If all the people in the middle of the market decided that they only wanted to pay what the bottom third were paying (and priced them out), there would be a lack of buyers for mid-ranged properties and the price would fall.

This won’t happen because competition to get somewhere half decent is high. If there were more decent places I think more people would trade down to have more fun…

http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/index.php?showtopic=160352&view=findpost&p=2912713

Clearly from the contents of the thread I haven’t broken any of the established rules, I just wasn’t following the HPC orthodoxy.

6538

House prices aren’t stupidly high because demand has rocketed in the past 10 years or so. They are high because people have been able to borrow insane amounts of money very cheaply and with ever fewer checks.

I bought a property back in about 2001 for £11.5K and sold it about three years later for £50K. The value of it didn’t skyrocket because the demand shot up, it skyrocketed because the people who were doing the demaninding were able to borrow more money. No other reason. If people are suddenly allowed to borrow six times their income at a 100% LTV then the price of properly will increase from the where it was when they were only able to borrow three times income with a 75% LTV even if the actual numbers of potential buyers had not increased by even one person.

These are precisely the arguments put up by those on HPC and, being fair, they are spot on. The problem is that a number of people on there have been waiting for a hugh crash for years (it’s now 4 years since the banks started going down) and are having to face up to the unthinkable outcome that it may actually never happen. It’s got to the point of the denial stage whereby their belef in this “crash” is getting to an almost religious level and many of them simnply don’t want to face up to reality that they have been worshiping a false god. As you say, their general reaction of “f**k off” gives it away that they really have no argument and are scared. The final thread I was allowed to post on before I was benned (without reason or even any notification) shows this mentality. It’s actually a great pity because there are a great many sensible and likeable people on there who aren’t a bunch of radical idiots. What annoys me is that although I have been banned my account hasn’t actually been blocked so it just looks to anyone else that I’m not posting any more. They should at least show some balls and tell everyone precisely I was benned – ie: that they don’t allow dissent within the ranks.

I’m not saying that a crash cannot happen, by the way. It clearly could if there were enough forced sales about. Fact remains though is that that it isn’t happening now and doesn’t look like it’s going to any time soon.

I started posting there in 2008 and have over 5K posts to date. I actually agree with a great deal of what these people are saying; the banks have loaned far too much money to far too many people who shouldn’t have had it; houses are ludicrously over priced; house prices are falling; people have led profligate lives centered around acquiring cars, mega tellies and suchlike on stupid amounts of credit.

Their theories of why a crash is going to happen are actually pretty sensible the problem is it isn’t actually happening and probably won’t. Four years since the banks started to go down and still nothing. The mistake I made was to point all this out to them and point out why its probably not going to happen. The bottom line is that it can’t happen without lots and lots of forced sales (repossessions) and they are unlikely to happen in the forseeable future. They will tolerate you posting if you are talking down a crash on crap arguments but as soon as you start posting sensible reasons as to why it can’t happen then they’ll ban you.

I like no.47 from J Levene how tells you you’ve got it all wrong and then goes on to predict a load of stuff which didn’t happen (that said I agree with lots of J’s next post).

The trouble with house price predictions is that predicting the timing of house price moves is a bit of a highway to nowhere – and that has been proved plenty of times!

P.S. Only stats you can believe is Land Registry as these are factual. Nationwide and Halifax reflect valuations and not completions so any idiots that are thinking of quoting them in response to this post!!!