Jun 2008
Housing
The recent credit crunch in the UK has been also seen a drop in the consumer confidence. The Government's mismanagement of the economy, and the media's Schadenfreude in the depression they helped to develop.
We have experienced this directly in our attempts to sell our house. The house selling process in England and Wales is archaic at best, and criminal at worst. The paranoia created by the media led too our buyers, who had to that point been pushing us to exchange contracts, suddenly to pull out citing fear of the economy.
The system in England allows someone to make a verbal contract, with an offer and acceptance (normally all you need for a commercial contract), but then to escape from it without any financial or moral repercussions - and the law allows this. So we had to complete surveys and mortgage evaluations, all of which cost us financially for our new property.
So the newspapers talked the market down, causing a slump not only in the housing market, but also the whole housing an property market. We have now found that buyers have been frightened off, with no new buyers looking. Buyers who are selling, are stuck, and people who have sold are waiting for the prices to fall further, because the media is telling us that this will happen. Other buyers are feeding off the misery of people who are being forced to move, by offering ridiculously low prices and further feeding the media frenzy for prices slumping.
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