11 August 2008
Welcome!
My desire to write a blog has come from the realisation that many of the general conversations that we have around the office within Countryside Properties could be of interest to those in the wider world. I have views and opinions on our industry, many built up from my half century of experience in development and some that spring up from conversations during the working day.
This blog therefore aims to express some of those opinions for public consumption and discussion. I hope you enjoy my new blog.
Alan Cherry
The downturn in the housing market
It is now widely known that the credit crunch is having a severe impact on the housing market in the UK. Tighter supply of home loans and stricter lending criteria has had a major effect and has caused a significant downturn in the housing markets.
All this has happened in a relatively short period of time although the first signs were there when the number of new mortgages started dropping in 2007. This has meant that there are fewer house transactions because many would be home buyers are deferring their buying decision until they are more confident that house prices have stopped falling.
The problem is made worse by the exceptional amount of media coverage that there has been on the subject often created by journalists extrapolating limited statistics to represent a wider and sometimes misleading picture. This will take some time to reverse.
The sign to look for is an increase in the number of transactions. This will then allow prices to stabilise before, in time, increasing. However, people’s confidence if they are buying a home is obviously the most important factor and recent research has shown that many buyers’ confidence is currently at low levels.
In my next blog, which I’ll post shortly, I’ll look at the consequences of the downturn for housing supply.
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