Have your say: are you happy about falling house prices?

The media has made this situation 10 times worse than it should have been. People are too ready to read headlines and not read the whole article. Get your facts right. Prices have gone down but it really is not as dire as people think - or at least it wasn't. As long as people continue to buy and sell when they want/need to and offer reasonable prices instead of taking the micky - things will be ok - but people are offering ridiculously low prices to combat the downturn and take advantage of people who want to sell. Not everyone who owns property is a fat cat trying to make money - they don't deserve to lose out just because they are on the property ladder and you aren't - for most its been their home and they need to move.

Gordon Brown did not help matters by suggesting Stamp Duty 'might' be scrapped. People are now stalling in case this happens - this will not happen! If anything is changed about stamp duty it will be in months time not next week. I may not agree with it, but I can see tthe government are not going to give it up quickly or easily. If you need to move house go ahead but budget correctly for it - if you can't afford to pay your stamp duty then maybe you shouldn't be looking in the bracket you are looking anyway - look within your budget and don't add to the problem.

They might be dropping considerably nationally, but in London there's very little evidence that they've dropped.

I still can't get on the property ladder despite the fact that I earn a reasonable salary (although I am single) and I've saved a decent deposit - £20,000, which is certainly more than many single first-time buyers manage.

It's looking like I'll never be able to afford to buy in London. I could afford to buy in Kent or Essex, but then would not be able to afford the £200-300 monthly travel costs that I would incur, plus those areas are not practical for me as I need to travel to Berkshire once a week for work.

So I'd love it if house prices were dropping in London ... but they really don't seem to be! The minimal percentage that they have dropped is not enough to make a difference.

Falling house prices are bad for all and especially pensioners as those that need to increase their income, to off set all the price increases, are faced with falling property prices so can not raise as much extra income to help them, from their property.

It seems that the media want to talk us into recession, it is OK for them, they can go to their bosses for a rise, no one thinks of the impact on those on "Fixed" income ( always declining) i.e. Pensioners.

The one thing that seems to have accounted for all this credit crunch in the UK is no deposit mortgages, you should always have a stake in property and not just rely on price rises, there should be incentives for all to save a small deposit. The other thing is, of course that we imported a lot of trouble from the US who don't have the same business standards that we are used too.

Also bear in mind a lot of the problems are being caused by the media hyping the credit crisis. The excessive amount of tax we are paying to get to and from work, especially on fuel. Then there is the case that the banks themselves got greedy with the sub prime mortgages that they tried to make a fast dollar on. So we as a nation are paying the price for the finical miss management of the City and government.

Falling prices where!! houses are still way too expensive.
and yes i own a house.
look on the internet i have not seen any cheap houses of yet. where are they.
Their is such a divide between the well off and the poor.
As for estate agents they should all get the push.
They do very little work they tell lie's and keep you guessing.
please let us know if you know a good one .
I am sure we would love to meet him/her.
As for council housing we need more for our young and the less well off.
They should never have been sold off.

I whole heartedly agree with Ellen Pitt, its time estae agents werre bought to task. We had a similar experience last year where we were told that our house needed a lot of work doing on it so were lucky to get such a good offer. I new bathroom and wood floors it was back on the market for £100,000 more than we sold it for. But we are having the last laugh, its been back on the market for 7months and still not sold!

For me a home is just that, somewhere to live not to make loads of money on. I for one hope they keep on dropping for the sake of my children.

I symphathise with Soni and would suggest you go ahead with improving your home if you can afford to do so without overstretching yourself finanically. Whether or not you sell in the future you will improve your home and enjoy it even more.

It's interesting to read the different opinions on this. As someone who has closely monitored the housing market for the last 6 years I personally think house prices have been over inflated since 2004 when they escalated in some cases by as much as 20% and this has continued until recently. I think there are many reasons why this has happened as follows: very low mortgage interest rates at the time, easily available credit, self certification mortgages where often borrowers lied about their income, removal of the need to provide a deposit, 5 times salary mortgages, the plethora of property investment/development programes encouraging us to do up run down property to sell or let and become millionaires overnight, insufficient new building development and land banking by the bigger developers, Thatchers big mistake in allowing tenants to purchase their council homes, a more mobile workforce and higher divorce rates which inceased demand for rental accommodation etc. A combination of these has caused unsustainable price hikes. I'm glad prices are coming down even though this will affect the value of my property in the short term but this is really irrelevant if I sold as I would be buying in the same market.

House prices in this country deserve to fall significantly but I am doubting that the middle classes and the noveaux middle class (those who bought one or two ex-council houses on the upward swing) will allow it to happen. Making money without, effort, or risk is generally bad for an economy, as everyone else in the world has learned. Only in the UK and nowhere else has the harm of overpriced housing been understood. Why is this? why have prices fallen 60% in Tokyo, Singapore and USA and not here? Because we alone have a wealthy socialist state that has banned government intervention on rent to the less well paid. On selling-off council houses to stay in power Mrs Thatcher has created an economic holicost and a return to the vitorian era of slum rentals gobbling up 50% of the poor's income. This is the situation that the poor of this country face. Rents are now 200% that of fair social housing rents. This is propping-up the housing market and genrating undeserved wealth to the masses which no economy can suport for long, (undeserved wealth needs to be on a small scale to work).

So how is it all still ticking along? Because the taxpayers are paying for the rents in the form of housing benefit. All private landlords are actually doing is shovelling tax money into their pockets, rather than have social housing at affordable rates, which will lower house prices and lower the tax burden. Ban shorthold tenacies, regulate rental prices and prices will fall 70%

Since putting my flat on the market in late oct of last year I have had a trickle of people viewing but not one offer placed. I plan to move out of the area, I had a new job and new life planned but unfortunately its not going to happen til i get a buyer. can anyone tell me is this situation going to last years or months?