Saturday 14 June 2008

Morgan Stanley's negative-equity-o-meter

From The Times:

Morgan Stanley, the investment bank, believes that a further two million households are at risk of owing more than the value of their property if house prices fall 20 per cent by 2010

So that's about 100,000 borrowers in NequityTM for every 1% fall in prices; Citigroup reckoned about 70,000; and my more pessimistic fag packet said about 120,000.

So let's go with 100,000 in NequityTM for every 1% fall in house prices as a nice round mid-figure.

8 comments:

Simon Fawthrop said...

And how many of those went for equity release to pay for cars, holidays or other frivolous expense?

I hope they don't expect any sympathy.

Anonymous said...

We've owned 4 houses in all; and we've not much cared what they've been worth until we've come to sell them. Except in the summer of 2005, when I did raise the notion of selling, and renting for a spell. I received a veto.

DBC Reed said...

Wouldn't people in negative equity try and sit it out ..until an upturn? This would tend to limit activity in the housing market .Not
that desirable.

Mark Wadsworth said...

I called the top much earlier than that, but the Her Indoors Veto was not lifted until the end of last year.

Mark Wadsworth said...

dbcr, I just read in the comments here that that is what some people do. If they can still pay their mortgage, then good for them.

Anonymous said...

I read, (somewhere), that some financial group has called for councils to help those caught out by higher rates. I nearly dropped my coffee in shock. Why should my council tax pay for others who decided not to live within their means like I have? Any fool could see a couple of years back what was going to happen.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Anon, d'you mean here, perhaps? Seeing as this is more or less the opposite of Land Value Tax (whereby home-owners and land-owners pay local councils for the value of what they are getting) and because I am against taxpayer-funded subsidies generally, this has to be one of the shittest ideas of the week.

Anonymous said...

I'm going to buy a fancy car, then when I struggle to meet the repayments i'm going to whine about it and ask for government and local authority help to pay for it, even though I could easily have got by with a smaller less fancy car. Same thing, is it not? I will gladly pay taxes to ensure folk can still afford their nice shiny houses with the conservatories etc etc. Not!