Wednesday 2 April 2008

"Buy-to-let properties to flood market as investors cash in"

The Goblin King & The Badger came up with this CGT wheeze last year to stave off the property price crash, but their Day Of Reckoning has now arrived. As widely predicted.

But who's going to lend people money to buy them? Not Northern Rock, First Direct, Lehman Brothers, London Scottish Bank or various other smaller building societies. And probably not Halifax/HBOS* either.

If anybody knows of any more lenders that have stopped lending, please leave a comment!

* Via Growler at HPC.

3 comments:

Jock Coats said...

Do you think this spring/summer house sale season is the edge of the precipice? If turnover is able to pick up there's still a chance that the housing market might ride out the credit crunch. But if not prices will just start to drift away - 20% to 30% - as people get more and more desperate to sell?

Mark Wadsworth said...

The long run chart says that house prices have to fall by about a third to reach long-run price/earnings average; maybe a bit more if they overshoot (like in the early 1990s).

The only question is, will the government have the nerve to try and mask this with high inflation, like in the 1970s when we had static house prices and 25% inflation?

Simon Fawthrop said...

Isn't the release of all those BTL properties into the market a good thing? A lot of them are new built 1 and 2 bed flats, just the thing that 1st time buyers need ans something that had dried up.

What we don't need is idiots trying to inflate our way out of the problem. Inflation is a voracious monster that devours all in its path and the cure is far worse than the benefits it will bring.

Haven't we learned anything for the 60's, 70's and 80's?