ItsColdUpHere

You can buy a coat of many colours with the money you save...

Consett, County Durham

Yep. Ordinary job up north is better than 60k job in london for house buying.

The estate with the 186k house didnt exist in 1999. That was a "peak price" estate which sold from 2004 to 2006. But I pulled out because of the low (and revised) valuation placed on my house, and the woman sold it straight away, so im guessing that was the real price. A friend of mine also bought on that estate. He's upset that he's lost 40k. I think a mere 40k loss is wishful thinking. The poshest "oak" houses went for 250k. Mahooosive house on a tiny plot. 5 bedrooms, 2 receptions, double garage instead of a bavk garden. One recently sold as a repo for 175k....

Asking prices for 4 bedders where i live (town in north county dyrham) have come down significantly over the last year. From this thread this would seem to be the exception....

The value judgement is just my opinion. It doesnt really matter. But if you are waiting for houses to return to 1999 nominal values (which were in turn about the same as 1990) in the North East, you may be waiting a while...

North durham. Consett actually. Get a look on rightmove. There are come cheap ones and some where people still think its 2007...

With interest rates lower and wages higher I reckon 120k-130k would be about right for a house that was already reasonable value at 90k in 1999. Quiet estate, large garden and parking for 3 cars. But the cheaper the better for me - my kids will get the money they would get from the house anyway in 30 years time but NOW, in the form of lower house prices.

A house I almost bought at the same time (for 186k) has just sold for 120k. Ouch. It was a townhouse - the wife wanted it but I got cold feet - it just felt to expensive., and the deveoper "changed his mind" over how much he'd part-ex our house for. Lucky escape.

A house exactly the same as mine (wimpy clone estate) has just sold for 145k - 4 bedroom detatched. I paid 165k as a repo in 2005, a clone of my house sold for 180k on the open market in the same month. I make that 20% off peak market price. These houses were 90k at there cheapest when the first ones were built in 1999. Sanity has almost returned in my part of the North East, I may one day be able to get rid of my really expensive (currently teenage) daughters at this rate :-)

Me and my brother got a standy-up grundig tape-radio between us for christmas in 1980ish. It cost my mam £40 - the equivalent of £140 now!! Her first video was a grundig V2000 (we always knew how to pick losers), a snip at 500 quid or 1750 in todays money. In hindsight I think my mother must have been on the game...

You do raise a very good point. Those shop floor workers were basically competing with 3rd world workers and had no protection with the death of the unions. Government workers on the other hand were New Labours main clients, competed with noone and got well above average wage rises for most of Labours time in office. The question for this thread is whether the one thing balanced out the other. With the governments share at 65% of GDP in the North East (a similar share to most mid 80's communist countries) I'd guess yes.

The bread and butter has changed. An average wage is an average wage, no matter how its earned. Thats the only direct comparison that is needed. I was one of those shop floor workers on a decent wage, i became an office worker on a ludicrously good wage. I am atypical of course, which is why we need hard data.

Ive found some data. See www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn89.org The north east hasn't done bad since 1996 apparently, im looking now for 1990 to 1996.

I find that hard to believe. In some sectors, yes, but remember that the north east has the largest percentage of GDP dependent on government largesse of any mainland area, so with the increase of public sector wages and wealth transfers (tax credits), i'd be stunned if household incomes haven't held up well.

I dont Know. But the 1.3 increase in price to earnings ratio talies with the nationwide figure for the north. House prices where i am simply arent as mad as down south.

Www.measuringworth.com, national.

North/South divide again. My mams house was 6k in 1973 when she moved in. 3 bed semi with a garage and a massive cellar. Wages have gone up 15 fold. So the house should be worth 90k. It would actually go for about 110-120k. So more but not outrageously more. The only reason we could afford it then was my dad dying. Even then we ended up out in the sticks because my mam couldnt afford to buy in Newcastle because of mental house price rises. Histlry doesn't repeat itself but it does rhymn.

Inflation adjusted I take home 60% of what I did 10 years ago (rate cut plus inflation) But i was married to a spendthrift wife then and spending approx 5k a month. Because she wasted so much money it became almost a spending competition - i might as well waste it as she would anyway. Now i earn much less but save much more, all down to now having a good wife. RPI means nothing to me. Its a funny old world...

Anyway, ive got to go to work now to pay for at least 4 friends and neighbours that i can think of off the top of my head who are "on the sick" with nothing wrong with them. They are the problem here, not you and certainly not me. All with bad backs or stress, one manages both.

Ah, "disabled bashing", the disabled version of "thats racist". As soon as you start to question anything about disability benefits someone always pops up with that. 1. Is by observation , I know far more lazy gits who get disability than reall disabled people. admittedly a small sample size. Nobody really knows the true proportions, but political correctness normally stops this sort of discussion in its tracks. as you just tried to do. Do you have any counter facts or just the chip on your shoulder. O 2. Sickness benefits are higher than none sickness benefits. "disabled" people get more tax credits than healthy people, so given tbe same umemployment or employment conditions, a "disabled" person will get more money than a healthy person. Personally I don't see why a sick/disabled person should get more money than a healthy person except where they have a higher cost of living because of their disability. If you got rid of the monetary advantage for being on the sick, the fake claims would just vanish overnight, leaving real claiments like you. you should be more annoyed at the lead swingers than me, for they are stealing resources that could be better spent on real disability. 3. I'll get back to you. I've seen statistics on this, and i'll track them down. You should try the same instead of using your disability as a reason to stifle debate. And for the record, I have no problem with genuine disabled people getting benefits. But i do think there is a massive problem with people faking illness, which you obviously dont.

There will be some hard cases - any complex system with humans acting as judges will give variable results. But for every hard case I'd wager there is at least one sponger - the government made this inevitable by giving someone with a "bad back" on the various sickness benefits more money than a healthy person. Only a fool would think that nobody games the system. To me the big giveaway is that the majority of people on sickness benefits either have back trouble or stress, two things that basically cant be disproven. Anecdotely it does seem to be getting harder to get sickness benefits (as it should be) but unfortunately this will inevitably increase the number of "hard cases". As for feeling invisible, most of us live boring invisible lives, we just dont whinge about it. For the record, I'd hate to live on single persons dole as well.

Nobody has ever stated that £71 a week is easy to live on. As I've posted before, the entire benefit system has been twisted by Labours promise to "take children out of poverty". This is why single people or childless couples get meagre benefits but a family with 3 kids and a few hours work gets money chucked at them. The first child alone is worth about £80 a week in tax credits and child benefit, more than a single adult gets on the dole. My wifes friend had a child with mild learning difficulties who was in the 6th form (doing some none course) so his total was nearly £150 A WEEK before they canned EMA. See my "60k job in london = minimum wage job oop north thread", and tell me where my numbers are wrong instead of invoking "daily-mailness", the HPC equivalent of "thats racist".

In fact, the 60k earner/renter "loses" about 43k of his extra 47k pre-tax money relative to the minimum wage earner/renter up north, to end up only a bit better off. Of this, approximately 33k is through the tax and benefits system and only 10k to extra rent. So the tax/tax credit/student loan/child benefit factor is over 3 times the house price factor. High house prices arent the only problem in this country...

Obviously. As will people who inherited wealth, won the pools, have parents who bought them a house, deal drugs on the side etc. The whole point of my post was about house prices in combination with taxes and tax credits stealing/redistributing wealth, which kind of implied buying with modern high house prices. I didnt realise I had to be that specific - i meant a someone on 60k buying or renting now in london.