BMV Property Marketing

With every expert adding their two cents on the movement of house prices in 2008, I’ve come to the realisation that the only guarantee we have is that no one seems to be certain - if I have sit and listen to another DIY expert quote “well, it’s obvious that people dont realise property moves in seven year cycles” I’ll scream! (and technically that ‘fact’ is a myth and not entirely correct).

“The Wisdom of Crowds ..” - a book published in 2004 by James Surowiecki, explains how the aggregate decision made by a group is usually better than the decision made by any one member of that group.

“The opening anecdote relates Francis Galton’s surprise that the crowd at a county fair accurately guessed the weight of an ox when their individual guesses were averaged (the average was closer to the ox’s true butchered weight than the estimates of most crowd members, and also closer than any of the separate estimates made by cattle experts)” (extract taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds)

Moving away from livestock and back to house prices, this holds some wisdom. The following table shows the 2008 predictions of the “experts”: (this data is collated in full at http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk)

By the same theory, the aggregate prediction is a drop of approx -3% for the year - seems to be contrary to the severe doom and gloom forecast by the media.

But then there’s another theory - well not so much a theory but a logic, that if the british public are constantly told prices are set to fall, this will increase number who postpone on buying for (sometimes) misplaced fear of losing cash - end result = less sales = lower prices … it seems our fate is somewhat sealed?