Houses ~ Falls much bigger!!

'House prices to fall until 2010': the options for buyers and sellers
Last Updated: 12:56am BST 11/06/2008
Page 1 of 2
Have your say Read comments
Homeowners are being warned to brace themselves for three years of falling house prices, writes Paul Farrow
There are signs that tens of thousands of borrowers are already being sucked into negative equity.
Ed Stansfield, at Capital Economics, said: "We had forecast price falls of 8 per cent this year and 10 per cent next year, but the 8 per cent figure is looking very conservative. It is now plausible that prices will fall by 15 per cent in 2008. When it comes to forecasting the direction of prices in 2010 it is a case of reasoning why prices won't fall further rather than the other way around. House prices falls tend to run in years not months."
Mortgage repossessions: how to hang on to your home
Ten tips to get the best price when you sell your home
Surviving negative equity
The gloomy prediction comes as the number of homeowners in danger of falling into negative equity begins to rise. More than 23,000 homeowners took out 100 per cent home loans in the past year – and it is highly likely they are already in negative territory.
Weighed down: homeowners need to be prepared for difficult times in the housing market
The number of houses changing hands has also "collapsed" to the lowest level in 30 years. The fall in sales far exceeds the depths of the last housing crash in the 1990s and is the lowest since records began in 1978. The average number of houses that estate agents sold in the past three months was 17.4 - almost a third lower than a year ago, says the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).
Miles Shipside at Rightmove said that those that were still looking to sell were being totally unrealistic – new asking prices were, on average still higher than a year ago. "Sellers have to drop their asking price by at least 10 per cent," he said.
Last month, Hometrack, the property research company said that property values had fallen eight months in a row, while Nationwide and Halifax, the two largest mortgage lenders, confirmed that house prices are falling year-on-year.
House sales fall is steepest since the 1970s, says RICS
House prices: News, views and data
RICS UK housing market survey, May 2008 [PDF Format]
advertisement

We have canvassed the thoughts of some other leading experts on how far they see prices falling – and what they would do if they were a buyer or a seller during these difficult times.
How far can prices fall and has your forecast changed recently given the ongoing gloom and fall in consumer confidence?
Alun Powell, senior UK economist, HSBC "The recent run of weak housing market statistics, including the very low levels of mortgage approvals for house purchase and falling house prices, has led us to downgrade our forecasts for house price inflation. We now expect that by the end of this year, prices will be 10 per cent lower than they were at the end of 2007. The bigger question is what will happen to house prices in 2009. Our view is that a weakening economy will keep the housing market subdued."
Melanie Bien, director Savills Private Finance "The UK mainstream market will fall 8 per cent this year and 2 per cent in 2009 assuming liquidity pressures ease by the end of the year. The worst case scenario is a 10 per cent fall in average values in 2008 and a further 15 per cent in 2009 taking values back to 2004 levels for UK residential."
Ray Boulger, analyst at John Charcol, the mortgage broker "I have changed a little. I expect prices to fall by about 9 per cent this year but to be recovering by the second half of next year."
Marc Goldberg, head of residential sales, Hamptons International "We have seen prices fall by around 10-15 per cent so far, since the peak of 2007 and it is possible we will see another 5 per cent over the next few months – which will mean a 20 per cent drop since summer 2007."
What would you do if you were a buyer?
Melanie Bien: "If I were a buyer I would find a property I liked and then seriously haggle on the asking price. It's important in a housing market downturn that you don't pay more than you need to, nor overstretch yourself on the mortgage.
"If I were a buyer without a deposit of at least 5 per cent (preferably) or 10 per cent and no likelihood of assistance I would return to old-fashioned values and save for one. Because there is a downturn you won't risk being priced off the ladder while you save and it will widen your options, give you access to a greater number of mortgages at preferential rates."
Mark Goldberg: "Analyse prices carefully. Prices are 15 per cent off the peak of last summer and some vendors have taken advice from their agent on this and adjusted prices accordingly. However, others have ignored the recent changes in the market.
"Ask the agent why the vendor is moving. There are always people moving for genuine reasons and these people are more likely to be realistic than those just looking to cash in on an investment. It is a more relaxed proposition buying in a down-turn though, as buyers can, on the whole, secure the price they want."
Have your say
Continued
1
2
Next page

Dialect researchers given a 'canny load of chink' to sort 'pikeys' from 'chavs' in regional accents
By Andy McSmithFriday, 1 June 2007


If, in this age of instant nationwide communication, you think that regional dialects have died off in the UK, you must be a bit of a noggerhead (as they say in Somerset), or perhaps or a nizgul (from the Black Country), or you're a bit cakey (Staffordshire), or batchy (Essex), mazed (Devon and Somerset), niddy-noddy (Isle of Man), or just gormless (Yorkshire).
Researchers at Leeds University are sifting through a vast collection of examples of regional slang words and phrases turned up by a project run by the BBC, in which they invited the public to send in examples of English still spoken throughout the country.
So much information came back that the Arts and Humanities Research Council has awarded a team led by Sally Johnson, Professor of Linguistics and Phonetics at Leeds University, £460,000 to study it. Among thousands of items turned up by the BBC Voices project is the range of words the young use to insult one another.


How, for instance, do they describe someone who goes around dressed in a lot of cheap, trendy clothes and jewellery, someone like the singer Lily Allen, for example? The best-known insult thrown at such a person is "chav", which can be heard all across the south of England and has spread north.


But in the South-east, such a person may also be called a "pikey", a corruption of 'turnpike sailor', a derogatory name that used to be directed at gypsies.


Other regional insults, all given the same meaning, include "charva", a Romany word heard in Newcastle, "scally" on Merseyside, "ned" in southern Scotland, and "kev" - short for Kevin - around Birmingham.


