The FT faithfully reproduce a press release from First Direct (who are hardly going to be unbiased in the matter):
Four million homeowners in the UK are playing a waiting game with the property market, watching for the best moment to trade up and cash in on cheaper home-ownership before prices start to rise. According to research from First Direct, these homeowners are now sitting on a savings pot of £20.2bn which is ready to be ploughed into the housing market when the time is right.
Wow! That's a lot of people and a lot of money! All that 'pent-up demand'!!
Er, no it isn't. Karlos at HPC crunched those numbers - it makes an average 'savings pot' per homeowner of £5,050.
Also chucklesome is this:
The survey found that with the property market already showing small signs of recovery, the average Brit expects house prices to start rising steadily as soon as October 2010.
The article is headed "House prices to start rising steadily as soon as October". Well spotted Uncle Tom.
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Fun with numbers
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comments:
The report itself of the journalism raised more questions than it answered.
In a normal year about a million houses are sold.
About 150 billion house sales per annum.
So are all the 4 million householders looking to trade up or buy?
It is only the money held by those who wish to move that interests me.
Post a Comment