...what do these people want....a flag day? If you bought a house for 250k a year ago, you were happy to pay that price, no problem. But, if you intend to live in that house as your home, what the theoretical price of other properties is irrelevant, you paid the price you were offered. You aren't paying any more because of negative equity, but because every half wit expects house prices to keep rising, they act all shocked when the inevitable limit is reached...once new buyers are priced out of the market, the market adjusts.
The only people affected are those wanting to move on quickly or make a quick profit...the whinge like hell when this happens but where very quiet when the prices where rocketing...... remember...PRICES CAN GO DOWN AS WELL AS UP..... as they used to say.
Someone pass me an onion and I can cry along with them.

i have to agree it is only negative if you are selling after a short while and hoping to make a killing

Spot on Snowy. Its only a problem if you want to sell.

But that's the same for just about any big purchase, you don't spend 10k on a car then expect to be able to sell it a year later for 11k.

I always remember my granny saying that when you bought a house it would naturally depreciate like anything second hand. Obviously this was a very long time ago and she'd bought a big 3 bedroom semi detached for £500. I guess things changed with supply and demand and people becoming home owners as opposed to renting property.

It's not as big a problem as the media are making it out to be, particularly in times of low interest rates.

Fear factor - should be concentrating on dead soldiers and hospitals closing rather than some twat in chiswick who 'lost' £30 last year

negative equity can go and fook itself

.... that's what I said... but you 'condensed it'...

It's not that long ago first time buyers were in the news because they were priced out of the market. Now it should be good news that they will be able to get on the ladder again. But no, the media want to focus on the bad side again.

On the news a couple of weeks ago, they had a woman on moaning about negative equity. Her story is this:

She bought a house a few years ago.

It quadrupled in value.

She took some of the equity out to put down on a flat to rent out.

Mortgage rates have gone up, meaning the rent from her flat doesn't cover her mortgage, and she's struggling to pay the mortgage on her house that she lives in.

The stupid bastad was on the telly looking for sympathy! If she had simply carried on paying the mortgage on her house, she would have nowt to worry about. But instead, she chose to try and make money at the expense of those who probably couldn't afford to get on the housing ladder.

I would really like to see her on the news in future, featured in a story about how her ex-tenant bought her house at a knock-down price, and charged her rent to live in it.

The BBC are the worst for this, their news is always geared towards the upwardly mobile 30 somethings and the lifestyle they enjoy..if it's of concern to that focus group, it's news.....Global warming is an example, bombarded at us constantly like some mantra, brainwashing kids as though to question it is to deny your own sanity, yet most people are more concerned about the real priorities in life than the theoretical sea level speculation in 100 years time.

Not everyone suffering is purely on the make though.... we're trying to sell our house at the minute, lived in it for four years, and although it's been on the market since April no-one's even come to view it. We need to sell as we're moving to Manchester (work reasons) come September, job with a house - so no chain etc but we can't even get someone to look. We are faced with trying to rent it out (for less than the mortgage payments), or swallowing hard and selling to one of these quick sale merchants that will maybe leave us just about clearing the mortgage if we're lucky - despite having put a deposit of 12% down.... the lender is being singularly unhelpful about changing the mortgage to buy to let too, despite us having actually made overpayments on the mortgage in the past they don't want to know us right now.

Yes many of those complaining are hoist by their own petard, but spare a thought for those of us who are genuinely struggling essentially because a load of American Banks gave pots of money to people with no way of paying it back - then expected the Money Markets to pick up the tab....

Will you part ex it for a tent????

Sadly in your case, you're in the market at the wrong time and with mortgages hard to get, it's gonna get a lot harder. My building society has been bombarding me with loan offers for years and now it's stopped to be replaced with a lettter saying loans are being restricted to secured loans only...providing you have suitable equity.

Rent it out and make up the mortgage payments if you can. It will be worth it in the end.

