Chicken

you're missing the point of my post. It wasn't to suggest that you don't have a valid reason for moving, or that you aren't a good parent to your kids. It was, however, suggesting that if you are having a hard time making your mortgage payments (despite the fact that it is interest only AND libor is at historic low levels) then you either don't make very much money or you are living in a very expensive house, or a combination of both. Either way, you can't really afford it (especially once interest rates go up).

You're paying libor interest-only and you can barely afford to make the payments? Where is this million pound mansion of yours?

You had a rubbish business model then. You should either have been working all those hours but making a lot more money, or making that money and working a lot less. I have a business partner who turns over 4 times that and puts in about 25 hours a week.

hmmmm.... I have a sneaky suspicion that she has outsourced the production of plain cupcakes to a third party and then throws on a bit of icing herself...

no probs Frank. Good luck with it.

That's the only thing in the article that I care about - there's hope for me yet...

I've done it before with two terraced houses. My works involved knocking out a couple of walls but it sounds like yours would not need anything structural and would be simpler. I don't think there's any hard and fast criteria for the council. The council will just inspect to make sure that you have actually joined the two houses up to make one residence. Whatever you do, don't get it changed on the land registry - it's a load of time and paperwork, especially if you know that you are going to split it up and sell it again in the future. For the same reason, you would probably want to keep your gas and electric separate for the two houses as well.

resurrecting this thread because I've just found out that Sweden seems to be a remarkably cheap place to buy a house.

Nothing wrong with the Duke - it's probably the only thing in the house that is going to go up in value.

and as an aside, I think your original error (in so far as you didn't secure the house for the price that you wanted) is that the place had not been on the market long enough? The longer they sit without acceptable offers, the more likely the sellers are to be willing to deal.

That looks fairly pleasant. Did you find somewhere or are you still interested in this place at your previous (or now lower) price?

At the risk of stating the seemingly obvious, perhaps the paternity test results came back negative?

So you've changed your accusation of him being an idiot and a running dog for the politicians to him being a money-grabber? Last I saw, he was doing more for poor people than you http://www.soros.org/ It's fine if you don't like the guy or you disagree with his comments, just give a reasoned argument to debate. That's better. (edited for spelling)

He's clearly not an idiot. Whether he is right or wrong, he has his own motivations for saying what he has said. And why is it clear that he's a lapdog for the politicians? He's a self-made billionaire FFS. Maybe they just happen to have aligned interest at the moment?

they're young right? Presumably hoping to increase their earnings in the future so that the repayments become more affordable. It's certainly riskier than I would be comfortable with (especially including the car payments) but it's not as bad a situation as many I have seen.

Might be a really, really, really, really, really nice house though.

Thanks VWYF, I'll take that as a compliment! I don't normally look at bonds, just equities but the Dubai situation was a quasi-equity situation. I try not to be contrarian just for the sake of it but it's just that that is where the greatest opportunities tend to lie. The key for me is a combination of risk v reward and what I believe is going to happen. For example, with the Dubai bonds the potential reward was 100% over 2 days. The potential risk was <20% (in my opinion based upon my estimate of the value of the assets they were secured on). Combine this with my high expectation that Abu Dhabi would come to the rescue (not every time but for that particular maturity) meant I thought that was a good investment. In this case, I only described a potential motivation that someone might have to buy the greek bonds - not my own motivation. No doubt these bonds will have to be issued at a high yield in order for the greek government to get them sold - but it's very very very unlikely that they will offer a double-digit yield. The downside is that if greece does default, these bonds will very quickly become double-digit yielders (ie the prices will get smashed). Now I ultimately think that europe will have to bail them out, which will support the bonds and keep the yields reasonable - but that will come at the expense of the euro (ie I think euro will weaken). So I either get protected on the asset (the bonds) or on the currency (euro) but unlikely on both. So, in summary, the risk-reward is not good enough for me and what I think is going to happen will not benefit a holder of the bonds - so I'm going to pass on these.

My apologies for my assumption then. It's just when you say that you consider Thailand to be dangerous - while I have the complete opposite perception.

For someone that wants to emigrate, you don't seem that adventurous.

Perhaps they should? It would raise all kinds of unintended consequences though.

You're mistaking effort-based compensation with results-based compensation. The estate agent that secures a buyer on the first viewing has done a better job than the one that takes 6 months to achieve the same. ps my estimate on number of properties sold was per agent but a complete stab in the dark. Doesn't sound too unreasonable given your figures though.

There's two questions here: 1) As a seller, do you get good value for what you get? 2) As an estate agent, is it worth your while to do it for that amount? Opinions will vary for both. If you don't have the time or the skills to market and sell the property yourself then the fee is worth it because you wouldn't sell it otherwise. On the other hand, if you are media-savvy and work from home then you might consider it money for old rope. How many properties can an estate agent sell in a year? In a weak market, maybe one a month (complete guess)? If the average selling price is £200,000 at 1.5%, this gets £36k gross to the agency - once you've paid for the rent, utilities, legal and other expenses maybe you can pay the agent half of that - say, £18k. Not bad for "untrained" work but I suspect a lot of people wouldn't work for that. One thing I do question is the reason for the fee to be based upon the value of the property. It doesn't take twice the effort to sell a £200,000 property than a £100,000. I can appreciate that it's down to what the seller can afford to pay but still doesn't make it right.

You need somewhere to live. It's cheaper for you to buy this place v renting it. You can comfortably afford it. What's not to like? Congrats on the new house!

that's the main reason that I think the euro is going to weaken this year.