northernbear

I'd like to see the derivative position sales in the last hour of trading, must have been interesting

As i understand it the contrarian view is one of two things. Either that all the borrowed money that was being pumped into property will dissapear into bonds and shares driving them up. they may fall first only to shoot up as everyone jumps on the band wagon. You can almost here the hype - in the long run you always win with shares...... a new bubble in stocks. Maybe a super bubble. The second scenario is that the super bubble has already happened and that general devaluation of all paper monies in an attempt by central banks and governments to bail out the financial system will result in massive inflation forcing the price of any real asset higher in paper value. Many shares are real companies producing things people will still need even in a recession / world meltdown. In that scenario anything of tangible value will be highly sought after. Cue rockets filled with gold etc. Even the perception of either could be enough to actually cause it.

mostly because they cant. bought house at 90k. 80k mortage. house price went upo to 120k, remorgaged to 110k, bought new kitchen, redid the garden, went skiing for two weeks and swopped the old car for a nice new ford. house price went up to 160k, remortaged to 150k, got rid of the Ford and wheeled in a 4x4, big plasma TV yadda yadda ya. went up to 200k, remortaged to 200k with northern rock, invested in a 150k new build apartment. Gonna be millionaires in a year. Now the new builds are built, no one wants to rent them. No one wants to buy them. Personal credit card debts of 15k, cant sell for less than mortaged value. Only thing to do is run and hide. They are in denial. Time will force them down.

Nnow apply the above to northern ireland and things start to look quite scary!!!

crystal ball stuff.... I'd say it'll be near the bottom when the property investment programmes are showing someone getting rich by buying three 2 bedroom appartments which have been lying empty and unsold for 3 years at auction with the plan to convert back into a 4 bedroom semi detached family home. The real genius of the design will be knocking down the third apartment to the rear to reveal............. wait for it............ ...........a garden.

does anyone have the skill to compile, say from a well known property website a list of all the estate agents and the number of properties they are tied to and have declared say be 'owned by estate agent' 'friend of estate agent' etc It might be useful to see how that number changes over time for each estate agent.

just spotted this http://www.propertynews.com/brochure.php?r...mp;p=CPCCPC1302 'priced for immediate sale' nothing too new there, the kicker is in the last line of the add....... Even the EA is admitting the game is up now. 49 Glendower Street, Cregagh, Belfast, BT6 8PD BACK TO RESULTS PRINT BROCHURE ADD TO FAVOURITES SEND TO FRIEND AGENT TypeTerrace Bedrooms2 Reception2 Offer StatusFor Sale Estate AgentCowley Property From £ 125,000 EUR 185,039* US$ 253,862Features 2 Reception rooms 2 Bedrooms Kitchen air gap to bathroom area Highly sought after locality Description Priced for immediate sale. Situated off the bustling Cregagh Road this property is an ideal investment opportunity. This property is owned by a member of staff

cartimandua51 - interesting about what you say about accountants. also about the 1st's being a bit nerdish, I think from your posts your a bit older than me - I graduated 4yrs ago. I think the degrees are a bit easier now - especially in science and engineering, so you dont have to quite so much of a nerd to get one now. I work in IT, about 20 of us in the grad intake - only 3 were computer science people. Rest scattered to the winds in terms of courses. As you say, gumption and common sense are in high demand. edited for typo - probably lots left. Oh well.

I completely agree, I studied engineering at university and enjoyed it. I decided to leave the profession as I wanted to be better payed. Selfish, not very patriotic - yes. Surprising - hardly. Its worse in that less of the best students now do engineering to stay in it, which lowers the quality of entrant to the engineering sector on completion of there degrees. Companies therefore have a problem finding good people. Which is why there has to be immigration to fill the skills gap. Anyone with a first class MEng degree will be able to get a 20k+ grad job in the UK if they want it. Not that many want one. Lots of imigrants will gladly take it. Industry can't aford to pay more as making 'stuff' is generally cheaper in other countries. It will cost less to build a car in mexico than in the UK for example.

and then remember that of the 20 that put their hands up probably half will leave inside three years when they see their pay scales go 25k, 25.5k 26.5k after three years when they buddies who left to transfer to accountancy/law/banking go 30k 37k 50k etc etc. Only place for engineers to make money is oil and gas. Standing of the back of a ship in the north sea at -10 degrees sure looks glamouress in the university prospectus, not so much when you havent been home for 6 months.

corevalue speaks the truth, engineering may be a noble employ but the grads are catching on, engineering is generally badly payed and even still there is nothing like a shortage of them as all the engineering dissapears from the country. its also expensive to teach engineering and science generally whereas teaching accountancy or law is much easier and cheaper.

Agree, for some jobs progression is difficult. And for some people circumstances such as family or illness will make progress difficult. Alot of others make excuses. No reaon why a 17yr old working as a cleaner in the NHS can't leave after two years along with some kind of NVQ effort to clean in a pub and serve at the bar. Then a year later go work in a hotel bar. And ten years later be in charge of wedding bookings. Opportunities are everywhere for young people who want to work.

there is no problem. And the people who are good will be suitably rewarded if they want to be. As for the polish workers, there is a Polish chap where I work. He has a physics PhD. I've learned lots from him already. As far as I know he has no thoughts of returning to his native country. I hope he stays for manys a year.

