If you’re the owner of a property and you’ve been trying to sell, the past decade has probably been a relatively rough time for you. Following the housing crash in 2007, it became near impossible to sell a property without resorting to selling it at a loss. From 2013 onwards, however, property prices began to increase until today, here in 2014, they are at their pre-recession levels.
Despite this, though, reports are starting to suggest that although the going has been relatively good for house sellers in 2014, 2015 might be more of a challenge, with house prices expected to fall 0.8 percent.
The Current State of the Housing Market
Bricks and mortar have always been seen as a relatively stable market to invest in compared with, say, financial investment methods like Forex or stocks and shares. However, when something does go wrong in the property market, it really goes wrong. This is obviously what happened in 2007, and the ramifications of the crash are still being felt today.
Despite this, 2013 marked a real change for the property market across the UK, and here in 2014, prices have reached past their pre-crash levels, with average property prices in London worth over half a million Pounds. What this has meant for people who own property in London – and indeed everywhere across the UK (though in some places more so than others) – spring and summer of 2014 have been a reasonably good time to buy or sell a house if you’re in the position to do so.
A Turning Point in the Property Boom
Many have asked whether the property price increases that have swept the nation over the past are going to continue for the foreseeable future, creating a housing bubble like the one that existed between roughly 1995-2006. However, it seems as though a bubble we won’t see, as house prices are set to turn around slightly in 2015, with a 0.8% fall on 2014.
This means that if you’re putting your house on the market, you should do so quickly to make the most from your sale, but if you’re in the market to buy a property, you may want to wait until next year where prices will fall. Of course, if you’re not sure you can wait, you can use a handy mortgage calculator like the ones available from Saffron Building Society to see whether you could afford to buy your perfect home now.