Because...
Owning a house with a high price makes you feel good about yourself, especially if you are paying substantially less on you mortgage. That's probably about as deep as it gets with the media.

Rising house prices means that people are investing more into them again, which means that other areas of the economy are doing well. Its just a nice indicator, nothing more. "Unaffordable" house prices aren't unaffordable to everyone, but its getting there.

What will happen, I think, is that house prices will wobble about a bit for a while, then plateau for a few years or drop slowly outside of a recession. If they don't there's going to be a very serious case of demand outstripping the ability to supply, and prices will drop very sharply very quickly - or be bolstered by yet more government grants (this time to first time buyers).

If the latter happens, much of the older generation are going to find that much of the equity they thought they had in their house for retirement has disappeared. It isn't an end of the world scenario, and it certainly wouldn't affect everyone, but there could be a generation or two who go through their later lives finding it a fair bit tighter than they expected.
(Captain Skippy pooed in a bag and left it on your doorstep, Sat 29 Aug 2009, 16:07, 1 reply)

House prices.....
....will go up eventually. They always have done. Semi detatched caves fetched a pretty good price back in the day. They fetch twice the price now. Cavemen have never had it so good! Speaking as a caveman with his own detached cave, I hope my kids don't have to pay inheritance tax on my detached cave, it's what I've worked bloody hard for all my working life!
( The Lone Groover has mal des nuts., Sat 29 Aug 2009, 22:40, closed)

I don't deny they will go up
But not by as much as we've seen, and hopefully not for a while. And hopefully after staying steady for a bit.

If they do go up rapidly there will be some fairly major problems in twenty/thirty years time.
(Captain Skippy pooed in a bag and left it on your doorstep, Sun 30 Aug 2009, 8:21, closed)