he who dares

Not posted for a long time but i just had to respond to this thread. I am unlucky enough to live in oldump and i can confirm that prices have not risen at all in the last 2 years but by the same measure they have not really fallen either, it pretty much is a stagnant market. The only place where ASKING prices have gone up are the saddleworth area (probably the only decentish part of oldham) but prices there have been absolutley crackers for the last 5/6 years now (200k 2/3 bed semi!!!!)The thing is that i check the prices on a weekly basis in that area and the same properties sit week in week out and prices slowly come down but houses there are soooo overpriced that 10/20k is just a drop in the ocean. Also because of ludicrous hpi the villages in saddleworth are becoming devoid of families with young children and they are suffering a a result, local primary schools are struggling like mad for intake and class sizes are getting smaller and smaller. There has also been a massive amount of "apartments" built recently by the hated housebuilder wiggets who will chuck up a block of flats in someones back garden, many locals complain wiggets are ruining the character of the villages with his fake stone 2 bed shoe boxes. I can also confirm that the town is an absolute sh1thole it basically sums up how different racial groups cannot live together and coexist peacefully, there is a general atmosphere of unease in the town between the asians and whites and recently there seems to have been a massive influx of eastern europeans who don't seem to work they simply sit on their **** all day in the town center leering at the local women. Most people give the town center a wide berth with regards to shopping as no one feels comfortable there anymore and most go to manchester/huddersfield. The same goes for a night out no one with any sense will go for a drink in the town on a weekend as they know they will probaly end up in casualty at the end of the night (apparantley yorkshire street has the highest incident of assaults in the uk) The local council services are shocking and the council tax rises are outrageous for the level of service that is provided. I also cannot understand why house prices are higher here than in other local regions as rochdale/bury/ashton are quite a bit cheaper and local wages are basically sh1te, so how do people afford these prices? I am absolutley gutted that after living away from thowdam for the last ten years that the wife convinced me to return last year, it has been a year of hell as the place has gone down the pan dramatically in the last few years. When hpc truly hits oldham will be absolutley slaughtered I ADVISE ANYONE: DO NOT BUY A HOUSE HERE WHATEVER YOU DO. YOU WILL REGRET IT.

Thanks everyone for your responses/views. I know that aus has it's problems too and the grass always appears greener but i simply feel as trevor werewolf posted that i am merely existing in the uk and not actually living. The future appears to consist of rainy, grey 10/12 hour days and the evenings consisting of a diet of crap reality tv followed by a 30 minute dose of depression called eastenders (if it wasn't for the daft gangster storylines i think it gives an accurate portrayal of modern uk "life" everyone seems to be p1ssed off) and no amount of sh1t that the tv tries to coerce you to buy makes you any happier. I just fancy a nice bit of weather, the odd barbie and a beer on the veranda of an evening. But yes i could do with a long holiday in aus first it's just a bit tricky with 2 kids at school (i keep saying to the wife i will go for 3 months on my own to test the water but she seems strangely reluctant!!) Munimula. I live in Oldham, it ALWAYS RAINS HERE!

Set your pension fund up to mature in 2008/9 after the crash!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

mercsl Have been looking at adelaide, off to live in the burbs. Don't fancy city living don't like any cities in the uk i have always liked being out in the sticks (to a certain degree!) i am not going to live in the bush. I have been checking out the hp's on ljhooker.com and realestate.aus and am looking in the region of300k aus dollars and there seems to be loads but i won't know until i get there these houses could be in the middle of a chav estate! But when you look at what your money buys you there and what you get here there really is no comparison.

There must be a catch......There always is.

Cheers abb. I know aus has suffered with hpi just like the uk but it is coming off the boil now and with the proceeds from my house sale i could buy a 4/5 bed house with pool and have virtually no mortgage! plus it will take around 12 months for my application to go through so i hope there will be further falls in the meantime! But i am not considering going just for a bigger house, it just seems that everything is wrong in the uk right now, hpi (of course) education system in a shambles, tax rises soon are going to hit hard, chavs,violence exploding on the streets, pc government, everyone seems to have a face like a smacked @rse in the uk it all seems to be all work and no play and bill after bill after bill. At least in aus if it is still as expensive in the uk at least you have the weather instead of sitting in the house all day on a sunday trawling the web for want of owt better to do as it is p1ssing down outside! Coincidentally i was at an expats meeting recently and was amazed at how far down the line people have got with regards to going to aus but still had not sold their house but are planning for the future without actually having the funds. PS i really don't want to slag off the uk so much but there really is so much to moan about. :angry:

