cartimandua51

I'm not so sure. If you flog through the entire thread you'll see that very few of them HAVE to sell - they WANT to sell because they've got 2 kids and only two bedrooms (this would have been the height of luxury for most of history!) or they have an inconveniently long commute, but they don't HAVE to. And as long as they don't have to, there will be a point where they decide to manage with what they've got. The kids can share until they're 10 if different sexes, forever if same. Even if you do have to give them separate room, until they are mid-teens they are going to be going to bed earlier than their parents - how about investing £2000 in a really super-duper top of the range sofa bed & Mum & Dad sleep in the living room? not ideal, but a damn sight cheaper. Ditto the garden - a big, well-appointed garden shed with an electricity supply takes the pressure off the house at a fraction of the cost of moving. And so on ... unless you can't pay the mortgage and are being evicted (just isn't happening at present) or have to bolt because of domestic violence, say, the market is going to coninue being sticky. The only thing that would really get things moving is foreclosures, such as have happened in the U.S.

Not quite as simple as that - the 600 years covered some massive swings. Elizabethan England may have been a better place for the poor to live ( give or take a bit of religious persecution!) than early Victorian England - consider the appalling slums of the industrial revolution. The bouts of starvation caused by the Corn Laws in the early part of the 19th century hit the working people while benefitting the landowners.....

When they were giving out LIAR LOANS (sorry, Eric) of 100%+ I don't thinlk BOM&D were needed for deposits until after 2007.... True, subsidies were going out to kids, but a lot of that was due to tuition fees, graduate unemployment etc. Hardly a new phenomenon - "money can't buy you love, but it sure keeps you in touch with your children" - J Paul Getty

The cultural thing is important in another way. As a classic early boomer (1948) I am starting to consider this. I had my 3 kids late, so they haven't settled enough for property purchase to be appropriate. My major worry is the skanky son-in-law problem; I'm not passing over money to my daughter only for her partner to dump her for a younger model 10 years later & use cash originating from me to set up a second family. I imagine people with sons have even more worries about the skanky daughter-in-law scenario, given the tendency of women to stick to the family home. The Greek / Chinese model is posited on much firmer marriage relationships than exist here, where anything up to half of marriages / cohabitations break down. There aren't even any enforceable pre-nups such as exist in the US and some of Europe. This makes long-term planning difficult. The only way I can see round it is to wait until there are grandchildren then skip a generation, which at least keeps it out of the hands of the skanky spouse.

Like the 150 yd beech (sic) & WTF - "Sinks has been designed..." is the house really called Sinks or is this a weird typo?

What's happened to the AA?? I posted elswhere about their rip-off breakdown insurance renewal. Have the RAC deteriorated to the same extent?

AFAIK this area of Boscombe is OK (if you don't mind the happy daytrippers) & you'd expect a fairly high turnover in a block like that. The two things which i would look carefully at - Service & maintenance charges may be horrendous and completely out of your control - parking issues

Too right. Last year's insurance on the Grannymobile (1999 Nissan Micra 1L Auto) £600 for self & 23 year old Learner daughter as named driver; 11 years NCB, cheap rural area. Last week renewal notice came through from AA: £5,740 I damn nearly didn't notice, too: misread it as £574 Rang up; was told if it had been for me alone it would have been about £120! Gocompare produced figures around the £500 mark. Go figure.

If nothing else, the typist at C& W estatate agents should be sent back to school - "spaeks" is probably (?) a typo, but "sort after"???

Not much changes - I grew up in Nottingham, and fights outside Yates' wine lodge on Slab Square were the norm on Friday/ Saturday nights. Then went to Bristol uni & found it rather genteel by comparison ( though Kingswood was a bit rough - I gather back in the 18th century the militia went in pairs, though it didn't stop John Wesley making a stronghold there.) Thence to Manchester which I loathed, and Leicester - nasty parochial smug little city in the 1970s - and finally Inner City London until retirement. What all these had in common (with the possible exception of Bristol) was a difference according to whether you "belonged" to the area. I never had any worries round the Elephant and Castle, though a lot of my out-of-area friends were terrified of it after dark. In Nottingham some bits of Arnold were always dodgy - if you were a teenager stopped by the police an address on Front Street was always convincing as where a troublemaker would be likely to come from. What Nottingham shares with London is the cheek-by-jowl wealth and poverty - The Park being but a stone's throw from Radford, for example, or Mapperley Park from Forest fields.

I have an (admittedly hazy) memory from the 60s, when automation first started to get going, that there was a lot of earnest discussion from academics, pundits, Guardianistas etc about how, in the Brave New World everyone would only have to work about 20 hours a week. Much discussion about how they were going to fill their time, with a naive assumption that Culture (i.e. Art, museums, music, theatre etc) would have a major resurgence along with lots of happy community activities. I think it was the management guru Charles Handy who much more accurately predicted that half the people would be paid twice as much for working three times as hard (I forget the precise ratio) and the rest would be left on the scrapheap.

