Can I Sell my home fast?. Well, since the great slide of free economy started in mid-2007, probably the worst since the Great Depression, newspaper headlines have been filled with words like “unemployment,” “recession,” “repossessions,” “credit crunch,” “bankrupt,” and the likes. Just recently, “double dip” is bantered all over.
The Sunday Times reported that forecasters fear that job losses and the prospect of new property taxes may undermine an economic recovery. Also according to the report, Morgan Stanley predicts a 7 percent fall in house prices by the end of next year, but said they can slide to as much as 18 percent. Deutsche Bank expects a 5 percent dip, while Capital Economics puts it at 10 percent.
Property analyst Hometrack also reported the biggest price fall in houses since April 2009, when things seemed to have finally been looking up.
“The housing market is in the process of a modest re-pricing that is likely to run for the next six to 12 months. This follows a period of 18 months over which house prices have firmed rapidly on the back of a potent mix of rising demand and a chronic lack of housing for sale,” Richard Donnell, director of research at Hometrack, was quoted as saying on Cliff D’ Arcy’s column on Lovemoney.com.
But a fellow columnist of Arcy’s on Lovemoney.com, Christina Jordan, does not think it’s all doom and gloom. In a recent column, she writes about why despite all the bad news, there is a bright side.
1. Lending stable
It is true that mortgage lending has dropped compared to when the property market was booming just a decade ago. It’s also true that mortgage lending is down 3 percent in July compared to the same period last year. But according to figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders, lending was up in July from what it was in June, which was up from May, which was also better than the previous month.
These increases have got to be good news. Although Jordan acknowledges that the market will slow down for the remainder of the year, she says it is “precisely what’s expected,” given that we are at a time of the year when the market is traditionally slower.
2. House price reports not all bad
All those headlines about “double dip” in the housing market may have scared the hell out of you. Okay, so Hometrack reported a 0.3 percent fall from July to August, and Nationwide said it was 0.5 percent in July, but that was after it reported consecutive rises in four previous months.
In the same report, Nationwide also noted that house prices rose by almost 2 percent in the second quarter of this year, compared to the first quarter. And Halifax actually had actually had conflicting figures,reporting a rise of 0.6 percent in house prices in July.
Taking everything into consideration, house prices are still significantly higher than they were a year ago. Jordan says indications of a slowing market are there, but she thinks “it’s too soon to call an inevitable drop in house prices.”