First of all hello again to all the hpc regulars, i have been coming to the site on and off for the last few months but just could not be bothered posting anymore but have been kept up to date with all the relevant hpc info from all the old timers on the site, cheers for the postings people without a regular dose of hpc every now and again i feel i would have crumbled under the massive weight of the vi propaganda machine and bought a scrubby semi by now. Anyway a quick update in my neck of the woods saddleworth/oldham (sh1thole) area. NOTHING is selling! in particular saddleworth has come to a complete standstill. Was talking to an ea in the area on friday (who i get on quite well with funnily enough) and she tells me they are only just ticking over and is at her wits end with sellers refusing to give up their ill gotten gains and will not drop their prices and that buyers just are not bothering at the moment (waiting for price drops) funny thing is she is now anticipating price drops and no longer tries to ramp the market up anymore and this is from the agent who started the bubble in saddleworth in the first place! I read apollo's posts with amusement, desperately trying to ramp up the market in the manchester region (don't believe the hype of the junior ea/teaboy) he is just trying to keep his job the manchester region is as flat as everywhere no one earns the wages to keep the bubble from popping up here. Anyway to cut a long story short or shorter! I am getting fed up of the str adventure, i decided to give it a year and see what happens that was jan 05 and although i can see the cracks appearing it seems to me that the government/vi's have got so much dependant on high house prices that they are doing everything possible to stop the hpc. So i have decided on waiting until the land reg figs come out in november and if they don't show a negative figure then i will give up and BUY........in Australia!! Ha Ha. There is no way i am buying into this pyramid selling con so i have decided to do what every other sane person is doing and i am getting out while the going is good. I have got the cheque written/the forms are signed and am ready to post them to my immigration agent. The sad thing is i am going not because i really fancy australia or what it has to offer (although it does have a lot) I am really doing it simply to escape the insanity of what is going on in the uk now Taxation/pc gov/chavs etc. If anyone has any good info on aus or advice it would be much appreciated. Cheers.

Added my view. I will be amazed if they put it on their site. (They never do)

I can well believe this, the wifes father is on 45k a year (house paid off/company car etc) and he is always skint/overdraw on his cc's. Goes to show you the more you earn the more you spend!

I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiments fred. The uk is on a rapid downward spiral and there is no chance for mr average who simply wants to own a 3 bed semi with a garden to bring up his family in peace, I long for the days when i took no intrest in economics or hung on every word that came from the board members of the mpc for any sign of an ir rise, I do not want to trawl the web looking for more hpc tit bits to satisfy my craving for hpc news or to scan the ea websites and curse the derisory prices that greedy vendors want for their 3 bed shoeboxes, i just want to live in peace and have the time and energy to raise my 2 kids in a decent area without having to finaciialy cripple myself. All i want to do is work my 40 hour week (remember those?), come home at the end of the day and relax, not having to do what i do now eg:50/55 hour weeks(totally shagged out by weekend) and for what? I never see any more cash for my extra labour, Gordon Brown and his crappy working tax credits see to that. I don't want to even contemplate buying a house again as i am looking at least a 100k mortgage and that to me is a truly staggering amount of cash to be burdened with, Ah and to think how innocent i was as a sprightly 28 year old who bought his second house in 1999 for 65k and was fretting about borrowing that much!!! Oh how times have changed....for the worse. I thought it was bad under the tories but labour! there are no swearwords strong enough to describe my feelings about them. What has happened in the last 4/5 years? Why has it all gone so wrong? Having to compete against greedy btl who look at property as an investment and refer to houses as "units"?? I simply refer to them as a house/home. The fundamentals of uk living have become drastically skewed, somehow we have all been suckered into believing 2 bed terraces are worth 100k and we all need to have/own/buy now now now as if consumerism is the only thing that has an value/worth in todays world and stable family life is a thing of the past with mum and dad flinging their children into the arms of a total stranger for 10 hours a day all so we can keep gordon and his tax craving minions happy. Whats the solution? Well for us we are in the process of trying to go to new zealand, i think this is the only sensible course of action left open to people who play by the rules (eg:pay their taxes/go to work etc)who want to have a decent standard of living after all the bills have been paid and not have the stress/hassle/**** you attitude of the modern british citizen. Will life down under be any better? Honestly i do not know but it can't be any worse than this, I know they have something of a bubble but a pal of mine live there and he bough recently a 4 bed detached house with a pool!!! for uk price of 97k!! But hp's are not the only issue i want to live somewhere which is forward thinking and people are proud of where they come from and the quality of life is based more upon not what you earn/drive/live but more on how many friends you have and the social life you have outside of work. I am honestly truly sad about trying to do one out of the uk as i was once proud to be an englishman but i cannot help thinking if it is this bad here now how bad will it be when my boys are in their twenties, call me a cynic but i just cannot see it getting any better.