Alternatively, come to a deal with your mortgage company and see if they will accept reduced payments without any detriment to yourselves. Lots of them do this now, as it a good way to make extra interest.

ie you have to pay £700 and pay only £600 they are able to charge more interest on the difference in your payments i.e. £100 - may not sound a lot but when you are doing it for a year along with thousands others then it's money for nothing for them but at the same time it's ideal for your current predicament.

I sold a property to my tenant a few year back just to get rid and made a 'couple of quid'. Six months later he made £14000 - stick it out.

it's an awful predicament for the people trying to sell at the moment. But when you buy a house anytime no matter what the economic climate is like there is no guarentee that someone will want the house after you.

My sisters house has been up for sale for 20 months and no one has been to view it. I don't blame them - it's over priced. And they still want loads more for it than what she actually paid 3-4 years ago.

Long gone are the days where yo can rent your house out and expect it to cover your mortgage. But surely in a few months when people desperatly want rid there should be some good deals to be had.....

I have no sympathy for people in negative equity. I don't know much about the housing market (which I'll be entering soon, renting, which I think I'll probably have to do for the rest of my life unless I move to the US).

The whole thing is motivated by greed fundamentally. People think they can handle the payments on a house that's slightly out of their price range.

I'm looking forward to it all coming tumbling down. My parents' house is worth twice as much as it was 6 years ago. I remember when you could get a house on Duke St. for £20k (granted, it's bulldozed now) - and I'm only 22.

Someone in the property game told me that houses in general will double their value every 7 years and that it is highly unlikely that there will be a crash. Things will just slow a bit for a while and certain people will struggle.....

I bought my first house 12 year ago in Blake Street (near The Nursery pub)

£17,950.

At the time it felt like a ridiculous amount of money to have tied round your neck. You wouldn't get a fooking tent for that now. For now

You can have mine for that money...

Douible every seven years...? IN HIS DREAMS...he must have been hoping it would as these people do, but that would mean a 250 k house would be worth £2 million in 20 years times...I suspect not.

I fully agree.

It's a combination of banks and building societies offering people mortgages that they can't really afford and thick people signing up to them.

When we moved a couple of years ago they wanted to lend us twice what we borrowed. We told them to clear off cos we were working on what we wanted to pay back each month as opposed to how much they were prepared to offer.

When I was in the building society on Saturday morning to move my mortgage (fixed rate just expiring) they offered to loan us more than twice what we were wanting. They actually said that they would lend us 4.5 times our joint income!

The problem is that there are too many people thick enough to take them up on these crazy offers.

I think he was talking about the trend since the war, i wouldn't know whether it was true as I'm not old enough to remember. But if you take Mr 3quid who says he bought a house in blake st for 18k 12 years ago, the same house (if that street hasn't been knocked down yet) would probably cost about 70k now....... That is roughly what terraces cost now.....

I think that is quite a conservative figure Jonny. House prices have at least doubled every 7 years since the war. However in these days of low/lower inflation this trend may not continue.

there is a darker side to it too, as some people who are not bothered about getting turfed out of their house in a year's time, will have had a jolly old time splashing out all that lolly they borrowed and had no intentions of paying back.

Everything in this country is motivated by greed, including football. The state of football in this country is a microcosm of the country as a whole - the top clubs are disgustingly rich and the rest, to a greater or lesser degree, are all struggling financially. If only we could have a socialist government eh?

No-ones any different though eh? We would all like to make a few quid and if you were advised that you could make a few quid on buying a 2nd property then who's going to look a gift horse in the mouth!

I work in council housing and the amount of applications we are getting at the moment is incredible. This includes young couples trying to get on the housing ladder and even families who have had their properties re-possessed.
There's no easy fix for us, the right to buy cost us a lot of properties so we have dodgy landlords charging extortionate rent and failing to do even basic repairs.

Luckily the cost of buying your council house has rocketed so no bargain buys anymore and it means we have more properties to rent to people as stated above.

