[DrBubb]

libspero, on 01 February 2010 - 10:44 PM, said:

I thought he bought in 2003.. in the far east?
Given that the pound has devalued 30% since then I would say he did pretty well wouldn't you?
Funny how people who like to criticise others also like to forget half the story

You've got the date wrong.
I sold my Kensington property in 2001, as gold was hitting bottom, and I used the money to start investing in stocks,
and my main purchase was gold mining stocks, which I though would benefit from a strong upturn in Gold prices.
This proved correct, and I made about 5x my money after subtracting my living expenses.

In 2007-08, as Gold shares were peaking, I took over 1/3 of my capital and started buying property in Hong Kong.
We have now sold 7 of those property- each at a profit, with two more on the market. When we are done selling,
I expect we will have made enough profit to have about 1 1/2 properties for free. And I still have 2/3rds of my
stock portfolio, half of which is now in cash.

Looking back, I have made a decent living off this portfolio, while side-stepping the property downturn, and the currency
downturn in the UK.

On GEI, we have quite a number who also did well, by investing in stocks, or in gold, and now are well position
to do well as UK prices slide into their second leg down.

I am pleased to have been able to help quite a few people preserve some wealth in volatile times. And many
friends on GEi (and HPC too!) are showing generosity to to others, and coming up with useful suggestions for
how to stay ahead of the average investor

This post has been edited by DrBubb: 06 March 2010 - 03:19 PM

[DrBubb]

MORE TROUBLE in Mr.Brown's Paradise

Mortgage lending slumps by half
Mortgage lending to people buying a home dived by 49pc during January following the end of the Government's stamp duty holiday.

12 Mar 2010
Only 32,000 loans, worth £4.7bn, were advanced during the month, around half the level seen during December, the Council of Mortgage Lenders said. The CML said the figures "emphatically demonstrated" the impact on the mortgage market of the end of the Government's stamp duty holiday.

The drop was even more pronounced among first-time buyers, with the number of mortgages advanced to people taking their first step on to the property ladder dropping by 54pc to 11,300 between December and January.
There was also a 55pc slide in the value of lending to this group, with advances falling to £1.3bn.

The CML said the steep drop reflected the fact that a high proportion of first-time buyers bought properties priced between £125,000 and £175,000, and had rushed through purchases in December before the stamp duty threshold fell back to £125,000.
It had reported a 63pc jump in the number of first-time buyers purchasing homes in this range in December, but transactions in this band dived by 80pc in January. Properties priced between £125,000 and £175,000 accounted for just 19pc of all first-time buyer loans during the month, compared with a record 42pc in December.

But despite the steep drop in mortgages for both first-time buyers and home movers, the number of loans advanced for house purchase in January was still up from the low of 23,000 seen in the same month of 2009.

/more: http://www.telegraph...ps-by-half.html

[DrBubb]

bateman, on 11 December 2009 - 10:46 AM, said:

You are hilarious Bubb - guess what - the housing market slows at Christmas and picks up in the Spring.
Looking forward to your claims of being correct about the top when prices fall Jan and Feb and then your silence when they start rising again.
How many years have you been wrong about the direction of the UK housing market for?

"PICKS UP IN THE SPRING"... ?

House price growth slows
Mon Mar 15, 2010

LONDON (Reuters) - The annual growth in asking prices for residential property in England and Wales slowed in March for the first time in a year after a glut of houses came on to the market, property website Rightmove said on Monday.

Year-on-year price growth slowed to 5.3 percent from February's 6.1 percent -- the first fall in the annual rate since it reached its nadir of -9.1 percent in February 2009.

March typically sees an increase in the amount of property for sale after the depth of winter is past, but this year the trend was exacerbated by the iciest weather for 30 years in January and February.


The non-seasonally adjusted data showed asking prices rose just 0.1 percent between February and March compared to 3.2 percent between January and February, the weakest March growth since the series began in January 2002.

"In some areas more restrained pricing is required as a direct consequence of buyers having more choice," said Miles Shipside, Rightmove's commercial director.

"We still forecast some further rises in the first half of this year when buyers have picked over the newly marketed stock, though the small increase in March shows how much more unpredictable the market has become," he added.

/more: http://uk.reuters.co...E62E00G20100315

"..shows how much more unpredictable the market has become."

