Frances Cook

It basically comes down to the value of the land and then a little bit extra on top for the house.

And so there are absolutely people who buy houses thinking in the future, when I go to retire, I could sell this to a developer and you could fit three townhouses on here.

That's absolutely a strategy for some people.

Oh, 100%.

If you are a first-time buyer right now and you're feeling secure in your job and you've been saving diligently and you've got that house deposit, the silver lining here is that if someone is trying to buy now, they're actually doing quite well.

It is absolutely a buyer's market.

They have a lot more time with these longer average days to sell.

So that is giving them a bit more time to do their research,

to really look into things, to give it a try.

And there are more sellers at the moment now who have watched the prices go down since 2021, have often been holding on.

We had predictions that this was going to be the year that we hit

the bottom of the curve and things started going back up and then Iran happened and now interest rates might be going up and all of that makes it far more difficult for property prices, which is great news for the first home buyers.

It's always a winner and a loser in these things.

So, you know, first time buyers rejoice for once.

Exactly.

I mean, the first thing is a lot of the impact of negative equity will be emotional.

If you know that you owe more to the bank than you could sell it for, then it's a totally normal and rational response to feel a bit panicky and to worry about what the bank would do.

But first of all, know that the bank doesn't actually want to sell your house from under you.

I get that question all the time.

Is the bank going to get me in trouble?