Don't Get Burned By Overheated Markets

Your money

- Harvey Jones

TODAY’S explosive house price growth is grabbing all the headlines but other assets are also soaring in value as increasingly manic investors blow bubbles everywhere.

Cryptocurrency bitcoin and electric car maker Tesla have seen huge growth and then crashed over the last year, while the internet is fuelling extreme investor behaviour.

Many now treat investing as a form of gambling, getting hot tips from anonymous strangers on websites such as Reddit or from unregulated Instagram influencers. The longer this goes on, the bigger the mess when everything bursts.

RACE FOR SPACE

The property market is the biggest concern as prices rise by double digits and buyers risk paying over the odds after getting sucked into desperate bidding wars.

The frenzy has been fuelled by the stamp duty holiday, record-low mortgage rates, property shortages and the “race for space”, as people scramble to find houses with working-from-home office space and bigger gardens.

While existing homeowners enjoy seeing their biggest asset rise in value, this is a nightmare for first-time buyers, who are borrowing ever-larger sums to get on the ladder and risk negative equity if prices crash.

More than six out of 10 first-time buyers fear their house will be worth less than they paid for it when they sell or move, according to research from broker First Mortgage.