House prices in Greenwich continuing to fall
You may have seen some excitable headlines recently about house prices. Much of the media, being ever more reliant on advertising income from the property industry to offset falling sales, like to push headlines about house price growth.
They want, and need, ever more of those property supplements and barely disguised adverts stating “x town is up and coming”. I’m sure you’ve all seen them. Look at online adverts on many news sites – both local and national. Many are from property developers.
Over the past week the least reliable source of house prices saw much coverage when it released the latest numbers. That being Rightmove which measures asking prices and NOT sale prices. Some papers somehow mix up the two.
The Times confused the two, to give one example:
How many chuffing times..? pic.twitter.com/8IZ6Pj3huV
— Henry Pryor (@HenryPryor) February 17, 2020
When it comes to sale prices the best source of information is the Land Registry which records every transaction in the UK.
And that gets us onto news out that according to Land Registry data used by LSL house prices in Greenwich borough are still falling. On the month they were down 2.1 per cent and 0.3 per cent annually. London as a whole saw a two per cent rise on the year. Lewisham was up 0.8 per cent annually (though down 0.9 per cent on the month) and Bexley up 0.5 per cent on the year (0.5 per cent monthly).
Funnily enough this data has not been covered anywhere close to Rightmove across much of the media.
WE do not want to get to the stage where people end up in negative equity. However, to be honest house prices and private rents in the Borough both need to fall a little as both to purchase a property or rent a private property are out of treach for many Greenwich residents on their incomes.
There is a need for more affordable homes in the Borough both to purchase or rent.
House prices and rents need to come down a lot in my opinion.
I have avoided purchasing property (i’m a first time buyer) for ages as I could see the property market was way overvalued and unsustainable.
Many people jumped on the property market thinking prices will only go up (in the long term it does) creating a self-fullfilling prophecy, but they’ll be in for a shock!
Negative equity doesn’t mean much if you are living in your property for the long term, as you should eventually be back in the positive.
While i’m free-market leaning, i do think there should be some sort of regulation/cap on the foreign money that comes into the market, strong planning laws to stop large houses turning into HMO’s etc, as all this does is overinflate and take good sized family homes of the market (and in some instances increases anti-social and other problems in the area). This should be does asap while prices are coming down, otherwise the speculators will just buy them up at a lower price!
I’ll need the prices to drop at least another 10% before I can afford & seriously consider bidding on a property
Agreed HK. You do make some good valid points. Most people can no longer afford to get on the housing ladder or afford to rent privately while prices remain so high.
@HK, it’s capitalism red in tooth and claw and it ain’t pretty. Rent caps and barring overseas buyers will be rejected as interferring in the ‘operation of the market’. Profit is the name of the game and screw those who cannot afford anything. The down at heel seaside towns or the north is for them.
The more small flats are built or converted, the lower the average price will be. This does not mean an individual property will fall in value.