House Price Spy Blog

As with all property slumps there will be some areas worse hit than others, inflated prices in the capital seeing modest flats changing hands for millions, will hit London property prices hardest. The HBOS predicted that prices in London will fall by a massive 9%, the lender is planning a rights issue in the months to come, hoping to raise £4 billion to counteract falling sales of mortgage plans.

London was of course hardest hit in the 1980s when inflated prices caused negative equity for many.

The Council Of Mortgage Lenders last year predicted a 1% increase in average property prices and are now predicting a 7% drop in prices. Conservative estimates predict a 5-10% drop with the higest estimates reaching 20% for extreme cases!

Some thing to think on is that although property prices are on average 4% down on 2007 they are in fact 5% up on 2006 which, I think puts things in perspective! Prices are not rising as high as they were but have reached a ceiling where steady rises will apply.

The average property price is a huge 39% higher than in 2003, which tells its own tale!!! You could also consider the fact that if you buck the trend and move homne you will be losing a one end (selling) and gaining at another end (buying cheaper) so overall wont lose out too much…

The SBE (Society of Business Economists) has predicted that UK property prices will fall by up to 10% during 2008 and reach rock bottom in 2009 losing up to 20% of their value. They did however predict that prices would then get back to peak values seen in 2007 and start rising from that point onwards. However this may take up to 4 years….

UK estate agents saw an all time low of sales during May 2008.

With no end in sight to the Credit Crunch there will be no quick ‘ Bounce Back’ effect and people appear to be waiting out the situation rather than bucking the trend.

The Bank Of England has lowered and retained the mortgage rate in recent months at 5%, while this has not been passed onto the borrower by all lenders. This does not seem to have a very beneficient effect on the Uk housing market

This may be the time to either reduce the price of your home or indeed to wait out the next period and see what happens in the UK property market.

Energy bills are rising higher than ever and it’s never too late to switch you utilities provider and save hundreds of pounds each year! The press is full of scare stories about families choosing between heating and eating, but most of us will have noticed out bills rising in the last year with the remaining low cost providers following suit and raising prices.

House Price Spy has a specialist Utilities section with the best providers and price comparision sites around. Dont say you cant be bothered or they are all the same as many promise to beat your present deal at the very least! There is not paperwork to complete and no visits to your home will be required to make the change.

Try our Cheaper utility Bills section, it could be the best thing you do all day!

The Bank Of England has held the mortgage lending rate for June 2008 at 5%, holding for a second successive month. The BOE has slowely decreased the rate from a peak of 5.75% in August 2007.

Whether this will increase consumer confidence enough to breath life into the UK property market will remain to be seen…although the rate can be reduced as much as they want if no-one is buying property and lenders are not giving any decent mortgages out then things will never change.

As always the Bank Of England site has all sorts of facts and figures which are interesting and informative, plus you can get the latest mortgage, inflation and other announcements hot of the presses!

The next rate announcement will be given on the 10th of July 2008.

As the ‘credit crunch’ media hype goes into overdrive the papers were reporting that almost 2 million people in the UK were stuggling to pay their mortgages. In the early 90′s a record breaking number (hundred of thousands!) of home owners lost their homes due to the devaluation of the pound and rising unemployment.

With few people taking the option of mortgage insurance or employment insurance there are more people than ever at risk of losing their home…

This is not taking into account the fact that there are more people in the UK than ever with the population rising by almost 10 million in the last 10 years and the fact that mortgage lenders untill recently were handing outcrazy mortgages to anyone who applied.

I’m probably not alone in thinking that the media played a part in the so called ‘credit crunch’ hyping the thing untill it turned into what they wanted. If the news has negative news about house prices every night people are less likely to move home meaning sales will be down. It’s probably not what Gordon Brown needed but he is a victim of the reletaive success of the last 10 years inflating property values beytond sustainable levels.

Members of House Price Spy have exclusive benefits and features they can access that casual users wont get access to, so it pays to join up for free and get the ability to watch streets and get notification of all properties sold on that street, email alerts, newsletters with great offers and info on the property market, plus millions of individual free house prices from the last 8 years!!!!!!!

Members benefits are only for people who have completed the short sign up, just give a few details and join House price Spy for free. We wont give your details to any 3rd party and are bound by all transparency legislation.

If you have not joined up yet then you can claim your free membership of House Price Spy now!!

As mentioned in our last blog post House Price Spy has had a complete facelift and revamp. The main thing you should know while the site is now easier to use and search through you still get free house prices for all non-commercial properties in England, Wales and Scotland! The data is provided from government sources free with stats and info for every street with advice and recommended links for quality property related websites.

the new version of House Price Spy should be up ans live in the next few weeks and will help users to make the most of what we offer!

House price Spy is free to join and free to use, you can only access all members benefits with membership. To join you will have to give your postcode (to give you local data) and email address (so we can confirm you are a genuine person)!!!

Have you ever wondered where the the noisiest and quietest areas in the UK are? The Department For Environment Food and Rural Affairs have a new site where you can see what an area is like before you buy there. We have the Freedom Of Information Act to thank for letting us into these secrets that are gathered by government departments and retained on records.

Enter the type of noise you want to know about ie train, airplane, car etc and you can search regions in England getting results with usefull info on noise polution and known noise problems.

See for your self what they are saying about areas near you! Get the info!!!

See the BBC report on Noise Mapping in the UK

We have been busy re-designing House Price Spy site, a new face lift and new functions and member only stuff that will improve the way the site works. We are all excited with the new design and the hopefully we will see plenty of positive feedback in the months to come!

With the blog, emails to members and the forthcoming revolutionary new site design it’s all going on at House price Spy HQ!!!

Free house prices and great members benefits are just two of the reasons why hundreds of thousands of people have joined up with us at House Price Spy!

More on the new design as we have it, should be up early next month…

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