"unpredictable" for the chronic bulls perhaps. Not for the realists

CURRENT DATA

M Hali.ns Na'wide Rt'move Delus% Ave.H&N Amom% AyoY%
9 159,818 150,501 213,570 137.6% 155,160 -0.37% -16.52%
F 159,208 147,746 216,163 140.8% 153,477 -1.08% -17.66%
M 157,066 150,946 218,081 141.6% 154,006 0.34% -16.69%
A 157,156 151,861 222,077 143.7% 154,509 0.33% -16.37%
M 160,869 154,016 227,441 144.5% 157,443 1.90% -12.55%
J 158,807 156,442 226,436 143.7% 157,625 0.12% -10.99%
J 160,686 158,871 227,864 142.6% 159,779 1.37% -8.11%
A 161,930 160,224 222,762 138.3% 161,077 0.81% -5.27%
S 164,854 161,816 223,996 137.1% 163,335 1.40% -2.53%
O 165,430 162,038 230,184 140.6% 163,734 0.24% 0.13%
N 165,617 162,764 226,440 137.9% 164,191 0.28% 2.21%
D 167,260 162,103 221,463 131.5% 164,682 0.30% 5.74%
J 165,514 163,481 222,261 137.1% 164,498 -0.71% 6.02%
F 165,997 161,320 229,398 140.2% 163,659 -0.51% 6.63%
M ===== ===== : 229,614

Key Points
+ Virtual price standstill as new sellers ask just 0.1% (£216) more – the lowest rise ever recorded in March
+ Previously snowbound sellers return, leading to highest new property supply for 18 months

/see: http://www.rightmove...use-price-index

[57percent]

Would we normally expect signs of spring bounce by now?
Everything seems to be in reverse, so I think your prediction is looking very likely.

I should be happy, but I know a few people who've got pulled in by the bounce and could
be in trouble if big falls.

.... worst government ever ...

[Bloo Loo]

57percent, on 16 March 2010 - 08:15 AM, said:

Would we normally expect signs of spring bounce by now?
Everything seems to be in reverse, so I think your prediction is looking very likely.

I should be happy, but I know a few people who've got pulled in by the bounce and could
be in trouble if big falls.

.... worst government ever ...

feel no guilt...its not you who made the decision.

[Bloo Loo]

"In some areas more restrained pricing is required as a direct consequence of buyers having more choice," said Miles Shipside, Rightmove's commercial director."

this tw@ thinks that after a fortnight, the market makers...the sellers, have to reduce their asking prices!

nonsense, we havent got the BOOM out of peoples minds yet...and we were "Back to Normal" according to Bateman above in DECEMBER.

no, something has happened months ago otherwise people, EAs and valuers would have been pricing UP...its when OFFERS fall far short for weeks that sellers see the need to drop the asking price..not the first week of the peak period of activity...no-one has had time to test the market.

[otters]

livingdangerously, on 05 March 2010 - 04:48 PM, said:

A friend has asked me to watch the property market in my home town (St Albans) as she wants to move here. On my regular walk to work this week I saw a for sale board outside an attractive early last century property which I thought might be of interest. I checked Rightmove as soon as I got home that evening and it had already gone SSTC - asking price a cool 830K.

Not quite sure what this tells us about the way the market is going.

[welsh1]

57percent, on 16 March 2010 - 08:15 AM, said:

Would we normally expect signs of spring bounce by now?
Everything seems to be in reverse, so I think your prediction is looking very likely.

I should be happy, but I know a few people who've got pulled in by the bounce and could
be in trouble if big falls.

.... worst government ever ...

http://www.telegraph...for-a-year.html

"Only 258 house-hunters registered with estate agents during the month, the lowest level for a year and down from 291 in January, according to the National Association of Estate Agents"

Can't work out if this is per agent or across the country - if the latter it seems a very low number! If the former it is a big drop from January too.

[grey shark]

57percent, on 16 March 2010 - 08:15 AM, said:

Would we normally expect signs of spring bounce by now?

I remember mid March from 12 months ago EA's and the market were on their knees , then from Easter and onwards the market in many places started to stabilise and confidance started to return .... end of next month and i think we will know for sure which way the market will go for the rest of the year .

This post has been edited by grey shark: 16 March 2010 - 11:17 AM

[blue skies]

Britain has a problem. I am not just talking about the unenviable choice at the coming election between a worn-out Labour government and a Conservative opposition ill-prepared for office. Much as the air is thick with talk that the nation is on the brink of bankruptcy, the voters are simply not ready for austerity.

Politicians and pundits have offered several explanations for a tightening in the polls that has seen a Tory lead over Labour shrink from 10 or more points to about 5 or 6. The Conservatives have struggled to articulate a prospectus; the offshore tax status of the party’s wealthy benefactor Lord Ashcroft has mocked David Cameron’s promise to clean up politics; Tory election strategists are mere babes against a political master such as Lord Mandelson; Gordon Brown is a much better campaigner than he is prime minister.

All these things have probably touched the public consciousness to a greater or lesser degree. To my mind, though, the big shift came some months ago when Mr Cameron put aside his centrist Conservatism for a ringing pledge to shrink the public realm.

