hamster

If she can afford the mortgage then surely if her man is not a waster then he could rent or sell his place and then move in and use any spare cash for munchkin upkeep. Two can live as cheaply as one - in fact, it is not difficult to feed children healthily and quite cheaply as they do not really eat all that much. Also they do grow up and eventually find their own way to school and parents can pick up the threads of work. Eat more rice and lentils and simple vegetables, avoid processed meals, buy an economical motor, waste less money on imported crap, live simply, throw out your telly, do what it feels right for the right reasons and etheric law will makes things work for you. You are a long time dead and a life without children (IF you really do want them) would be a shame.

How negative! Seems as if you can only think that the status quo is worth preserving. This is not necessarily the case. A collapse in so-called "civil order", lots of unrest and anarchy might do this country a lot of good. Try to appreciate the bigger picture. For example: 1) people wake up and smell the coffee, realise we are being sucked into a fascist, federalised Europe behind which lurks a one-world government which will be driven by alarming neo-conservative corporatist crazies, who once fully in power, will rapidly shed whatever benevolent image they still attempt to project 2) in the above situation, considering that many feel they have nothing to lose, government is rapidly brought to its knees through a series of direct actions - you only need to look at history to see how incredibly quickly the tables can turn - these pyramidical top-down control systems are after all incredibly fragile when they start to become disassembled against a united effort from underneath. People frightened of government = tyranny (current situation) Government frightened of people = LIBERTY (most desirable situation) Oil running out? Chairman of Shell? No, that's like asking a London cabbie if the minimum taxi fare should be revised upward. Fresh water? Absurd. We drink less than 1 per cent of the stuff that goes through our meters. And in certain places over 20 per cent of it disappears in leaks. There is no problem with water in the UK. Do you not think that many people (after a period of adjustment) would probably be far happier in a so-called "depression", when they realised the potential for true democracy and genuine social liberty rather then the pathetic controlled sham and manufactured propaganda (lies) which is foisted on them by so many vested interests?

To be sure someone at KBR has a sense of humour! The website mentions "HOT jobs" - no kidding, given the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of Depleted Uranium that the good ol' boys have been turning into microscopic dust over Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years. If you breathe in enough of it, you will have a "HOT" time for sure - followed by bleeding from every orifice and a slow, painful death with myriad horrible symptoms which is completely unstoppable. That aside from the scary-looking drinking water and dubious hospitality amongst locals. Is not your health your most precious asset?

It is very good news if prices fall especially in London, which is a chronically expensive location to live as it is. Last time I went on the tube it cost me FOUR QUID to go a couple of miles?! (When I lived in London it was half that). 1) Ordinary people with ordinary incomes will be able to afford to buy their own home. This is VERY VERY good news and not to be under-estimated. 2) Less "stamp land duty" (mobility tax) for the government which hopefully means less scope for bloated, self-approbating wasteful rubbish and nonsensical tax-and-spend schemes being touted by tragic and ineffectual Westminster windbags. 3) Estate agents will make less easy money on the back of speculation. 4) Banks will make less easy money on the back of speculation. 5) People who are moving "up the ladder" (family expansion etc) will be able to do so more easily. 6) If everything goes down relatively, people "downscaling" likewise will not be punished because what they move to will have gone down as well. If anyone can see any downside in ANY of the above points they are either a politician, a banker, estate agent or plain daft. The only people who will be shafted are those who sink into massive negative equity or those who have over-stretched to buy to let and then have problems with rising interest rates. I suggest that in general these people represent a minority and if you play at investment then like gambling you should only be using money you can afford to lose.

I have to point out that as a reader of Money Week for some years, they have been playing the doom card on UK property for as long as I can remember (Merryn Somerset Webb writes the lead page of the publication and has been honking on about the "crash" or demise of UK property since around 2004). Point is, if you rush out every day for 4 years saying there is going to be a thunderstorm/flood/whatever EVENTUALLY one day you will be right. Money Week have been calling the crash for the last 3-4 years, so eventually they had to be proved right at some point. I am not disputing the (current) crash as a real event however just want to point out the above for the sake of balance and clarity. Also it must be remembered that if someone is renting, and the interest on a mortgage is less or the same as the rent, they would be foolish NOT to buy (in my opinion) as everyone needs somewhere to live, and however you structure it, it will cost something so may as well be tied to ownership and control of one's own destiny even if that might mean negative equity at some points in the market cycle. James Ferguson who also writes in Money Week had an article published around 05 or 06 which basically stated that the market would keep rising through to 07, and then collapse in 08. I think he is the man to watch for tips, as he seemed to call the top in advance. I would not pay too much attention to Somerset-Webb or Bill Bonner or many of the other Money Week pundits, as they are uniformly negative and gloom-laden, and although it's a good publication, it's not necessarily the holy grail they crack it up to be.