I am afraid the point is until we see house prices set to fall headlines on the front of the sun no one will believe in the hpc as most of the uk population does not read about economics on the web, they simply believe the tripe printed in the daily rag.

oh crap, try google and type in- living in england is a rip off. Sorry I hate computers! yeah got to go back and browse the site for any more insightfull, economic ahemm information!

it seems the sun is waking up to the idea that people are struggling. Sorry don't know how to do a link to it, just go to the sun.co.uk and the article is their along with a facility to post your views. Go for it, if the "uk's biggest selling daily" gets in on the idea that people are struggling we may get some bearish articles in the news.

Nice one webmaster. ********** filled the empty space while hpc was down but this is the place to be!

No Muggy Bear, it is rubbish isn't it? You simply get to the stage where you think is it worth it? all this rushing around/stress/hassle/missing out on watching your kids grow up, all for a few quid a month extra for grabber gordon to squeeze a bit more tax out of. Well we are not playing the game anymore, family is more important. That is a fair point gen x. The problem being is hard working families having the mum forced back to work as they cannot survive any other way, it's only after a couple of months when you tot your finances up that you realise you are working effectivley for nothing. £500 a month for nursery fees is extortion as if you are a homeowner on the "average wage" you get pretty much nothing back in tax credits etc as you are always just above the threshold for qualifying for any worthwhile benefits. The wholechildcare/taxation system under labour is totally biased as the average earner is getting taxed more and having his/her own personal wealth redistributed to sandra slapper who sits on her ar5e all day popping out kids for a hobby and claiming for all she is worth! I totally agree with you about third world wages for the nursery nurses it is scandalous, these girls are doing a great job looking after our children and being paid a pittance. How come it is so much better in sweden/norway etc they have got the whole childcare system sussed, Why is it the uk is happy sending kids into the arms of strangers from morn till night with barely a glimpse of their guilt ridden mum who is FORCED back into being a wage slave. We are breeding a generation that will be emotionally crippled by being abandoned at birth and shoved into the arms of a stranger and for what??? So mum and dad can just about put a roof over their heads. Thank you very much Mr.Blair/Brown for the wonderfully strong uk economy that puts profit before people.

Well said zzg. This whole country is built on a poverty stricken underclass and it stinks!

I find it laughable about the women who give up work to become house wives but will not do any house hold chores!!!!!!! They just sit on their ar5e all day reading magazines and hubby has to employ a cleaner to do his ironing???

I agree with you rjg about people paying for bits and bats on their cc's but his whole monthly expenditure??? MADNESS. My story was similar to what you say, up until we had kids the wife and i were doing fine and dandy bought our second house, 3 bed semi for 65k in 1999(never in debt, always lived within our means and always had savings to fall back on, oh and both had cc's but never used them, probably had a £500 limit on them back then! circa 98/99) Fast forward to 2004 and two kids later and we were slowly going under bit by bit, not because we were living an extravagant lifestyle, simply that the cost of everyday living and bringing up kids was beginning to skyrocket and we had found our selves on the 0% cc merry go round, juggling 2k from one to the other but paying it off slowly. The point being is that i am on an "average" wage (for the north anyway) the wife was a senoir microbiologist on "average wage" but even we were slowly going under, what with exhorbitant nursery fees, petrol bills/cost of running 2 cars (we lived way up in the hills so running a car costs a fortune)council tax going up and yes monthly mortgage payments going up because we had to mew twice (simply to pay back some debt accrued, not to buy a plasma tv or a caribbean cruise) The thing is we just could not win after having the second child as both of us working full time it was putting strain on us as a family and the costs of full time nursery and the before and after school/holiday clubs for our eldest was crippling us, so we figured that us both working was a waste of time as we were only about £100 per month better off. So the wife gave up working and we were in the situation where my monthly wage was swallowed by everday household expenditure but if we needed to repair the car or the car insurance was due, yep you guessed it we banged it on the cc. As we were struggling I wonder how people do it who have much lower paying jobs? Probably struggling just as much as us or more so. The solution? Sold up in dec 04 and str'd/banked the cash and am waiting for some sanity to return to the uk. I appreciate that in the early years of having a young family you are expected to struggle a bit but not when you are both working, struggle on a single income yeah, thats what my parents did but not on two ok wages, the whole system is fcuked up and you cannot win either way. If you own a house and have kids in the uk they have got you exactly where they want you-By the BO11OCKS and it is only getting worse.

