joe_

Sunak is convinced of the trickle down economic theory that if you give loads of £££ to the businesses they will use it to grow their business and help the general economy. Except businesses exist to make profit, and typically don't care about their staff and the economy, it's all about the bottom line.

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-8436599/Bounce-Loans-splashed-supercars-insiders-claim.html Hardly suprising, give the business bosses loads of free cash and they spend on supercars ? Just like BA and Virgin, don't want to lose their mansions and private islands so just take the taxpayers free money while making all your staff redundant ?

As an FTB, I am worried this will just increase competition (I am now competing with second steppers now who will now have extra money to outbid me) It seems the government are determined to have HPI at any cost, so maybe I should just get myself in debt and buy an overpriced tiny box now

Yep, second home owners/steppers will have more money to outbid FTBs and push the prices higher. Also, Stamp duty holiday seems crazy if the government have borrowed loads of money they need to pay back. Why not change the income tax threshold or reduce VAT.. That would benefit everyone not just the rich.

As some people have already said if there's not a HPC after all what's happened, I don't think there will be one. A few weeks before lockdown I put in an offer for a place 2% lower than asking and it was rejected, before this I had put in offers of 10% below. When coronavirus was all over spain and italy I kinda thought, "best wait for this to blow over". Stock markets were crashing, but I noticed the house I was interested in went STC. The next day, I rang another agent that had it listed and actually offered over the asking price just out of curosity. To cut a long story short, vendor had accepted the asking price from someone else and didn't want to take up my offer! I thought this was madness.. I have been watching rightmove ever since and noticed a fair few properties moving to Sold STC on the day of listing! Every day I see about 2/3 that go straight to sold STC.. Is this the agents playing games or something? I have been working all during the lockdown while the rest of the street have been sunbathing in their gardens enjoying all the free money! If prices don't drop this time I don't think I'll ever own a house, I am always playing catch up with prices.

Essex's Local Authority Mortgage scheme was agreed last week: http://www.essex.gov.uk/News/Pages/First-time-buyers-to-get-support-getting-on-the-property-ladderFirst-time-buyers-to-get-support-getting-on-the-property-lad.aspx There was a discussion on BBC Essex this morning between a Conservative Councillor and a UKIP Councillor, with UKIP being against the scheme because of the risky lending. I'll stick up a link when it comes up on listen again.

I think if everyone knew the answer no one would be on these forums I am in pretty much the same position. I could buy somewhere now, but it would not be what I would want and the best case scenario would be interest rates and prices stay the same - even then I wouldn't pay it off till I'm about 60. If rates when up I'd probably have to sell and lose money. I also hate paying some landlords mortgage as well. I'll probably end up renting for a few years and try to just relax and get on with life. If nothing changes then, maybe get a place up north.

I never really understood the plan behind Right to Buy. If a council tenant can afford to stump up the mortgage required to buy their council home, shouldn't they have been told to rent privately and the house go to someone who couldn't afford to rent/buy?

I must say I am shocked at the level of benefit. What's worse is that I realise now I could have claimed for the last 10 years - I always thought I was earning too much to claim. It's quite tempting to just splurge my savings on the good life and then when I run out decide to start a business and have any shortfall topped off from benefits.

Seems like a common thing, I have colleagues like that. No documentation at all, no comments - And that's if I'm lucky to find an up to date version of the code. The bosses are not developers so it goes unnoticed. At first, I would clean the code and document it as I went along, but then I thought why should I waste my time doing their job when I'm not getting paid any more for it? Also, if a developer writes unmaintainable code, it keeps them in a job for life.

Suprise, suprise - No mention of price to income ratios or the fact that houses are just overpriced.

Just had a letter about my account. The 5% is dropping to 3%, and also some other changes (you can now put in as much as you want up to the £50,000)

Yeah, there's definetely more people trying to grab a bargain, I notice people trying almost to sell anything on the freeads/ebay, whereas before they may have just dumped stuff.

Yes, to the middle one. What people have said here has confirmed a lot of what I was thinking, and yes as mentioned above your outgoings do make a difference. I guess the real question I should be thinking is what should I be doing to improve my situation now.

I certainly know a lot of people at my workplace in their early 40s and bought at the bottom in 95, and have now paid off their mortgage thanks to low interest rates. I can imagine that gives you an awful lot of disposable income.