XPost: talk.politics.misc, soc.culture.uk, alt.elections
XPost: alt.politics.usa
https://www.gbnews.com/money/house-prices-zoopla-fall-uk-property-news
It's started! UK house prices collapse 12.5% with 'far worse'
to come
House prices in the UK have already dropped by 12.5 per cent
in real-terms with a lot more to come, a leading property expert
has warned.
The housing market is being hit by surging mortgage costs, with
average two-year fixes jumping to a 15-year high of 6.7% as
interest rates keep rising to combat stubbornly high inflation.
Halifax recently said house prices fell at their fastest annual
rate in 12 years last month, down 2.6% at £285,932.
And now Rob Dix from the Property Hub has warned that, when
you take inflation into account, a major crash is "already
happening".
. . .
UK property prices - like those in many places in
the world - had been climbing rapidly since the
Covid thing. Very few could afford to buy houses,
or even pay for rent/lease. In the USA, the term
"Working Homeless" was coined ... gainfully employed
people who have to live in their cars or worse
because even rent on a total dump was out of reach.
Thing is, a lot of people STILL managed to scrape up
enough to buy some kind of property the past few
years - and are now locked-into high-interest loans.
As the property values crash ... now it's a very
expensive loan on something they'll never get their
money back for.
Now we kind-of saw this before - if you remember -
when banks badly over-lent and people were paying
outrageous prices for property. It all went
ker-splat. Some lenders failed or had to be absorbed,
stock values fell as much as 50%. Not good.
Yes, it DID all recover - and started building towards
today's bubble - but it was a LOT of damage.
Governments/leaders don't seem to be able to fix this
little flaw in capitalist thinking. The lenders lobby
and 'donate' and regs are scaled back so institutions
can make MORE big loans. Govt is only as good as the
people comprising it, and that's NEVER been a very
reliable group.
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