Politicians call this telling it like it is. In the Tories’ case the message seemed clear enough: the public sector deficit had spiralled beyond control; deep cuts in spending were the only way to save the nation’s finances from ruin; told the truth, the voters would reward the Conservatives’ honesty.

That was the theory. And sometimes the treat-the-voters-as-grown-ups strategy works. It has for Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat shadow chancellor who is now the taxi-drivers’ favourite politician. “Honest Vince” has prospered mightily from his image as a straight-talking politician.

Truth be told, Mr Cable does not invariably practise what he preaches. His much-trumpeted plan to lift the poor out of income tax by raising thresholds sounds compellingly simple; in reality it would help the low paid not very much at all. The extra pounds in their wage packets would be offset by cuts in welfare benefits.

Mr Cable trades off his reputation. He also has a keen grasp of the prudent limits of candour. Hence the Liberal Democrats’ reassurance that, tough though they would be about tackling the government deficit, the harshest measures would be deferred.

The Conservatives made their big mistake last autumn when Mr Cameron joined his shadow chancellor George Osborne in promising a new age of austerity. Hitherto the Tory leader had defined himself as a post-Thatcherite politician, eager to heal the society whose existence the famous Lady had so infamously denied. Now he took up her ideological cudgels against big government with a promise to slash and burn across the public sector.

Plenty of economists will tell you that the Tories are more right than the government about the seriousness of the debt mountain – even if many of them are more cautious than Mr Osborne about the timing of spending cuts. I have heard it said that the Treasury knights now helping Alistair Darling, the chancellor, to frame Labour’s pre-election budget are privately urging Mr Osborne to be much tougher if the Tories win.

For their part, the Tory slide in the polls has half-persuaded Messrs Cameron and Osborne to soften their rhetoric about the speed of their proposed cuts in Whitehall budgets. Savings in the first year of a Tory government, they now say, would be carefully calibrated so as not to derail economic recovery.

The trouble is the axe-man image has stuck. Fed up as they are with Mr Brown, the voters do not much like it. Sure they want a government that will deal with the debt. They just do not want to suffer the consequences. Not yet anyway.

In 1979 – the last time the Conservatives were elected to clean up an economic mess left by a Labour government – the national mood was almost masochistic. The country intuitively understood that brutal measures were needed if Britain was to escape from the spiral of economic decline.

There is no similar sense of national emergency now. Tough as the recession has been and terrible as the debt is, voters are disinclined to admit that putting things right requires the Tory prescription of a full parliament of pain.

For those who have kept their jobs this just does not seem so dangerous an economic crisis. Inflation, after all, is under control, and interest rates are low. Pay freezes are one thing. And, yes, there must be some spending cuts. But a new era of austerity? Suddenly, Mr Brown looks a little less threatening.

I still have my doubts as to whether this unease will change the election outcome. Time for a change is a powerful message. It would be more so if Mr Cameron rediscovered some of his earlier optimism. Of one thing, though, we can be sure. Whatever the result on May 6, the voters will not like what follows. The next government will soon find itself very unpopular indeed.

[blue skies]

Copy and paste

[dances with sheeple]

57percent, on 16 March 2010 - 08:15 AM, said:

Would we normally expect signs of spring bounce by now?
Everything seems to be in reverse, so I think your prediction is looking very likely.

I should be happy, but I know a few people who've got pulled in by the bounce and could
be in trouble if big falls.

.... worst government ever ...

Still, no one forced them into debt at gunpoint? There is a ton of information out there, not just this site, sheeple need to start (too late this time around) doing some critical thinking for themselves in future IMO, Brown makes a great Bogey Man/ Hate figure but it really isn`t all his fault. He should never have been allowed to be PM so long anyway, if at all? The political elite, the bankers AND the sheeple are all culpable? The good news is that many political and banking cartels are being weakened by all this?

[Tired of Waiting]

otters, on 16 March 2010 - 09:15 AM, said:

Not quite sure what this tells us about the way the market is going.

That there are some fools at all income levels, now. Not for much longer though.

If I rememberer well St. Albans is one of the most expensive areas of the country. 830k may be a "normal" (bubble) price there.

But the deeper point here is: The last decade saw a huge and random distribution of wealth, doubling or trebling the wealth of people who happened to own a property, not necessary related to these individuals skills, work ethics, educational level, intelligence, etc. Some deserved it, but many didn't. It was like a huge national lottery. This was not the best way for a society to allocate capital.

But now, social Darwinism's influence is coming back up. The fools who bought that house in St. Albans are helping bailing out the banks (with their deposit), and the nation (saving us from having to bail out the banks again), but they will pay for it, soon (negative equity).

