Kirstie and Phil's Location, Location, Location Returns as UK House Prices Crash Housing-Market / UK Housing Nov 20, 2008 - 01:12 AM
By: Nadeem_Walayat

Kirstie and Phil self professed property experts make a return to the UK's TV screens with a more muted version of their long standing delusionally bullish UK property candy floss show titled location, location, location that helped feed the get on the property ladder frenzy of the last few years.
Finally, Kirstie has been forced to recognise the fact that house prices can actually fall which follows earlier near religiously opinionated programming that fed on and reinforced the fervour that gripped much of the country as annual house prices roared ahead every month by more than that which people earned in wages, that house prices are a one way bet.
The credit crash is clearly leaving the presenters in an air of frustration that the wood be buyers are in increasing numbers failing to act on their suggestions of buying found properties as people increasingly realise the risks of buying into a crashing UK housing market. Kirstie is still not getting the message that no matter how much you want house prices to rise, you can't talk up the market. But still the impression is that the presenters desperately want the potential buyers to BUY the located properties upon which the programme still hinges, when most are not wanting to once they do the sums away from the glare of the TV cameras, that BUYING does NOT stack up as the analysis of November 2007 showed and concluded that house prices need to rise by more than 2% per annum to beat renting, anything else and buyers lose money.
housepricecrash.co.uk video
Whilst Kirstie's now infamous emotional and angry response against anyone that suggested that house prices could fall on ITV's London Tonight 'appears' to have gone. Still both Kirstie and Phil are attempting to talk people into lemming like house buying decisions that they will likely regret as the housing bear market progresses, as in fact the most recent program illustrates which showed that had prospective buyers acted on Kirstie's and Phil's 'suggestion to buy', they would have lost £20k ! Let alone many of those that acted during the programming's boom years that are now probably sitting in negative equity.
Perhaps Channel 4 should have commissioned a show titled Repossession, Repossession, Repossession, so as to revisit those of Kirstie and Phil's clients that are in the process of handing their keys back as they pack their possessions and head off to some rundown council estate. Instead Channel 4 is holding onto an old programming formula that has been tinkered to at the edges for primarily an era that has now GONE ! No longer exists, instead of focusing on the housing bear market.
The return of the property show location,location, location follows Channel 4's other new money series titled the Ascent of Money, unfortunately again Channel 4 have commissioned a series led by an academic called Niall Ferguson, who appears to have little real world experience of actually trading the financial markets but purports to know the answers that led up to the credit collapse and what is likely to transpire. This from someone who apparently stated in late 1999 and early 2000 that Gold was dead as an investment and held no future other than as jewellery, and in fact published a book to the the same effect in 2001 as this was his conclusion after 'studying' over 500 years of monetary history.
It just goes to show the wide difference between academia that basically does not understand what they are talking about as they have never actually gained the experience and insight that comes with actually trading the markets over a number of years by reacting to price movements in real time. Instead academics rely on sanitised historic events without any of the associated experience of actually being immersed in events in real-time which is from which accurate forecasts are generated, rather grandiose theories of what should happen are employed that usually never stand up to a real market environment.
Given the poor quality of mainstream programming, its no wonder than people are waking up to find out that their banks are bankrupt and the housing market has crashed.
As to where house prices are going ?
The most recent house price data released by the Halifax shows that UK house prices have fallen by more than 16% from the peak of August 2007 and October 2008. The crash in both US and UK housing markets over the last 12 months was increasingly followed in September by the bankrupt banks collapsing one by one like a chain of dominos with governments rushing to their rescue during September and early October to the tune of unheard of amounts of tax payers money that now runs to collectively over $3 trillion. This triggered the near panic co-ordinated interest rate cuts in October of 0.5%, which was followed this month by an near unprecedented 1.5% cut.

The whole trend for the house price crash has been forecast well in advance of events, right from the very peak to the initial down-trend path amidst prevailing mainstream denial that house prices were actually falling as recent as of March of this year, and right up to the most recent data that fulfills the original forecast of a 15% fall in average UK house prices as projected in August 2007.

The current house price forecast is now complete, therefore work is underway towards completing in-depth analysis geared towards generating the next accurate forecast for UK house prices to cover the next 2 to 3 years, to get the analysis in your inbox subscribe to our always free newsletter.

By Nadeem Walayathttp://www.marketoracle.co.uk