One of Lily Allen's offences against sartorial standards was to be photographed in a dress and trainers - trainers as the universal word for footwear known as "pumps" in Yorkshire, "gutties" in Scotland, and "daps" if you're on the south coast. "These labels are perhaps more eloquent of the people who are using them, and their attitudes, than of the people they try to stick these labels on," Clive Upton, a member of the research team, said.
"There is a study to be done as to whether when somebody calls someone else a 'pikey' or a 'scally', the word means the same to the hearer as to the person using it. Some people might think of it as a style statement, others might hear something threatening.

"But while we are in academia studying these questions, the people who really know what is going on and the people who are really driving the language forward are the people who speak it."
Mr Upton, who is Professor of English at Leeds University, said that they were "very pleased" - and indeed, "well chuffed" - at receiving their generous grant. He could, of course, have been "bostin" if he had come from the Black Country, or if he was a Scouser he would have been well "made up" over so many spondoolicks, because as a Geordie might say, £460,000 is a "canny load of chink"


The word on the street: dialects from around Britain


Northern Ireland
Foundered: cold, chilled
Hirple: hobble or walk with a limp or unevenly
Peasewisp: untidy heap
Scrake of dawn: very early
Yam: crying sound of a cat

Glasgow
Go-carry: piggy-back
Midgie men: bin men
Oaxter: armpit
Planked: hidden

Tyneside
Canny: something or someone good
Copper wife: policewoman
Hadaway/Howay: be gone
Snotter cloot: handkerchief
Wor: our

Liverpool
Backie: riding on the back of someone's bike
Delf: cups, saucers, plates
Exey cosher: newspaper street seller
Latchlifter: having enough money to go to the pub
Spondoolicks: money

Yorkshire
Ay oop/Ey oop: hello
Baht: without
Clarty: muddy
Happen, or 'appen: perhaps
Owt: anything
Black Country
Mardy: moody
Nizgul: stupid person
Ronk: horrible
Toy: a gentleman's neck tie

London
Russell Harty: party
North and South: mouth
Pete Tong: wrong
Leo Sayer: all dayer
Tom Cruise: booze
Boracic lint: skint
Lord Mayor: swear

Southern Counties
Allus: always
Bodger: careless worker
Swimey: sick, or faint
Twitten: narrow path or lane

Edinburgh
Gie's a schifter: let me have a go/look
Mawkit: dirty
Pure: solid, really difficult
Top gadgie: great guy
Somerset
Acker: friend
Lart: wooden flooring
Noggerhead: idiot
Pixie-led: simple minded or crazed
Scollared: taught

Mid-Wales
Chimook: chimney
Glat: hole in the hedge
Her's in a cank!: she is in a bad mood
Unty tump: mole hill

Wiltshire
Fuckling: tiresome
Galley-bagger: scarecrow
Loppity: to feel weak or out of sorts
Mucker a miser: Teg sheep

Norfolk
Bishy-barney-bee: ladybird
Dodman snail: Mawkin scarecrow

Gordon Porridge ~ PM of UK

PM is like porridge - Labour peer

Mr Brown's leadership style was likened to porridge


A Labour peer has launched an attack on Gordon Brown's premiership saying it was like "porridge" compared with predecessor Tony Blair's "champagne".


Lord Desai said Mr Brown must "change his style" to be "more presentable".
He told the BBC recent opinion polls did not look good for Labour, ahead of local elections next month, but said it could "overcome these things."
Lord Desai, a leading economist, is not known to have spoken out against the party leadership before.

'Not exciting'

He told BBC News 24: "A lot of this is about perception. He [Mr Brown] doesn't seem to be able to tell people he's on their side and he can solve their problems.
"I really think somebody has to change his style and make him more presentable."
Gordon Brown was put on earth to remind people how good Tony Blair was
Lord Desai
Lord Desai added: "He is a tremendous person in terms of thinking, policymaking, his seriousness, the question is going to convey to people that he feels their pain and that he is on their side?"
He said that as a Labour member for 37 years, his main concern was the party won the next election, but he believed voters were losing patience with Mr Brown's style of government.
"Blair was like champagne and caviar, Brown is more like porridge or Haggis. He is very solid, very nourishing but not exciting," he said.
'Weak'
The backbench peer denied he was stabbing the prime minister in the back, while he was out of the country on a tour of the US.
"I am not stabbing him at all, but if it was it would be in the front. I have said something openly, frankly," he told BBC News 24.
"Tony Blair had a style of communication and that's why, when you see Gordon Brown, you say 'Oh my God, how good Tony Blair was'," he added.
Earlier, he told the Evening Standard newspaper that the prime minister had appeared "indecisive" and "weak" and was "a worrier".
He said: "Gordon Brown was put on earth to remind people how good Tony Blair was."
Lord Desai, a professor of economics at the London School of Economics, is not known to have spoken out against the Labour leadership before
'Miscalculation'
In his interview, he criticised Mr Brown's decision, while chancellor, to abolish the 10p starting rate of income tax - which opponents say will hit low-earners - calling it a "miscalculation".
Lord Desai said the 1 May elections for councils in England and Wales and the London Assembly and mayoralty were "going to be bad" for Labour.
He added: "If Labour loses in London there will be a real climate of fear... it would be absolutely traumatic for the party. At that point, backbenchers would look at the situation and say, 'How is all this going to work out for me?'. There would be real panic stations."
Lord Desai said Foreign Secretary David Miliband would be the best choice as next Labour leader and called Schools Secretary Ed Balls, a close ally of Mr Brown, a "repetition" of the prime minister.
On Wednesday, Chancellor Alistair Darling said the government had to "sharpen ourselves up" and deliver a "clear message of what we are about".
But Health Secretary Alan Johnson called Mr Brown "a serious man for serious times".