This post has been edited by Tired of waiting: 16 March 2010 - 12:03 PM

[dances with sheeple]

blue skies, on 16 March 2010 - 11:35 AM, said:

Britain has a problem. I am not just talking about the unenviable choice at the coming election between a worn-out Labour government and a Conservative opposition ill-prepared for office. Much as the air is thick with talk that the nation is on the brink of bankruptcy, the voters are simply not ready for austerity.

Politicians and pundits have offered several explanations for a tightening in the polls that has seen a Tory lead over Labour shrink from 10 or more points to about 5 or 6. The Conservatives have struggled to articulate a prospectus; the offshore tax status of the party's wealthy benefactor Lord Ashcroft has mocked David Cameron's promise to clean up politics; Tory election strategists are mere babes against a political master such as Lord Mandelson; Gordon Brown is a much better campaigner than he is prime minister.

All these things have probably touched the public consciousness to a greater or lesser degree. To my mind, though, the big shift came some months ago when Mr Cameron put aside his centrist Conservatism for a ringing pledge to shrink the public realm.

Politicians call this telling it like it is. In the Tories' case the message seemed clear enough: the public sector deficit had spiralled beyond control; deep cuts in spending were the only way to save the nation's finances from ruin; told the truth, the voters would reward the Conservatives' honesty.

That was the theory. And sometimes the treat-the-voters-as-grown-ups strategy works. It has for Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat shadow chancellor who is now the taxi-drivers' favourite politician. "Honest Vince" has prospered mightily from his image as a straight-talking politician.

Truth be told, Mr Cable does not invariably practise what he preaches. His much-trumpeted plan to lift the poor out of income tax by raising thresholds sounds compellingly simple; in reality it would help the low paid not very much at all. The extra pounds in their wage packets would be offset by cuts in welfare benefits.

Mr Cable trades off his reputation. He also has a keen grasp of the prudent limits of candour. Hence the Liberal Democrats' reassurance that, tough though they would be about tackling the government deficit, the harshest measures would be deferred.

The Conservatives made their big mistake last autumn when Mr Cameron joined his shadow chancellor George Osborne in promising a new age of austerity. Hitherto the Tory leader had defined himself as a post-Thatcherite politician, eager to heal the society whose existence the famous Lady had so infamously denied. Now he took up her ideological cudgels against big government with a promise to slash and burn across the public sector.

Plenty of economists will tell you that the Tories are more right than the government about the seriousness of the debt mountain – even if many of them are more cautious than Mr Osborne about the timing of spending cuts. I have heard it said that the Treasury knights now helping Alistair Darling, the chancellor, to frame Labour's pre-election budget are privately urging Mr Osborne to be much tougher if the Tories win.

For their part, the Tory slide in the polls has half-persuaded Messrs Cameron and Osborne to soften their rhetoric about the speed of their proposed cuts in Whitehall budgets. Savings in the first year of a Tory government, they now say, would be carefully calibrated so as not to derail economic recovery.

The trouble is the axe-man image has stuck. Fed up as they are with Mr Brown, the voters do not much like it. Sure they want a government that will deal with the debt. They just do not want to suffer the consequences. Not yet anyway.

In 1979 – the last time the Conservatives were elected to clean up an economic mess left by a Labour government – the national mood was almost masochistic. The country intuitively understood that brutal measures were needed if Britain was to escape from the spiral of economic decline.

There is no similar sense of national emergency now. Tough as the recession has been and terrible as the debt is, voters are disinclined to admit that putting things right requires the Tory prescription of a full parliament of pain.

For those who have kept their jobs this just does not seem so dangerous an economic crisis. Inflation, after all, is under control, and interest rates are low. Pay freezes are one thing. And, yes, there must be some spending cuts. But a new era of austerity? Suddenly, Mr Brown looks a little less threatening.

I still have my doubts as to whether this unease will change the election outcome. Time for a change is a powerful message. It would be more so if Mr Cameron rediscovered some of his earlier optimism. Of one thing, though, we can be sure. Whatever the result on May 6, the voters will not like what follows. The next government will soon find itself very unpopular indeed.

You are joking? are you he? if so time to pack your case chum. Mandlebum only works well in a loose credit environment when the sheeple are living the "high life" when they don`t look to deeply into what is happening. When the mob turn nasty he will be one of the first up a lampost, wheras Vince or even D.C has more of a common touch? Mandy loses his cool to easily when he is not in control of everything, as do all LieBour idiots, the game is up for the LieBour experiment as things are deteriorating daily and clown still hasn`t called his election? he is like a child scared to stop sucking it`s mothers tit in case it disappears, in this case the tit is power and in his case it is gone I`m afraid.