Why can not you use the negative to bring up some good points such as how to make money in a down market
Actually I thought I’d put forward several reasons why a down market is a positive thing; improved housing affordability for first home owners, buying opportunities for investors, reduced cost of trading up for existing home owners … that was…[Read more]

I have just thought of a person that would benefit from a house price crash – DMICHIE
Guilty as charged. It would be nice if a few people here admitted that they would benefit from contiunued growth in house prices.

As for your mate, you don’t sell to rent while prices are still rising. No-one can pick a top or bottom, you can only make a…[Read more]

Interesting to see the polarisation of the comments; a crash will either be 100% bad or 100% good. My own view (not Peter Parsons) is that it will be somewhere in between. Good for housing affordability but it will probably result in an economic downturn.

Luci, no idea who Peter Parsons is or what credibility he has (if any). I thought he made…[Read more]

The Mortgage Adviser wrote:
that means 70% of the populations does not care
Agreed, the vast majority (existing home owners who bought >5 years ago) don’t care. This group might feel less wealthy, but they also have the opportunity to trade up a better property at a much lower cost.

So is this your percentage breakdown?
Group 1 (renters looking…[Read more]

WHO CARES!!!
Someone does [biggrin]

I thought the article made a good point that rather than a house price crash being a disaster, most people in the community (even professional property investors) would benefit. I’m sure many here would see a crash as a great opportunity to pick up some cheap properties.

3 out of 5 groups either don’t care…[Read more]

blind Freddy could see the boom has ended in sydney… surely, we are not in denial about that?
I dunno, cmhall seems to think I’m delusional for even suggesting that prices are falling in Sydney.

While it’s obvious the Sydney market is heading slowly south, it is also clear that real estate agents have two very solid reasons to talk the market…[Read more]

What about these mum and dad investors who many years ago bought their holiday home/ investment property in coastal towns of NSW to help with their retirement?
These people are pretty well off by any measure, and have done very well out of just sitting on a property that they bought decades ago. As for retirement, why shouldn’t investment…[Read more]

you ar delusional in thinking Sydney prices are falling , the prices MAY have plateaued IN SOME areas
The deluded are those who believe that house prices cannot, will not, and do not fall.
BTW, if prices have plateaued then they are already falling in real terms.

more accurately NSW are the horrendous taxes the state govt place on home-…[Read more]

11 consecutive months of falls doesn’t sound too healthy to me. Also, 2.3% doesn’t sound like much, but if inflation is say 3%, that’s a fall of >5% in real terms.

Somehow I can’t see this chart stabilising, or gently falling back to earth:
http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/index.php?act=Attach&type=post&id=501
It could happen, but it seems…[Read more]

Yes David Morgan was at Westpac during the last property bust (not that there are property busts of course [biggrin])

One of the big banks has got to be wrong
http://smh.com.au/articles/2005/05/16/1116095907818.html

Westpac keeps its powder dry
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Business/Westpac-keeps-its-powder-dry/2005/05/05/1115092628749.html

Yes, the UK bubble could even be worse than ours, and looks like its bursting now.

Some nasty looking charts here:
http://www.graphicinvestor.com/econo/UK/MORTGAGES/Mortgages.htm

I sold a house and a car in the past month. The value of the house was approx 60x that of the car.

The purchaser of the car organised an NRMA check which took about two hours and was very thorough.

The bank valuation guy (contracted out of course) looked at the house for about 5 minutes and did litte more than count the number of rooms.

BTW,…[Read more]

And – as mentioned already – if you had chosen to sell at the right time, you would have made a huge profit in real terms.
True, if you had chosen the right time, but if you’d bought at the peak in say 1988, you wouldn’t have made any profit until 1998.

Look at the chart: http://203.26.51.178/cracker/51242_1.jpg
The peak in 1988 is around the…[Read more]

Michael,

You say Sydney and Qld are flat, but is anything actually falling? My (Sydney) suburb was down 15% YOY between 2003 and 2004, and I reckon its fallen further in 2005.

I am interested to know your views on the QLD market to property investing as a strategy v’s investing in Sydney.
IMO the only place to invest in property at the moment is WA, and then only in the short term. Once the heat comes out of the resources boom, the Perth market will follow the rest of the country.

As this is an investment forum what…[Read more]

Dimichie, good idea however u should know that the Share market and Property market work differently with this type of information in Australia … get a solicator to explain it to you.
Please do tell. Why is it recent sales data freely available in the UK, or Canberra for that matter, and not in the rest of the country? One could be forgiven…[Read more]

Luci, I’m glad that you have 100% faith that house prices never go down. If that’s what you believe then keep buying property. I am quite happy staying on the sidelines for now, because agents keep calling me to tell me about price reductions. Two just this morning.

Also, this graph is skewed to only count property growth after inflation.
Yes,…[Read more]

I truly have no vested interest (that I know of) in whether the Sydney market goes up or down.
Well I apologise then. One could easily get the wrong impression from the links in your posts.

markpatrick, as for balance I often find myself fighting the bullish case in ultra-bearish real estate forums like this…[Read more]

I make some money through people visiting my website and some other money if someone asks me for a referral which is paid by the broker I refer to (fully disclosed of course).
This is how you make your living I assume? Please correct me if I’m wrong. Perhaps it is just a hobby?

In any case, even if I did, in an upward market, people buy and in a downward market, people consolidate or refinance.
Agreed, but the market has to move, and its a bit of a standoff out there ATM. Vendors asking too much, buyers not offering enough, properties sitting on the market for months on end. As I understand it, investor financing has…[Read more]