fluffy666
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Posts posted by fluffy666
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water bills up 10%
But last week it was a triumph that they were going to reduce the amount paid for smaller properties. Give with one hand and take with the other.I'm so glad the water industry was privatised and my local company could be bought up by Enron. How else could I be priviliged to see my bills shoot up in a period of above average rainfall..
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3: Higher wages for all = Britain becomes uneconomical to do business with = noone buys anything from Britain = Britain goes out of business = everyone unemployed = noone can afford to pay their mortgage = HPC.
If coupled with a big fall in the pound (I.e. one pound = 0.8 Euros, 1.2 dollars or less), then we could have serious wage hikes here without trashing competitiveness. The trade balance may get restored as well. House prices can fall 40% in real terms without wiping everyone out. Pensioners on fixed incomes will freeze in the dark or starve in the gutter, of course...
Living standards - especially in terms of imported goods - will drop, but that's going to have to happen anyway...
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Gordon Brown has broken his much fabled fiscal rules, and also revealed the Bank of England is not independent at all which is why we had a cut in interest rates when inflation is running away.
Its so predictable, and for those of you who are too young to remember every other previous Labour Government it works like this.
At first they spend all your money, then they borrow some more, and some more, and some more, and some more, finally they bankrupt the entire nation, and we go to the International Monetary fund to get emergency funding.
New Labour are not fit to run a Bath, how on earth the Sun and Guardian Readers voted them in for another term escapes me other than it points to a lowering of intelligence on both counts of the nations populus.
Yes, given the perfect economic record of the previous conservative government.. they wouldn't preside over a houce price bubble, 20% inflation, 3 million unemployed, or the running down of the railways. Plus, of course, at the last election they supported the war in Iraq and ID cards.. that's why Labour got voted back in.
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I'm not convinced this is true.
I'd guess that most people who BTL'd houses would be perfectly happy with having a keen gardener as a tennant. Shows that the tennant might stay for a while, and takes care of the job of looking after the gardens. And they can pay rent in vegtables after the hyperinflationary holocaust.
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There is also a scheme where if your employer signs up for the childcare voucher scheme then you can get £858 a year tax relief as a basic rate payer, more if you're a higher rate payer.
Would be even nicer if they extended it to the full cost of childcare... but I suppose working parents are lower down the rung than BTL investors. Something to hope for in the next budget.
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Had my first enquiry today regarding mortgage resetting
Couple took a fixed rate of 4.3% 2 years ago and borrowed max they could of £110,000.
In the meantime they have had a kid and the mother is back to work full time now. They have also built up a small credit card debt.
The best deal I can get for them is an extra £110 per month and they were struggling to pay the existing mortgage and debts.
I feel sorry for them - one of many I guess
I'm glad I got fixed for 5 years a couple of years ago.. only really did it because the fees involved were so high it didn't seem worth it for 2 years. Are they on IO?
Childcare is incredibly expensive, especially for under-2s. At least if they survive a while they might get some cash from that..
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Talk about Communism, didn't the seizing of Northern Rock yesterday from its owners (shareholders) smell a little of Communism. Don't worry comrades, back to work now.
How much would the shareholders have got without state support?
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On second thoughts, I think I'll save my sympathy for my young colleagues who have bought places to actually live in themselves in the last few years, as all the advice from me and maybe one or two others didnt outweigh the MASSIVE PRESSURE FROM GOVT, MEDIA, LENDERS, etc to 'buy while they still could.' Again, coulda been me but wasn't, I guess, but these people seem more deserving of any sympathy that may be available.
You mean, those of us with young families and a serious need of space. Biological clocks don't convieniently wait for house prices to return to trend.
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Spot on....i was hoping someone on here was so sober enough to calculate that !!!
Not much of a drop before a geared investment becomes a geared liability...still...massive long term gain...if you can service the debt. Just takes one default renter to bring down the house of cards though...sleep well BTL rich boys.
IF BTL amateurs had been forced to take out repayment loans, then at least those who held on for a few years would find their LTV improving. And if they were really in it for the long term, then after 25 years they would own the properties and be able to retire on the income. That's the whole POINT of BTL as an investment, IMO.
With IO.. even after 10 years you could still be in negative equity.
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Nah, the bank was convinced by the application form, all Senior nurses earn £300K with a little overtime dontchaknow
Ah - like this:
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"Nurse Sarah Adams was living in Devon at the time she bought four houses – three in Burley, Leeds and one in Nottingham – from Morris Properties in January 2006 for £1,050,000"
A Nurse "buys".......for £1,050,000????
A Nurse?
Hello!
