4 Deadly Myths About Property
Peter Stanley, ex Business Bank Manager, professional property investor, author and great friend of The Money Gym, has written a great report that puts some perspective on the property market which by all media reports is “crashing and burning” at the moment (July 2008). We had a long chat after I read it, and he has given me permission to share it with you.
Peter says: “Regular readers will know how much I dislike media reports on the property market, as they’re often based on a single piece of data, or an opinion that’s passed off as fact, when most articles closely resemble works of fiction.
You only need to watch the evening news to realise that good news is in short supply, not because good things don’t happen, but because bad news sells. Sad but true. If you don’t believe me, next time you’re listening to the news, make a note of every good story - you won’t need a big piece of paper !
So, for anyone who’d like to know what’s really happening out there, here’s the most common myths;
Houses aren’t selling / people aren’t buying
Whilst there was a lull for a couple of months, houses are selling again.
That isn’t an opinion, but fact.
As you can imagine, I get to speak to a lot of estate agents and watch a lot of houses, waiting for the sellers expectations to reach mine and I’m seeing more and more houses bought between those times.
In fact, I was surprised recently (and not much surprises me these days) when I overheard a conversation between two estate agents about their sales figures. One of them had sold seven houses in ten days, which would be a good result in any market - perhaps someone should tell the Daily Mail & The Express.
It gets better though, as seven sales was for one of the estate agents in the office, not the whole office, so even if the rest of the staff had only sold another three houses, that’s a house sale a day !
No-one can get a mortgage
Whilst mortgages are harder to get than they were, there are still mortgages to be had.
If you haven’t got a deposit, or have a poor credit record, then you’re likely to struggle, but this is a knee jerk reaction to the Banks’ over eager lending policy of recent years.
I recently went to see a house where the owner was about to get repossessed, to talk about a deal……
