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Today a BBC survey has finally confirmed what many of us
already know - that more people now want to see house prices
fall than want to see them go up.
According to the BBC survey some 28% of people said they wanted house
prices to fall, against just 22% who favoured rises. Nearly half of all
respondents, meanwhile, said they wanted prices to stabilise.
The results of the BBC investigation – carried out for tonight’s
The Truth About Property programme – casts a very different picture
from those front-page scare stories that suggest falling house prices will
lead to economic meltdown.
The programme reminds us that price falls ‘bring economic benefits
not just to first-time buyers but to any homeowner who wants to trade up
to a larger or more valuable property’. This is because for those
‘trading up’ the more valuable should fall by a larger amount than
their existing property.
Meanwhile, less than 40% of those interviewed said that a 10% fall in
house prices would make them spend less; the remainder suggested it would
have no impact whatsoever.
So then, are you one of those people who would like to see house prices
fall back to more affordable levels? And if so, how much and how quickly?
And what would the political, social and economic benefits be of a house
price correction?
Or are we blissfully ignorant about the real cost of a housing crash?
Does the UK economic miracle rely on house prices going up? And what
about those who have bought over the past year or so, often with very high
loan to value mortgages? Would allowing a house price crash be fair to
them?
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