MRMX9

So you have a politician who supports policies that are going to make him personally worse off? Outrageous!

Such is the oddity of British retail selling. Visit most of the major retailers in mid February and you will struggle to buy a winter hat/coat/scarf as they have sold out – but they have brought out their summer range if you want to buy a bikini or a pair of shorts despite it being minus 5 outside. Of course they ignore the post Xmas gym joining rush in January – so no shorts etc to be found. Come mid August they flog off all their summer gear – and by the end of the month the winter coats and outfits abound. They then wonder why they don’t sell anything in September when its 70 degrees outside – and retain all those heavy winter coats unsold until early November. Why not have an all year round selection - to cope with people's actual needs?

There are endless ads about this on LBC radio - it makes a change from the endless ads promoting services for buy to let landlords (does no one else sell anything these days that isn't to do with renting things?). Its usually the same smug guy who 'sold his business for a tidy sum' but hadn't been making much of a return on the savings but is now making returns of 13% a year thanks to buy2letcars. The ads get very irritating after you have heard them 100 times!

Who cares what the postal address is. Chingford is London E4 - its the same distance from central London as Woodford Green Essex IG8? Purely a mechanism for the post office to sort letters - it has no more relevance than that. Ilford is in Essex for postal address purposes - but it feels a lot more London than Chingford. I come back to the relevant point - is Boris your Mayor, do your council taxes pay for the London fire brigade and met police, do you get free 24 hour travel across London at 60. If you do you live in London for all the things that matter - if you don't you aren't in London!

I have a one year fixed rate isa offering 3% which I opened this year which allows penalty free access with 90 days loss of interest. Its with an FSCS backed credit union - not available now but it was until July. Avoid the big boys - and you might do better! Another option are regular savers - some paying 3%+

I always wondered why I could see it when logged in - but not when not? Just odd that only the select few can participate? But then why not combine the house prices thread with the one about offering advice on buying houses - surely the two are relevant to each other?

In order to be fair to all sides I thought this article's headline was a little misleading - at first glance it might be thought to imply house prices in London are going to fall 80%. The truth being they are forecast to rise only 3% next year vs 20% this. "London house price growth seen tumbling 80%" More silly made up numbers I agree - however. http://www.cnbc.com/id/101909738?__source=ft&par=ft

Gants Hill (well the first property) also has a night bus (the N8) and to be honest is a nicer area overall with much better schools and more green space nearby (eg. Valentines Park, Hainault Forest and Fairlop Waters). Manor Park is cheaper for a reason – and might be a good investment (e.g. buy to let) I agree. Newbury Park and Barkingside nearby are also pleasant enough – in Redbridge north of the A12 is always best. Re Crossrail its often little realised that for those on the Liverpool Street to Shenfield section (e.g. Manor Park) journey times to the City will be exactly the same post Crossrail – in fact possibly longer as there will be an extra stop at Whitechapel. If you live in Shenfield or Romford for example it still makes more sense to take the faster Greater Anglia trains which take 20-25 mins to the City vs 45 minutes on Crossrail. The main benefit is newer trains and if you want perhaps to go to Oxford St or Heathrow or Ealing you no longer need to change at Stratford or Liverpool St – but most people won’t do those sort of journeys daily.

Gants Hill is very convenient for commuting on the central line and Ilford (Crossrail) is a short bus ride away - but like much of Redbridge the area isn't quite the nice middle class suburb it used to be. One of the properties is more Newbury park - still zone 4 though - which again is OK. The area used to have one of the largest Jewish communities in western Europe (a little known fact) but is now predominantly Asian which has changed the area significantly. The schools in Redbridge (the local council) are also very good if you have kids. Like in most of London now houses are ridiculously expensive - but for London you could do a lot worse.

According to the latest land registry survey from April the average property price in Kingston is 'only' £386,000 - just shows how asking prices and reality aren't actually the same thing! Tower Hamlets average price is only £430k with the LR - but over £630k with Rightmove. Rightmove's average price in central London is also nearly double that for the LR. Yet for Barking and Bexley the averages are almost identical? So what exactly is the average London house price?! http://www.landregistry.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/88168/HPIReport20140523.pdf

Its intended to appeal to a broad range of viewers across the UK - not reflect the world as it is in Bow (where you would find such a square) today. Why do you think our two top rated dramas are Call the Midwife and Downton Abbey? In reality most of the people on the show would have moved out to Essex long ago - but thats not the point!

Since April last year councils in England have had full discretion to remove all discounts and exemptions for second and empty homes - and even apply a 50% premium for homes empty for more than 2 years. Its a revenue raiser - so almost all councils have removed the exemptions entirely or have a token period of a month for newly empty properties. There remain certain guaranteed limited exemptions (e.g. for properties awaiting probate) and perhaps disgracefully banks aren't liable for council tax on homes they have repossessed but have not yet let or sold! The Govt was going to allow that but after some last minute lobbying from the banks it seems to have been dropped!

Under our current system a Russian oligarch living alone in a £30m Belgravia mansion would get a 25% discount - do you think they need it? I think that's the point councils are making i.e. they would potentially means test. Council tax badly needs reform - said same oligarch in his £30m mansion actually pays less council tax than a pensioner couple living in a modest semi in Croydon due to the artificially low council tax in Westminster (heavily subsidised by government and parking income etc).

To be fair to the Standard I actually saw a property advertised for below £200,000 for the first time in months - a Victorian conversion garden flat in leafy Forest Gate. I was shocked - as they normally don't allow adverts implying property can be bought so cheaply. Usual promotion of overpriced new builds of course - with the inevitable focus on help to buy. Laura James, 24, who is an 'operations analyst' at a bank in Canary Wharf has just bought a two bed new build apartment in 'leafy' Harold Wood (not to be confused with dodgy council area Harold Hill) near Romford. Might be in the outer reaches of zone 6 - but Laura is 'on the ladder'with her 5% deposit thanks to the government's help.

I would be interested to see the London borough level breakdown. The Standard today had a front page article on 'house prices rise 6% in a year'. It then reported that prices had risen in central London boroughs and places like Merton/Wandsworth by 11-12%. Given that house prices in those boroughs are well above the average - this might suggest that in the outer boroughs (by doing an obvious average) prices barely rose at all? Otherwise how do you get a 6% average rise when the most expensive areas are rising by 11%. Of course the Standard - being owned by a Russian oligarch - never mentions statistics for places like Barking or Havering or Hillingdon or Bromley or Lewisham despite most of its readers living in those places!