HelenDev - 4:16 pm on Dec 4, 2007 (gmt 0)

As a would-be first time buyer I look forward to the drop with glee, if indeed it happens.

I do worry that there are a lot of people like me waiting for their opportunity though, so if prices do start to drop they could soon go up again. I do however also know a few people who got tired of waiting and bought anyway, taking the advice that property prices will always keep shooting up anyway.

We could have bought a year or two ago, taking on a mortgage which was about 70% of our combined incomes, and more than twice our rent. The bank were perfectly prepared to lend us that sort of money with very little deposit.

The properties we could have bought were small flats in bad areas, and nowhere near as nice as where we live now, but we decided that was a pretty risky strategy. Basically we would have been buying a hovel purely for the investment prospect, and not a decent home which we wanted to spend 20+ years in.