Saturday, Dec 22, 2007
An old-style article, no mention of credit crunch or falling prices
Telegraph: Desperate first-time buyers still have options
"Getting a foot on the property ladder can seem impossible - low-paid jobs and sky-high house prices have pushed up the average age of a first-time buyer to 33. But buying your first home in your twenties may still be possible." -- Yes, and being repossessed in your twenties may also still be possible!
Posted by drewster @ 03:51 PM (1213 views) Add Comment
17 Comments
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1. yorkshireman said...
Seems like a great plan by the lenders to prop the market up and keep the party going. Do they give a toss if Mum and Dad are subsequently thrown out of their house ? No, because they only think about themselves and their blind greed. Articles like this make me very angry indeed. I really hope and pray for a very very big fall in house prices. That is the only solution to the problem and is the only outcome to the present situation.
2. mikedx said...
It seems to just becoming sheer desperation! Are we going to see "products" of 50 year mortgages at 10x salary? are we hell.
To me the whole thing started to go downhill when a house became "property".. a dog is property, a tv is property. a house is a place to live and raise a family, not a chip for the craps table of life.
3. drewster said...
I find it hard to believe this article was written today, even this year. It seems like something from another era, when prices only ever went up and people were desperate to get on the ladder. This quote in particular, suggesting that people should gamble on BTL so that they can get onto the ladder before it's too late:
"If property is too expensive in your area, you could buy a property to rent out in a more reasonably priced region, but with the potential to have an uplift in price." -- That just doesn't sound wise any more. During the dot-com boom, did anybody write: "If that BMW you want is too expensive, you could borrow $100k from the bank and buy some shares in a smaller undiscovered dot-com company with the potential to have an uplift in price." ?
4. justwatching said...
What a b*llocks article, I feel I just wasted two minutes of my life. I'm off to find three mates to buy an inflated house with. (maybe I'll just buy a blow up house instead)
5. Submedia said...
FTB a house your life does not make. Don't sell your life away. Be critical and stare through this coldly. There will be better times to buy than now! IMO
6. renting2 said...
This article was written by someone who's living in a time warp. This person obviously believes that getting on the ladder is more important than personal solvency. This advice is criminally wrong!!
7. dohousescrashinthewoods said...
To pick up the bank of mum and dad theme, this could be the first crash where both the parents and the kids get repossessed because both had to borrow up to their eyeballs to get the kids out of the house.
Talk about "leverage" for reposessions - twice as many made homeless and bankrupt.
8. Jimmy_joe said...
Brilliant! Find 3 friends who are teachers, or quit your jobs to become teachers so you qualify for a government programme, then get the 8 parents to take out a 50 year 125% interest-only mortgage on a jointly-owned home. It's so simply yet fewer FTBs are doing this than at any time since 1980. If only they knew!
9. renting2 said...
On the subject of bankruptcies due to repossessions, will GB stand aloof and watch it happen? Or will there be huge cries for government support and some sort of plan hatched to save them (mass shared equity etc.) GB the saviour of the repossessed. Keeps renters in the BTL properties and keeps families in their family homes.
I can't believe that this isn't already being researched in some murky Whitehall dept.
10. who stole my pension? said...
If we do as the article suggest then it will be like living in a third world country with many families living in the same house!!
Four people buying will only inflate the price of the property further.
11. planning4acrash said...
It just occured to me that this whole process, of peaking out, is like musical chairs. Who is left with a roof over their head, savings, liquidity, pension and a job (or no need for a job) are the ones who have a seat when the music stops, those who don't? Well, they don't have a seat and are out of the game! Funny thing is, that most people don't realise that we are playing musical chairs, and those who know that we are will keep the truth hidden to ensure that they are the ones who get the chairs!! TAXI!!!!!
12. Sold My Soul To The Never Never Never said...
Don't know about the FTB's being desperate - more like the article was!
13. Gone West said...
When articles like this disappear and EVERY paper says buying property is a losers game and prices will decline for many months or years ahead, THEN is the right time to buy. In a strange way articles like this serve a purpose.
14. Quiet Guy said...
@Gone West
"When articles like this disappear and EVERY paper says buying property is a losers game and prices will decline for many months or years ahead, THEN is the right time to buy. In a strange way articles like this serve a purpose."
I have two observations to make about your comment:
1) It's a logical contradiction. If every paper says buying a property like this is a losers game, then nobody could be publishing an article "like this".
2) Your argument reminds me very much of the sort of thing Assetz have been publishing recently - a twisted form of the contrarian investing theory. A good contrarian investor would have invested in property near the bottom of the last peak, e.g. 1991, and sold out sometime between 2002 and 2005 (yes - even admitting some lost profit between 2005 to 2007) and bought gold instead (roughly when GB was selling ours).
To abuse the contrarian theory further, let's imagine that a group of buyers decide to inspect a property on sale prior to bidding in an auction; unfortunately, the property catches fire and starts burning. Now let's see. All the other investors think it's a loser game so it's time to buy! Yes?
15. drewster said...
@who stole my pension:
Multiple families living under one roof is symptomatic of a widening gap between rich and poor. Third world countries have huge inequalities: think of Brazil or Nigeria, where millionaires live alongside shanty-towns. Because of this inequality, third world countries have a small or non-existent middle class; whereas in the west the majority consider themselves middle class. A single family home is a key feature of this attitude. The rise in asset inequality is effectively the erosion of the middle-classes. Welcome to Brown's Britain, where all animals are equally poor.
16. it_is_going_with_a_bang said...
These 'ideas' have been put forward over the last few years already. The argument being used is basically "YOU MUST BUY A HOUSE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE".
I.e. keep the housing bubble going!
I have a better idea. All FTB should refuse point blank to entertain the idea of buying a house.
The article only just stopped short of suggesting armed robbery as a method of financing a house.
The Headline should read:
"Desperate Estate Agents, Mortgage Advisors, Banks and Industry Experts want to suggest that first-time buyers still have options"
It is an insult.
17. Orwell said...
Amazing!
Did someone pay this moron for the article or did they buy print space?