I can see this poor chap scavenging for food in his neighbours dustbins in the next couple of months when those ir's start to rise and his take home pay no longer covers his mortgage and he can no longer move his debt around on 0% credit cards. Paying for his monthly living expenses on credit??????? He will not be able to carry that on for long. We are truly living in crazy times.

**********. It is a virtual clone of this site but it has forums for the bubbles in spain/france/us etc, it is a bit quiet there at the moment. Consa appears to have moved in permanantly over there. The site popped up over the weekend while hpc was down which helped as it gave me my hpc fix!

I feel there will be a sharp fall of 25-30% around autumn and then further falls of 2-5% for the next 4 years or so.

I agree merryn, there are too many people ready to have a pop at someone on this site simply for offering an opinion and i also feel there would be a lot more posters offering evidence (anecdotal or statistical) of house price falls in their area but are put off by aggressive comments to their opinions.

Zorn i do not need to look for official figures as 1: I don't believe them as most stats do not give a full reflection as to what is truly going on (if i believed some official figures i would be under the impression that hp's are fine and dandy) 2: Just try the oldham chronicle website on a thursday night (job advertisement night) and check out what people are really being paid doing average, skilled or semi skilled jobs and you will get a real idea of what crap money people are being paid in northern towns. I agree that for a minority in the town they are receiving above average wages and i will admit that these will impact those figures you mention so that the ave wage here seems semi respectable but for 90% of the workers in the town they are on under the nat ave wage UNLESS they do 10-15 hours over time. My opinions are not based soley on my own personal circumstance or circle of friends. In my line of work i travel to various buisnesses around the region and meet lots of different people and i talk to members of staff about house prices and levels of income etc i get a broad picture of what people earn doing manual/skilled/semi skilled jobs and for the majority they earn nothing like the national average. I actually work in engineering (sheet metal) and the industry is knackered, so no big wages there then. I am also qualified as an MCSE and believe me networking jobs in the region are around the 15-17k mark. People who work in banks, on the front line anyway earn 14k max. Like i say these are my opinions, are we not allowed anecdotal evidence anymore on this site or do we have to back up every post with endless amounts of stats and figures?

IGNORANT. Yeah right, this is coming from the man whose freinds all earn in the 50k-200k bracket, we all know someone on that sort of money. Do you live up here? Or on the same planet for that matter? Obviously not as you must be in the "50-200k" earner wage bracket that everyone earns in your neck of the woods. Like i said the wages up here are crap, MY OPINION. I experience it first hand on a daily basis having to live with house prices reaching southern prices and people desperatley attempting to service a 200k mortgage on 15k. When you have something of true intrest/value to say, come back then, in the meantime isn't it time mummy took you for a long walk to tire you out for bedtime? It is truly idiotic gits like yourself who put many people off posting on this forum as you seem to enjoy making contencious/snide remarks. I simply post occasionally an opinion as to what i see in life as i am not into gathering endless stats about the state of the uk, i come to this site for that information. Also i am not intrested in reading any more of your guttersnipe posts (they go back a long way, zzg seemed to cop for a lot of abuse from you as i recall) so congratulations you are the first person that i have put on ignore. You truly live up to your username.

Consa do you really believe that the fed would chuck in some 0.5% rises and if so would the boe follow suit, could you imagine some 0.5% raises here, am drooling at the prospect.