Yippee! Hurray!

Some of the doomsters over at HPC aren't really convinced that there's a house price crash on at all, because asking prices in their area are dropping so slowly. My opinion is that house price crashes are slow, drawn-out affairs, particularly when the UK government is doing its best to re-inflate the bubble by fair means or foul. Mainly foul, obviously.

I constantly have to remind Her Indoors (with her inevitable 'nesting instinct') of this, but there was a bit of a breakthrough today. The two identical houses next door to the house we're renting were both put on sale (for slightly above what they might have sold for at the 2007 peak) early last year. One of them has just sold for twenty-five per cent lower than the original asking price (which is still sixteen per cent more than what they paid for it in early 2005!).

The two houses concerned happen to look remarkably like these:


For some unfathomable reason, the asking price for the as-yet-unsold one has now been dropped to 'only' fourteen per cent higher than the actual selling price of the one that has been sold, ho hum.