Brief thought

[andrewducker]

I wonder if falling house prices are bad for the economy in a way I haven't heard mentioned - because they put people off from moving somewhere for a new job, because they can't sell their property without losing money.

Free-flowing workers are good for an economy, surely having the better-off ones stuck in one place must be bad for it.

Comments

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Except of course houses being cheaper means more people can afford to move to better-located/nicer/larger/whatever houses.


Except not really, because those cheaper mortgages are still harder to get now than the more expensive ones were before the crash. So in practice folk who weren't already on the property market are more stuffed than before even though prices have gone down.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Except if you took on the huge mortgage that you now can't get you'd be super-stuffed when the interest rates hit 10% and you can't afford it...

(personally I am risk-averse in that way and was (and am, but less relevantly now) totally unwilling to borrow such huge sums - so I think I'm less stuffed because the bank's idea of what I can repay and mine are now more in line)