.UKhousing.compredict that the worst in not yet over, and that government has constructed an artificialstabilising mechanism which has successfully halted the downward spiral.  If anyone is old enough to remember blackWednesday you'll now that governments can not buck the market, and that whenthe housing market supports are removed we will see an accelerated increase inrepossession.

What do you think?

Question...I am already using an Estate Agent, can I still attempt sell my house privately?

The answer is 'maybe'...It depends on what contract you signed with your agent.

If you are already with an estate agent you will have one of the following types of contract between the estate agent and yourself:

1. 'Sole selling / letting'
Sole selling / letting means your estate agent is the only one with the right to sell or let your house. Even if you find a buyer or tenant yourself, you'll still have to pay the agent!

2. 'Sole agency'
'Sole agency' also means the estate agent is the only one with the right to sell or let your house but if you find a buyer or tenant yourself, you will not have to pay the agent.

3. 'Multi agency'
'Multi agency' means that you can choose several estate agents to market your house but you will only have to pay commission to the one who sells or lets it

4. 'Ready, willing and able purchaser'
'Ready, willing and able purchaser' is a contract. If the estate agent finds you a buyer and you later withdraw from the sale, you'll still have to pay them.

As we are not an estate agent and your contract is either 2,3 or 4 then you can still use our services and sell or let your properties privately.

Note: Check your contract is not for Sole Selling rights.
Under Sole Selling Rights, your agent can claim commission even if you sell the property. Hopefully your contract is for Sole Agency.

I don't think estate agents should take the blame for the rise in house prices. They were simply doing their job, which is (was) to get as much commission as possible for themselves and realise the highest value for the property.

I do however blame the banking system and indirectly the government for allowing this house price explosion to occur in the first place, because when even first time buyers in the North of England, earning a wage which is above the national average are struggling to get onto the housing ladder, alarm bells should have been ringing loud and clear in number 10!

At this point steps needed to be taken to address the irresponsible lending which was going on and the bank of England given a new mandate.

Instead, all we got from the government and house builders, were ever more imaginative schemes to allow people to get onto the housing ladder, like shared ownership.

Call me a cynic, but I looked into buying a shared ownership apartment some months ago and was left with the feeling that the whole scheme was a trick to allow me to buy a fraction of an overpriced property and pay rent of the remaining portion.

My point was whether I am paying 600 pounds Mortgage and 400 pounds rent , 1000 pounds is still leaving my back account every month!

If the banks would not lend me a mortgage with repayment of 1000 pounds per month, why would they lend me 600, knowing that I still had a further 400 pounds in rent to pay? They shouldn’t right?.. But this was how shared ownership works. Smoke and mirrors!

As a result of the cheapness of money and the ever more imaginative ways of getting people onto the housing ladder , the UK went property mad, with countless property shows illustrating how even the most inept Neanderthal can make money from property.

Now the party is over and we all have the hangover and collectively as a society we need to adapt.

My thoughts go out to all who, like myself, are caught with negative equity. I console myself by saying that negative equity is not going to be an issue for me until I need to sell, which is not going to be for a while.

Other people are not so lucky as this credit crunch and subsequent fall in property values are leading us ever further into a major economic downturn.

So who do I blame..?

Everyone.

We all got greedy and brought into the myth of money for nothing. We should remember that a house is a home, not a Magic piggy bank.

Sometime in the next few years, house prices will start to rise again, but with fewer estate agents (thanks to this downturn, and ukhousing.com) and financial institutions.

Peter James writes for UKHousing.com, where you can save thousands from Private House Sales without an estate agent.