Rent or buy? My views on the housing market in Locks Heath / Western Wards

To rent or to buy? These are my views on the housing market

in Locks Heath / Western Wards. Be interested to know what others think.

For nearly 15 years investing in property looked like a

‘sure thing’. All you had to do was fill out a self-certification mortgage

application claiming to be earning any random sum of money you fancied, then

buy a property and sit back and watch it soar in value. Then you could use this

perceived value to fund your new millionaire lifestyle, flash

cars, holidays etc. For those of you of a certain age - like myself - the Harry

Enfield character ‘Loads-A-Money’ sprang to mind as a symbol of this

generation’s buy-to-let investors.

Then came the great crash of 2007. For a while, it seemed as

though prices would never stop falling. Some areas reported falls of over 15%

in the first eighteen months. But now it seems they have stopped - at least

according to Leaders - Estate Agent in Fareham. I spoke to them last weekend

while renewing my rental agreement. ‘According to most measures,’ the agent

said, ‘house prices are starting to tick higher again so I would think about

buying if I were you’.

Other housing pundits even expect prices to end this year

higher than when they peaked in 2007. So should I get back into the market?

NO. The current rebound is simply a ‘dead-cat bounce’. Even

though several factors may point to the crash restarting in the near future,

the simple fact is that houses are still just too expensive.

The average salary in Hampshire is £28,000 per year and the

average house in Hampshire is £266,000. Now that mortgage lenders are reverting

back to safe lending levels of 3.5 times salary – well, do you think they have

further to fall?