Methinkshe

Of course, there is a possibility that for the next year or two at least people will just sit in their properties rather than realise a loss, thus the market will become more and more illiquid. Although there will still be those who HAVE to sell..... Depends how many of those there turn out to be. And that could depend on employment, or lack thereof.

IRs SHOULD stay high to combat inflation but if the inflation figures are fiddled, what then? Everyone knows that CPI is higher than the 1.9% figure that the B o E will be working to. So much for B o E independence. They are only as independent as Gordon allows them to be. If he wants an IR cut then he'll just continue to manipulate the inflation figures.

Discounts and/or cashback deals must be playing some part in skewing the figures, too. And what about the deals that offer a house with a Ferrari or the like thrown in? Marko's anecdotal has more of the ring of truth to it than N/Ws figures.

Well, whaddya know! "But things appear different this time around. Our financial institutions have been a lot more cautious than people are giving them credit for (excuse the pun). No sub-prime in the U.K. No, sir!

I think you're right about wage inflation - it's not going to be the same as before. Companies can outsource a lot of jobs to low wage economies if the clamour for wage rises gets too much. And unions don't have the presence they did back in the 70s, for instance. A couple of weeks ago there was a story in the Sunday Telegraph about Personal Assistants who work from India. The writer was emailing his Indian PA to get her to sort out mundane tasks such as finding out why his coal delivery (or somesuch - can't remember exact details) hadn't arrived.

Since when did wishful thinking offset real events in the real world? These people sound like politicians - they think they only have to SAY, let it be so, and abracadabra it is done.

property auctions.com If you can be bothered to trawl through results and compare with guide prices, gives a good indication of distressed sale values of properties from all over the country. North looks particularly badly hit as do some less desirable areas of London.

More stuff about Presidential cycles from Robert Beckman's book "Crashes". "The actual year of the presidential election is generally good for stock market investors. That is because politicians are especially adept at short-term manipulation, and naturally the party in power will do everything it can to provide at least the appearance of prosperity by pumping up the monetary aggregates during the year of a presidential election. Several studies have been made to show the correlation between monetary growth and the election cycle. During the four-year cycle the highest levels of monetary growth have nearly always been recorded during the presidential election year. The lowest levels of monetary growth are generally recorded in the year of the inauguration, as the party in power in the White House attempts to reverse the potential damage that monetary excesses can cause. While election years typically favour investors, post-election yaars tend - on balance - to be crash-prone years."

What's with the 7s?

Don't be so daft. The company is bankrupt and you are pleading the case for a divi to shareholders? Where are you coming from? Ah! I guess you are a shareholder. Perhaps you are even one of those idiots that bought into the plummetting shares on the back of a possible divi. Serves you right if you are... Edit: Sorry, I see that you protest you are not a shareholder - perhaps your Mum is....

I should bloody well think so, too! What were they expecting? The B o E to pay shareholders their dividends? I don't think Darling could get away with that. At least, not so blatantly ...what he does undercover is another matter....

Yeah, but my horoscope for today says that I will meet a rich man and live happily ever after.......

Second charges are still better bets than unsecured lending. Expect to see ads continue. Many of these companies are off-shoots of big banks and are dependent on continuing dubious loans to stay in business. If they can't get borrowers to borrow they are out of business tomorrow. Yay! Sounds like a good aphorism! Can't get borrowers to borrow, you're out of business tomorrow!

A minor point but I have been wondering whether with hindsight the top of the market WAS two years ago. It takes a long time for negative news to infiltrate an apparently booming market, but the more I look, the more I see evidence for the top being 2 years ago. What does anyone else think?

When you consider that our economy is now largely a service and consumer led economy, and that consumerism has been lead by HPI, it seems to me that any fall in house prices will inevitably lead to a recession. I can't remember how many times I have heard, for instance, of cash-strapped middle classes mewing to continue to pay kids private school fees. That's at the top end. At the bottom end, mewing to consolidate credit card debt has been the order of the day. The growth of the economy for the past ten years has been based entirely on the latitude afforded to consumers by HPI. A recession - more likely a depression - is as inevitable as a HPC.

Pity that MPs don't rise up in sympathy and deny themselves their own final salary pensions, guaranteed, inflation-linked, bloody massive and bigger than anyone else's in the whole damn country. New Labour? New Lords, more like. The only bastion between New Labour and out and out corruption is the House of Lords - long live their Lordships, ESPECIALLY the hereditary buggers!

Silent Monarchy? Gagged, don't you mean. Not that I'd hope for much from Charlie, anyway, but Mummy is as dutiful and upright as humanity comes.

Have you been trained by Alasdair Campbell, or what? Talk about obfuscation! Try again. Here is my initial analogy: When a doctor tells a patient he has terminal cancer, he doesn't lie down and die on the surgery floor - but he does get progressively worse and often quite rapidly.

BA****DS! Makes you want to spit! These people don't know the meaning of service - correction, yes they do, they fully comprehend SELF-service. How are they getting away with it? Whjy are we not bringing them to book? How can we start a revolution?

Whilst I agree 100%, don't forget that double incomes also have played a part in driving up house prices. Way back in the early 70s when mu husband and I bought our first house, a wife's income was not given anything like the same weighting as it is now. Women full-time in the market place not only doubled the tax base it also doubled the amount of money floating around in the economy, which in turn helped to inflate house prices.

*Bump* We should all be livid that taxpayers money is paying for MP's mortgage interest so that they can make fat cpaital gains (UNTAXED) on their properties. This is FRAUD - and it's being done at our expense within the rules - though not a million miles close to the spirit of the rules. Politicians are leeches.

Ruins it for the tenant but makes it a very attractive proposition for a landlord. A no-penalty, cash-in your chips whenever you want after 6 months - what a deal!

Important point, which is why best advice to those who cannot sell and do not own outright is to have as near a 100% mortgage as possible. The biggest losers will be those who have 10 - 50 per cent equity that the banks can grab. If they fall behind on their repayments through, say, unemployment, it will be their houses that will be repossessed first, not the negative equity ones.

There's nothing wrong with encouraging home ownership per se - in fact, if people have a personal financial interest in the place and street where they live they are more likely to keep the place looking tidy and make an effort to contribute to the good order of the neighbourhood. What is wrong (apart from easy money) is the way that landlord tenant laws have been stacked in favour of the landlord. It was the ease with which a BTLetter could evict a tenant without suffering financial loss that made BTLetting into a speculative investment opportunity. Had 10 yr assured tenancies been the rule instead of the esception (and who can blame a LL for using the 6-month shorthold when it makes financial sense) you wouldn't have seen the type of speculative investment that has occurred in the last 10 years. A sitting tenant devalues a house by a considerable amount.

What more were you expecting? It's the abrupt 180 degree turn of sentiment that has resulted in these bearish headlines that is evidence of the crash. Symptoms will manifest and magnify in due course. When a doctor tells a patient he has terminal cancer, he doesn't lie down and die on the surgery floor - but he does get progressively worse and often quite rapidly.