Hopefully this will be the start of the crash. Personally I can't wait. The property boom has been divisive and has created a lot of superficiality which is distasteful. Difficult though to know how far things will fall and where. I remember in the late 1980s houses in the road of my parents (I lived at home then, a teenager) were going for around £130-150K+ at the peak. In 1991-92 the elderly couple next door passed on and their house was up for £78K - I don't think it made that much, so things went in half pretty much and that was an average suburban fairly unremarkable area of SE London. The house opposite had been occupied by an elderly man who passed on and it went for less than £30K albeit a dilapidated state. Cowboy builders "did it up" and flogged it for around £85K in the mid-90s. Last year some mug paid around £300 for it. Remember decent Docklands flats were £300K+ in 1988 however I remember seeing nice 2-bed wapping apartments for £80-90K in the early 90s. I remember seeing warehouses in Shoreditch - I looked at one in Middlesex St in 1994/95 which was offers around £140K for 1400 sq ft - now they're more like 400 per sq ft so things are sure to tumble back. So a lot has a long way to go, hopefully this will be the case, if they stop putting these stupid artificial fixes in place which just confuse things and prolong the agony. I guess the bottom line will always be rentals: if you take the rental value and say that's a 4-5% yield, gross it up and that's maybe a realistic price. Last time though remember things fell well BELOW this value - I recall seeing properties which were achieving £950pcm rent but only "worth" £75K and in good London locations! When variable base rate was around 7%. So with any luck there will be a lovely crash, high-ish interest rates, and pick of the crop for FTBs and current renters who can't afford. Hurray for imploding banks and Boo to the Government for bailing out the idiots. P.S. If we behave like total idiots and spunk our money on worthless reversible trouser bonds or African letter scams does the BoE bail us out? I think not. So bring on the noise and let the house of cards collapse because the ultimate winners will be the MAJORITY of ordinary working people - there will be some losers for sure, but they'll always pick themselves back up, and besides, even if they do lose everything on paper, chances are they'll most likely still have a job (or be able to get a job) and then be able to afford a house again anyway once things bottom out. After all we all need somewhere to live and the quality of life is what matters once you have a roof over your head. I would encourage everyone to put a "run" on their bank just for the hell of it and to remind them that they are there to serve us, not the other way round.

The problem is the bizarre knee-jerk reaction when things swing the other way. Some years ago around 1992-93, I really wanted to buy an apartment - I was looking at a 5-bed top-floor flat in Forest Hill a short walk from mainline BR about 1200sq ft for £72K. I was looking at 2-bed brick-wall warehouse conversions 1100 sq ft in Southwark behind London Bridge for £85K (price now - maybe £550K+). I had well over 20% of the property value saved in deposit in the NatWest but NOBODY would give me a loan. Why? Well Sir despite impeccable credit rating you're only 23 and you have not had a mortgage or a loan before. WTF? I simply could not see their logic. Short memories maybe. So what do we see over the last 15 years? Exact same as happened in the 1980s. Crazy reckless lending to idiots by idiots CAUSES a credit and property boom-bubble, however the recovery will be SLOW and painfully drawn out because of the short-termist stupidity of the banks who then run scared and refuse to lend money to anyone for anything. No idea where this will end, probably be a rerun of the 1989-1994 boom-crash, but then as I tend to think, on the whole these corrections are a very good thing - let's see a return to normal 2 and 3-bed houses and flats for £55-85K that normal people on normal incomes can actually buy with a normal mortgage and just live in them rather than this ridiculous monopoly game that's been going on for the last 5-10 years. And as for the BTLers going bust, I would say - that's investment like any other. Hand over the keys, walk away, and do something else. As for the tenants, simply move or play Dutch auctions with desperate landlords or wait for the crash and then buy a house. If the banks get shafted and go under that's their problem - we should not be bailing them out. Fewer banks is probably healthier for us all anyway. They're opportunist businesses like any other. If (say) Vodafone made such cack decisions with their business model and went bust as a result, then the BoE wouldn't be expected to bail them out, so why the banks?