For Joe Bloggs, the national house price stats are as meaningful as a one night stand with a blow up doll.
Knowing them is entirely irrelevant. The Halifax House Price Index is as helpful to Joe selling his 2-bedroom flat in Bournemouth as a chocolate teapot is for grating cheese.
A brief example.
There are 10,000 (ish) homes in BH6 (Southbourne). You’ll sell a decent 3 or 4-bedroom detached house in this area within a week for similar money to what they were going for in 2006 and beginning of 2007. If you’re in a really good street and you’ve got a great house, you’ll likely get a touch more for it than if you bought it smack bang at the peak. Demand higher than supply.
So if you have this type of property, ignore the papers when they say prices are dropping. They mean nothing to you.
If on the other hand you have a small two-bedroom flat in a modern-ish type block, you’re in for a tough time trying to find a buyer, let alone a good price. I know of a property that changed hands at £235k August 2007 and is now ‘worth’ around £175k.
So if you’re in this position, you too can ignore the newspapers, price indexes and all the other experts on TV. You’re much worse off than they say.
Confused by this? Don’t be. Just do your own research on your own area based on your own type of property and you’ll work out more in an hour than any expert on the telebox can tell you.
The land registry and Rightmove are two good sources of information.
Would love to get your thoughts on this. Let me know what you think in the comments section below.
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