In hindsight, perhaps spending a million quid of borrowed money on things that you hadn't even seen was not the greatest of financial decisions. But who could have known?
On the other hand, the banks were happy enough to lend the money..
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People in general are thick as F*ck and uneducated, the person with the strongest reality, who puts themselves forward as a "leader", will be followed until they turn out to be a w*nker who can`t be trusted, then the people will turn against them. It seems to be human nature.
Well, the thing is that we evolved in a society where you might interact with perhaps 100 people over your life, with very occasional times when you saw more than that. But basically, if someone sold you an axe head and it turned out useless, you'd know exactly who it was and turn up at his hut with a big stick. Essentially, in small groups it's harder to be a rip-off merchant. Plus most things were simple enough to understand. In this case you can usually trust people you know (and distrust strangers entirely).
Nowadays, we live in a vast and complex society; you have to trust people you don't know well - Tradesmen, Financial Planners, Doctors, whoever, and you can't be expected to know all the details of plumbing, car maintanance, investment, medicine, whatever - it's just not possible. Our society requires that people are specialised in some areas and stupid in others. This is why you do sometimes need regulation to stop people getting ripped off en masse.. it's either that or go back to living in caves.
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From today's Daily Mail:
Quote from the coments:
"We tried to get a mortgage last spring, we were turned down by Northern Rock, even though we pay 800 a month private rent, and both earn around 20k a year. Second attempt they said 20% deposit. We haven't got 40k! NOW, I wouldn't buy a house if they gave me the 100% mortgage with a five year fixed rate. We're off to France."
Ummm..
£200k house. 40k income. 100% Mortgage (repayment) around half take home pay.
So this guy must be complaining about Northern Rock not giving him a 5x income 100% LTV IO mortgage. And you wonder why property prices remain high..
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"Flat 1 is now worth £90K, loss is £20K (money you dont have)
Flat 2 is now worth £90K, loss is £20K (more money you dont have)
Flat 3 is now worth £90K, loss is £20K (even more money you dont have)
Flat 4 is now worth £90K, loss is £20K ( still feeling clever ? )
Total loss over and above the original investment: £80K, thats 800% loss.
Not so clever now, still your empire is still worth £360K, if you can afford to keep it going. You're technically bankrupt."
This bit isn`t mentioned in the letter I got from Inside Track a couple of days ago.
Yes iit is - page 6, 0.001 point font (use a microscope), very light grey on white background. Can't say you were not warned..
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Interesting info. Just opened the local rag and discovered where I am now renting that half of the area, Sketty, has just been designated a European deprived zone! I imagine loads of locals are going to gulp their crumpets and tea when they read that. I mean, Sketty is one of the poshest and most expensive parts of Swansea but... also has some grotty chav tower blocks that they used to put the 'nice' people in to but of late, so I am told, they have increasingly been putting in single 20-somethings.
Having rented a nice house here for several months now I would not buy as, yes, the place is looking run-down and increasingly full of chavs. It seems that is a chavification going on in the whole of Swansea with the chavs moving further West by the month. They seem to move into one nice area, wreck it, bring it down and then move on to the next. You even begin to think that there is some kind of coordinated plan by higher powers for them to do so.
Have to say Killay, Sketty, Derwen Fawr, Hendrefoilan and Upper Killay have now joined my list of Brynmill and the Uplands as places I would never buy in in Swansea West.
Bugger.. my in-laws have a big house in Sketty.
Interesting thing is that when we first bought (2000), house prices in and around Bath seemed high, and Swansea looked very cheap. By 2004-5, there was little apparent difference. I honestly think it's going to be places like Swansea and other places that have little economic base but have been pumped up by the bubble that are going to get hit worst. At least London has the jobs.
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Agent says ...
"A fantastic sought-after duplex apartment set within Meridian Quay's 'Tower' which is set to be Wales' tallest residential building."
What do they mean 'sought after'? Has it run away and people are looking for it. Is it hiding?
The picture shows a finished building. How can it be 'set' to be Wales' tallest building? Surely it either is or it isn't.
And the words 'stunning views' and 'Swansea' are mutually exclusive. Just because you are up in the air it does not mean the view is, by definition, stunning. Although, then again, most UK cityscapes are stunning, stunningly ugly.
If you had a REALLY high tower you couldn't see the city at all..
I think the idea is that you buy it off plan - the advert being aimed at people who don't live in Swansea and have never been there, but who think there are just loads of Professional Couples who wouldn't think twice about paying the £2500 a month rent required to cover a cheap IO mortgage on this place..