This right of offset has been law for donkey's years! NWide are presumably just clarifying it as a lot of people don't know about it (including a lot of normally very clued up HPCers!) Used to be one of the first things I taught my accounting students - if you graduate with an overdraft on a student bank account , get your new job's wages (those were the days) paid into a different bank, making sure they weren't all part of the same group.

The clue is here: The property is in need of complete internal refurbishment and an extension to the lease. Ideal investment opportunity. Mind you, it looks nicer on the outside.

You can do it on 4-bed+ student lets, but you're also taking on a whole load of grief - not for the hands-off absentee landlord. letting through the Uni is just an (expensive) alternative form of grief as they are obsessive about pernickity detail and take a massive rake-off.

My understanding is that the banks were leaned on heavily by the Gov't which wanted to do away with cash benefit payments, but unable to do so as most of its "clients" weren't exactly attractive to the banks. So the compromise was a VERY basic - and free- banking service to be used mainly for paying benefits in and taking money out, with the odd DD probably to social housing for rent. So why should the the banks be interested? They didn't want the customers in the first place and make no money out of them. No-one loves a banker, but they were never set up to be a social service!

I'd hold off on the sofa until you're convinced the dog won't eat it!!

I would only EVER rent a flat. Too many hassles - it's one area where short tenancies work in your favour: just give in your notice & it's the landlord's problem.

A sort of internal porch where you discard and clean muddy wellies, field jackets etc ? Very useful in any seriously rural area.

Same goes for the Church - you live in the Rectory / Vicarage (no, NOT the lovely Georgian / Victorian one - that's occupied by Simon & Samantha from London - yours is a 60's 70s council estate lookalike) and you are expected to move out tof the area on retirement so as not to get under the new incumbent's feet. Given that clergy salaries and pensions are not particularly generous unless you are pretty high up in the hierarchy, a lot of clergyman have tried hard to make sure they maintain a BTL. My F-I-L is about to retire and is having to throw himself on the mercy of the council's waiting lists - though in fairness, at 94 (!) they probably won't make him wait too long!

What as?? They can't ALL be hairdressers! Er, these would be the people who grew up in the 20s, lived through the Depression of the 30s & probably fought in WW2? Not what I would call a lucky strike.

The BIS seem to think so : Paul Davenport says: If i am in a position to pay for my daughters tuition fee in full and up front, and directly to her University, will I be able to do so without penalty? BIS says: Paul, thanks for your question. Individuals who pay for their tuition up front will not incur any charges over and above the published fees. http://discuss.bis.gov.uk/hereform/early-repayment/ about halfway down the comments at the bottom Of course, things could change, but charging people notional interest for loans they haven't actually taken out would, I think, be a legal minefield; and the sort of parents who could pay upfront are quite likely to have sharp-toothed lawyers and the ability to band together to fight test cases....

Currently in consultation phase: Higher Education - Consultation on potential early repayment mechanisms for student loans Open date: 28 Jun 2011 Closing date: 20 Sep 2011 We are consulting on potential early repayment mechanisms for student loans – similar to those paid by people who pre-pay their mortgages. We are committed to the progressive nature of the repayment mechanism. It is therefore important that those on the highest incomes after graduation are not able unfairly to buy themselves out of this progressive mechanism by paying off their loans early. That is why we are consulting on potential early repayment mechanisms – similar to those paid by people who pre-pay their mortgages. Further information can be found on the Higher Education Reform website. We seek your input on the following three questions. Should BIS introduce a more progressive mechanism for early repayment of student loans? If BIS should introduce a more progressive mechanism, which model best delivers BIS’ stated aims of ensuring the progressiveness and sustainability of the student finance system? How would a more progressive early repayment mechanism affect you or your organisation’s perception of and relationship with the student finance system? http://www.bis.gov.uk/Consultations/potential-early-repayment-mechanisms-for-student-loans

Amen to that. For years I was a Course Director of a part-time evening degree, and the difference in dedication between these students and the bog-standard undergraduate was stunning. The number of times I heard "If I'd known then what i know now, I'd have done more work at school"..... Some people just need longer to grow up and decide what they want to do with their lives. But for many, they no longer fit into the approved age slots dictated by the system for eg apprenticeships.

Usually that means after taking "lost " earnings into account. IIRC you were always lucky if you made an overall "profit" on doing a Masters degree, and almost never made the money back from a PhD. However, if you want a University post you just had to grit your teeth and get it.

I have the vague idea that the Gov't have / are introducing a clause whereby you have to pay what is effectively a substantial early repayment charge if you (or more likely, BOM&D) pay the loan off pronto, or even if you don't take one out at all. Anybody got details? Can't be faffed to plough through the Gov't websites!