I was in JJB in northern ireland on wed night. Massive discounts. got a really good table football kit, RRP 130 quid reduced to 30. Clothes from 20 quid to 4. Smelt like a closing down sale to me.

I think friday will be the day, thursday up 75 points, friday down 450 as people get terrified of what will happen over weekend, monday - back up 250 and so on and so on and so on

well the news from belfast is that petrol and dirty diseal is already over the £1 in some garages. A bit less in the supermarket brands. Buy hey, at least we have a low cost of living and plenty of cheap houses

I had the non pleasure of renting a place during uni which had them. As others have described, too warm in the morning, no heat after 5pm. Generally terrible. I went to the library to study rather than burn an extra electric heater. I will never rent a place with them ever again. As an aside, I used to work as a design engineer in a place that manufactured these devices and nobody there had them in their houses. They are just not good. On the flip side there a good idea for tall offices etc or in countries that arent particularily cold, like spain etc.

i like pharmaceutical companies, private heathcare providers, biotech (but nothing too clever) all as long term plays. The population is getting older and generally there is still alot of cash amongst the aging population amongst the millions of poor and debt that has transferred to the young. also chinese heavy industry, home builders etc, they have plenty of US dollars to pay for the stuff. some people think the next boom could be property in japan.

i work for a company that has way more employees than RM, if i went in on monday and said i didnt like the salary and pension and was going on strike, i'd be told where the door was. Quite rightly. If the posties dont like there jobs, get another one. If they cant get a better one, maybe thats says something

someone correct me if i understand it wrong, but is the BoE now not accepting 'collateral' that the other banks are not. For example if a distressed mortage lender asked barclays for 5 billion at Libor guaranteed against their current mortage assets they may be told to go jump, whereas the government might do the deal at the higher rate. Do we know yet what rate N rock got against their borrowing from the BoE, it would be quite amazing if it was below the Libor on that day for the same period of lending.

so do we think its too dear or too cheap? I know a couple of people who bought in this general area about mid 06, paying about 160 - 200. But thats finished much better than what they moved into.

Thanks for the welcome, You make some good points LondonView. NI has no advantage to the north of england or scotland, they both have masses of cheap land (in northern irelands case the whole of the docks) and large government grants. Doesnt JP Morgan have a tech centre in Glasgow? I could be wrong but I think its in scotland somewhere. "Where is the evidence of investment banks heading to NI from London?" Citigroup have two buildings in the docks area, all tech stuff, circa 500 people and growing just about as fast as they can recruit. I dont believe they are doing it because they are stupid. There are others setting up small scale services stuff. Its not as if their is a mass exodus but it is a signifigant gain for NI. "Do you have any idea of the multi-generational skillsets London has? Where you going to get that in NI? Please don't say queens..." I completely agree with you on the historical skillsets based in london and the oxford/cambridge/imperial etc ties that have fed them for generations. Amongst the big deals that kind of service and background will be essential. I dont propose for a second that Queens exclusively will churn out the nect generation of stock brokers or top name anaylsts, the BIG jobs will be in london. However, one clever bot is much like the next and much of the back office, middle office, run of the mill anaylst - lets say number crunching (sub 75k london jobs) could be done virtually anywhere. When the cost cutting starts good people in London will be forced to go to lower cost areas such as NI or glasgow etc, taking the skills with them, they will then train the next generation - clever folk from good UK mainlands will be forced to go where the jobs are. For the last ten years the IB's have been a license to print money, if that business model changes alot could change with it. Cheap Labour. NI has it in bucket loads. A bot job in london paying 45k would have a queue of people here looking it for 25k. The average (mean) wage here is 16k, and the median is less than that. The cost of living is also massively misunderstood here. Typical press. I often see the average house prices in NI are greater than london line trawled out. The reality is the average house in london is half the size of the average house in NI. Also most people think NI house prices are about for a major reset. NI has a very low cost of living in everything from rent to food, I was in London three weeks ago. I know. Invest NI - yup that will soon dry up, but it will dry up more slowly in NI, the government are terrified that recession here would spiral back to the crime of days gone by, so NI will get all the bail outs going. It isnt fair, not in the slightest, I dont like it but thats just the way it is. Its why we have so much civil service nonsense. In a country where nursing/teaching/civil service jobs are traditionally seen as 'the good high paid jobs' the movement of tech centres is big news in NI. Will it save NI from the biggest possible mess that looks to be brewing in the near future. Not a chance.

hi folks, first post on here for a bear turned bull (about last easter but thankfully had no money so couldnt buy) turned bear again.... It really is interesting this NI housing market, anyone else noticing there are no longer overnight queues to buy houses when they go on release? Anyway, the reason to post was to say that the financial sector in NI might not be too badly sucked under. The reason the big IB's are headed this way is to save money, likely they will shed the london jobs which pay double first and seek to move more to cheaper climes.