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Hmm.. so this one may have few buyers:
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-992...=1&tr_t=buy
(£575k for a 3 bed dual level apartment. Quite good value for central London.)
And this hasn't shifted recently:
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-189...=1&tr_t=buy
I think Wales my be going down a bit..
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And how many of those were people who would have been repossessed, if they hadn't sold to rent back?
This is the issue at this stage - people in trouble must just be selling up (83,000 net!?) because most will have some equity and are better off selling up any paying debts off then just waiting to go under. Once house prices start falling and this option goes, expect Reposession to hit the roof..
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that was my answer, but he said, no, people with houses have growing families, move for job changes and divorce, so they will always need to find a bigger place, a place somewhere else and turn one household into two.
He went on to say they ARE building loads of one and two bed flats, but there will still be a shortage of 3 bed and 4 bed houses.
Is he right?
City center flats will see bigger falls, but there again from the Birmingham and Glasgow threads recently, this is because they are about 4-5x overvalued and no sane person will want to buy them even then.
3/4 beds are still quite overvalued, probably around 40-50% where I live. But generally still moveable at some price.
2 bed houses will be interesting - these are the prime battleground between BTL and FTB, and have been pumped up accordingly.
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Perhaps their solution is for rampant HPI, so that people can MEW to pay their mortgage.
As long as house prices go up 10% a year [and interest rates are 5%], no one ever has to pay a mortgage.. Which means you can live in whatever house you want, regardless of income. And no one in the whole country needs to go to work.
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There are two bids on the table for Northern Rock - yet we have had no announcement about which bid has been accepted. Does anyone have any idea what is going on? Is it going to be nationalised after all? Why is it taking so long? What would be the impact if it did get nationalised?
It takes time and effort to come up with the kind of contract whereby taxpayers funnel vast amounts of cash to the winning bidder in a sufficiently convoluted manner so as to confuse voters.
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The modellers (in general) are required by their discipline to work from stated assumption. If the stated assumption is wrong, or if factors other than those assumed (and stated and ultimately modelled) impact outcomes, you're left with logical pleasantries that are as accurate as Michael Fish's hurricane warnings.
To put it into a more directly applicable context - if a risk modeller were not specifically instructed to assume that fraud would become geometrically more prevelant as a function of monetary easing, they would have created assumptions based on historical fraud incidence (during more benign conditions), and then stated this, bounded within some tolerance. An engineer would have then tried to stress test these assumptions and been thwarted in this goal by the lack of any data from similar systems, at the point of failure.
The lack of any actual Engineering in all this "engineering" is what the problem is. An engineer would have looked down the barrel of what they were being asked to model and said "this is a crock - you're asking me to throw darts, blindfold, at a spinning dartboard" - then walked right out and left them to it.
Yes - I have a feeling that the kind of people doing this work were not the kind of standard engineers, where paranoia and self doubt (What have I got wrong?) are good working practice. People like that would not have been making the big bucks - no manager is going to like hearing that they should do less business and make less profit to avoid possible problems..
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perhaps these financial 'engineers' are re-skilled ex-British Leyland engineers
Ahh.. THAT's why all the CDOs issued on friday afternoons turned out s**t, and none of them will yield anything on a cold morning?
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Yes, because their populations don't respect property rights and large sections of them are vying to be the government do they can then freeload off everyone else for eternity. Western nations have had things like the enlightenment and so on, other nations have not. It's mainloy a difference in philosophy. Taxes are only collected because people are threatened. If no threats, no one would pay. That means that no one wants what taxes buy.
No, that is just silly. There is no way to have a society without collective action - try it and you'll soon find youself paying protection money to whichever gang of thugs owns your neighborhood. Or contributing towards the neighbourhood defense organisation - which is not going to have much time for freeloaders. Unless you live alone on a desert island, you ARE going to be compelled to contribute towards society. Whining about it does no good.
It is however clear that the majority of people do in fact want things like collective defense, so to say that no one wants what taxes buy is false. The correct statement is that many people want what taxes buy but don't want to contribute towards them. People are greedy, amazing but true. Sheesh - by your argument, no one wants to buy anything in shops, because only the threat of force makes them pay at the checkout..
The US doesn't have a private healthcare system btw, what with it's licences, FDA, medicare, state sponsored insurance etc etcYes, no fully private system in healthcare can last long because the outcomes are so bad as to be politically impossible.
I Have To Stop Reading Moneysavingexpert Forums
in House prices and the economy
Posted
There is also SMA (Statutory Maternity Allowance) - £112 per week for 39 weeks, basically if you have worked for 3 months within the 12 months leading up to the birth. I'd guess that tax credits would also help, and chuld benefit.