Hartlepool House Prices Officially Crash -34%

[SamCook83]

Really interesting video here, using land reg data, showing that prices in Hartlepool have crashed a whopping -34% since their peak in August 2008:

-34% !!! OMG!

[HerRoyalNotness]

Great! sobs into coffee over buying in 2007

[HerRoyalNotness]

Is it really from land reg data though? We're looking for a buy-to-let right now, and yes there are deals to be had, but the majority of family sized homes aren't around the 80k mark. i'd say that average is quite low in compared to the reality.

[HerRoyalNotness]

bbc facts here

not as low as one thinks then

[SamCook83]

Actually, if you'd care to check the BBC source, you will see that it is the Land Registry too.

However, the BBC quotes the land reg's raw data using the arithmetic mean rather than the geometric mean that the Land Reg quotes in it's adjusted data. Meaning that the BBC figure is somewhat misleading, because it doesn't account for the warping caused by peripheral anomalies (high & low end property sales).

You'd be better checking the Land Registry data here:

Land Registry House Price Data December 2012

Since that is the source for the video (& supposedly the source for the BBC).

That clearly shows house prices in Hartlepool to be £74,702 at that time, far lower than the ridiculous £126,958 claimed by the BBC.

So actually the video is right & not the BBC.

[flow4]

I blame Peter Mandelson.

[deepfriedsage]

I blame the rain.

[SamCook83]

I blame firstly the banks for extending credit to people who couldn't afford to pay them back long term, with self-cert loans etc in an attempt to boost the over-saturated mortgage market from 2003 onwards to stop prices faltering then, helping cause the boom.

Also, the media helped stoke the boom:

Media exacerbated house-price myths, says BBC's Robert Peston

Plus the Bank of England deliberately fueled a consumer boom which made prices rocket also:

Bank Takes Blame Over Property

[LillianLardon]

@HerRoyalNotness:

Yes I'm afraid the op is right about the BBC's figures being distorted. They constantly quote the non-adjusted figure, which is useless, eg the Land Registry's actual published figure for av. house prices in UK is about £100k below the BBC's over-inflated figure.

When house prices crashed the BBC soon stopped updating the House Prices page as if they didn't want anyone to know that prices were dropping. You can actually go & check this is true on waybackmachine, the website that caches old pages (now that they've updated the cache).

The BBC stopped updating the house prices page for well over a year. When Prices started going up again, then they started updating it again.

[LillianLardon]

Actually, we were thinking of buying a house in Duke Street in Hartlepool.

That is, until we saw this video: