PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Growing evidence that the downturn is upon us....
Old 29th Apr 2008, 14:41
  #447 (permalink)  
Re-Heat
 
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Yes, I was just pointing out that you can't blame the index that is not designed to be used as a headline figure.

I don't believe a 20% crash is in order - what will happen is that people will not move house for a while, instead sitting there until they make little capital loss on sale.

Prices as a % of salaries will fall back to a more reasonable figure, and lending will contract (it has already) from 100% plus of property value to c.80%. Pent-up demand will be satisfied when developers sell off stock of houses at cheaper-than-expected rates, but I really doubt a crash per se is in order - the reason being that speculative second-home purchases were nowhere near as high as occurred in - for example - Dublin. (and the buy-to-let mortgage market remained reasonably sensible...)
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