All the pundits that seem to talk sense – without a need to try and alter the markets to their own advantage – believe house prices are going south. 🙁 Only how far & how fast are the unknowns. The shortage of the right housing stock is obviously an issue with a rising population, but where that population increase is mostly amongst the sector of society least able to get on the housing ladder (and how many young folk, graduates included, can these days?) it appears prices will have to come down to meet them or we will increasingly live in a country owned by the wealthy whom we rent property from. Either way, prices aren’t likely to be going up for a long while yet.
Comments in today’s Telegraph by Lord Harris of Peckham who is the chief at CarpetRight, echo this sentiment:
Reporting depressed first-half figures, the chain’s chairman and chief executive said: “Next year is going to be difficult but there will be a time – and I don’t know if it will be next year or 2012 – when people can’t afford to move so they will improve their homes instead. That is when we come into our own.” Read the full article HERE
Of course, that means people will be spending money not just on carpets, but on home improvements, extensions and all manner of ways to better accommodate their lives and additional people in homes they would prefer to move from, but simply cannot.
Interesting times ahead.
