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Bank chief: Worst house price falls over
Ben Bailey02.07.09
A Bank of England policymaker and mortgage market expert told MPs today that he believed the worst of the UK house price falls were over.
Professor David Miles - author of a Government-commissioned report on the mortgage market in 2003 and 2004 - offered more hope for the embattled property sector after Nationwide yesterday revealed that prices rose in June for the third time in four months.
The new member of the interest rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee said in a Treasury Select Committee hearing on his appointment that the market may have reached the bottom.
"Expectations are crucial in the housing market and they look a bit better now than a few months ago," he said.
"My hunch - and I put it no stronger than that - is that we have seen most of the overall aggregate house price falls."
Reader views (1)
And I still couldn't afford one! I hope the next Government takes the heat out of the housing market by looking at the gallic method of slapping huge capital gains tax on houses sold within 30years: only big fish can afford to take the burden. Houses should return to being homes people live in, not a commodity for ordinary people to ramp off other ordinary people with buy-to-lets. Because Landlords charge their tenants more than the mortgage costs, the tenants can never save enough money for an ever-increasing deposit and are paying off their landlord's mortgage instead of their own. There is a disaster waiting to unfold when one day everyone has grown old and can no longer work: whereas the landlords will be living in something they own 100% (with several houses spare), the tenants have paid out the equivalent but still have nowhere to live and no means of continuing to pay their rent until the day they die: how will a future Government handle that?
There should also be a law criminalising the act Gordon Brown committed of stealing from pensions, which is what triggered it all in the first place!
- Roz, France