Dispelling the UK home-ownership myth
According to research from the Council of Mortgage Lenders, the UK has the fifth highest level of social housing in Europe but, at 69%, it has exactly the average level of home-ownership, ranking 14th in the home-ownership league. A recent report, compiled under the Irish presidency and presented to EU housing ministers last month, shows that it is a popular myth that the UK tops the league in the level of home-ownership in Europe.

However, at nearly 21% the UK's level of social housing is the fifth highest, ranking behind only the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Poland.

By contrast, the level of private renting in the UK is relatively low at under 10%, and less than in all but seven other countries.

CML Deputy Director-General Peter Williams said:

"It is a popular misconception that the UK tops the European home-ownership league. In fact, we are exactly average. There are plenty of countries with higher levels of owner-occupation, but very few with higher levels of social housing.

"This reinforces the question about whether the Government is doing enough to promote and support home-ownership. Given that it is the most popular and cost-effective form of housing tenure in the UK, yet attracts only 6% of the Government's subsidy for individuals' housing costs, there is a good case for reforming tax and benefit structures and introducing additional measures to help support this important force for social good within the UK."

You can forget that if the tories get in. The last thing on their minds is handing out cash to build social housing.

If it hadn't have been for thatcher flogging off all the council homes for next to nowt the situation certainly wouldn't not be as serious as it is now.

To be honest I thought the same (about us having the highest home ownership) until I checked the housing market here, (which is not in the EU but may as well be).

Houses here have risen in more than the UK in the last 4 years with house prices now more comparable with the South of England. Home ownership is very high.

Part of the problem in the UK is the snobbery of the first time buyers now. Massive mortgages to get their "dream" house Everyone used to buy a street house and worked their way up (or stayed) which kept them nice. All this buy-to-let is ruining once excellent places to live. Now they are too transient.

I don't see how anyone could view people being allowed to buy their council house a bad thing - no matter what your political motications are. It has allowed people who had low incomes who would never of owned anything to leave something behind when they are gone.

I think my parents' house was about £15k 28 years ago (semi detached near the White House). Amazing how high it's soared since, even with inflation

The weird thing is that Rift House, where I was brought up, seems to have gone down the nick entirely since people started buying their council houses. It used to be very pleasant, full of families with young children who were brought up to behave themselves in a reasonable way. I suppose there must be another explanation for why it looks as it does now, but it seems an odd coinidence

Nah, they were conned. Do you think the councils spent owt on housing for the great unwashed?? They were just glad to get rid of the maintenance bills for the crap houses they had thrown up cheap. That's why they said 'oh well if you've been in there 18 years you can have a 40% discount,' and like the sheep they were, the tenants got slaughtered.

Incidentally before anyone goes 'yeahhhh, bloody Thatcher,' 80% of the local authorities were Labour controlled then.

But the local authorities had no say in the matter, did they?

Not all council houses were thrown up on the cheap, some of them were built in the late forties and are in better nick the the shite they slap up now!

Well quite a big one yes. They owned the houses.

but the tenants could legally buy the house so the local authority could not refuse the right to buy

So what, it matters not a jot, Mrs T wanted it, so it happened, if any council had said no, would she of said

'Ok then, do what you want...........'


I doubt it!

Some made it difficult some, like Nottinghamshire, sold the lot for nowt.

I doubt she was on the auction rostrum, wielding the gavel like......

The thing is, they weren't the great unwashed. They were decent, intelligent people. And they weren't crap houses. They were good solid inter-war properties

Half of them were pre-fabs and the great unwashed were the people they were meant for, not the people who moved into them.

Half of them weren't pre-fabs, old fruit. Most of then were houses better built than any you'll find to-day.

I guess the real reason for the change was that we were the last working class generation to get a real chance to benefit from the educational possibilities briefly possible in the 50s and 60s. Then it all reverted to form.