squaresheep

Not sure how many other people noticed this (or whether the Youtube footage is high-res enough) but she unconciously and very clearly looks to the left immediately after mentioning "signs of green shoots". This is fairly well known as one of the 'liar signs'. But if she knew she was lying, why say these things?!? Oh. Wait.

"Buy now before prices go back up!" Still got a picture of that I took on my phone when I walked past an EA. I plan to show it to my grandkids one day.

12 gone from here, although that is out of about 400. Who knows what the future will bring though?

Fionnuala rhymes with "moo-lah" My estimate is £117k. The beginning of capitulation...

Holy fook, Orbital is back! Another surprising side-effect of the massive rate cut! I'm still struggling with whether this means deflation or inflation in the medium term. And what will happen to various currencies, especially now the ECB cut is smaller than expected. I vote for anarchy, food stockpiling and house prices down 75%...

I always liked the idea of getting a big, thick book that you don't care about and then cutting out the centre of most of the pages to leave you with a box-shape inside. Although I hide mine in my arcade machine

Just got this nice little quote from my housing contact at the local Council. "We are having a fun time today after the announcements in the press yesterday that Councils will buy your house and rent it back to you!! The phone has been red hot so far this morning and we have lots of irate people that have told us the Government has said so so we have to do it. We’re not doing it, but we’ll have to wait and see if we get the word from high up to make us do it." What, and put all those lovely sell-and-rent-back firms you see in the back of your local paper out of business??

I LOLed. Oral Snails are to blame for this whole damn mess... If you think St Albans is bad with 15 EAs in the town centre, you should come down to Chelmsford! Walk out of the train station, out onto Duke Street and you are confronted with more than 20 EAs, letting agents, property solicitors and loan shops. It would be depressing if they weren't so empty

1.2% Although, bless em, I've only been working for them for 4 months so I guess it works out at an average 3.6%. I moved to this job for a 35% raise though!

Ah, Mortal Kombat... never a patch on Streetfighter II, in my eyes. I loved it so much, I bought an arcade machine! Thanks for the insights. I'm interested that you say that anyone could learn the trade with 2 weeks of training? The mortgage advisors I have come across always seemed to be just as much like the sheeple in reciting the "safe as houses" mentality, rather than maliciously trying to get people to lie. They didn't seem bad, some seemed to think they were doing people a favour by letting them off some criteria so that they could "achieve" house-ownership. Just wondered how people train to be mortgage advisors? Is it through the individual companies, centrally for the mortgage companies, independent, on the job, etc? Be good to get an insight into where the average mortgage advisors knowledge is coming from...

Don't stop MEW now, Cos I'm having such a good time, I'm having a ball...

Something along the lines of: Recent buyer: "So, have you bought a place yet?" Us: "No, we did some research first..." Although my all time favourite is from Billy Connolly, talking about a middle-class BTL-er talking to a council-house tenant. BTL: "Did you know, our house has gone up in value by 60% over the past 5 years. It's now worth more than £500k. How much do you think you would get if you sold your house?" Council-house tenant: "About 3 months."

Hey, Great to see you guys there and put some names to faces. Spent most of the time listening to Tonkers and Dr Doom and getting the evil eye from the landlord (how were we to know that the police would want him to close the pub for the day, following Bruno's threats? ) . Hope you enjoyed the Tale of Pickles and Ginger too. Amazing how we've all been here before... and seem doomed to repeat again! (Dave)

You can also add squaresheep's friend India to the list of attendees. What happened about reporting Bruno to the police, by the way? Will he be having his collar felt while we enjoy a few beers? Although probably more likely he'll be getting sectioned...

Excellent, that's just the sort of thing I was looking for. I'm impressed that Beatrix Potter had a book written, painted and published about the subject in 1909 though - before the financial crisis fully played out! Does that make her the new (old) HPC poster-girl? I'll bring the Tale of Ginger and Pickles book along with me to the pub meet next Tuesday if anyone is interested. Or if I can't work out who the HPC people in the pub are... please approach the guy in the corner reading the children's book!