The only way existing property will depreciate sufficiently to be 'affordable' is in a housing recession as of old. New-builds have fixed or increasing costs. Unfortunately, the situation required for this property price depreciation is complete mayhem, both financially and socially. As was the practice in the sixties, councils should re-evaluate building relatively cheap flats/maisonettes on 3 or 4 storey blocks of, say 20 and selling the leases. However, they also need them for social housing, so catch 22, it appears.
To be fair, Phil, most of this and other landlordships (!!!???) was before I was 83.
What a bummer! Not the best season to sell and I'd imagine a £3K CGT allowance carrying on beyond April. Surely best practice is to re-let quickly at a small rent premium to mitigate void costs and retain your equity in property. It's a temptation to get out with potential legislation foreboding but maybe not sufficient grounds to do so. Besides, At £85K FSA covered savings, you'll have a bit of work to spread the proceeds AND pay tax on those. Life used to be so simple !
Er, yes, through inheritance instead of the cash proceeds. It was one or the other, nothing entitled about it.
What a shame you don't work for a bank. You could have made them and yourself millions, with insider knowledge like that.
However my point is that it was pretty obvious that it *would* happen. Since I didn't know when, I let the changes in rate (as it dropped) and prices (rose) happened. Rather than cut my payments/month i kept them where the were - and thus either paid up early or would have been ready if they went up again. Thing is that we didn't buy assuming we'd keep 'moving up to something better', etc. We just stayed and thus paid up early. No "insider knowledge" just long term thinking.
Not at all sure that's true of many first/second time buyers for their own habitation. For BTL purchasers, this may have been an element (although not with me, despite it turning out as such).. It has only been the market/financial situations and gov't interference which have accelerated the rising asset syndrome. If you bought now, would you place a large bet on a guaranteed appreciating asset ? In the past, many have suffered depreciating housing assets (booms and busts). However, bricks and mortar are, and always will be in this country at least, an asset because it meets two important criteria; habitation and collateral. One of those is enough but to get both, as most have, is the icing.
Agreed, of course, but to me, social housing is not available for purchase by the general public (unless a tenant), so a dearth of this doesn't really impact upon ordinary housing available to buy, which also has been inadequate for a long time.
