wydsiwyrg

Ride_on - when I say gone I mean sold (and I've checked in on since). I was not contesting that prices are going down - just that LPS values aren't necessarily on the money in every area, and that holds true still to asking prices - the area I was looking may just be an anomaly (and I did buy, mostly because I'm looking to live in the area for the next 15-20 years). On the lending point - I have an income above double the average as stated, and an excellent credit history, along with no outstanding loans and a decent down payment. I was offered 2.5x my salary (fortunately enough to buy a decent house in Belfast). This is not lending as it was 5 years ago, when I was offered 6.5x my salary, with a very small down payment. Personally I'm not bothered if houses sell or don't sell. A correction to LPS values if nothing else would be easy for people to work out what things are worth! However, I don't feel that in EVERY area the LPS values are dead on - partly because, knowing people who work for LPS (and having worked for them), I know that they were vastly behind with the reclassification of a lot of properties.

I'm sure in some areas LPS values are reasonably accurate with what properties are "worth" now (which is indicated by the price the majority of the market are willing to pay for them!!). However, in the areas I'm familiar with - East and South Belfast, and where I know a considerable number of people who have bought/have been looking to buy property in the last 6-18 months, the LPS values are markedly lower (sometimes by upto 40%) than what prices are being marketed at, and not only what they are being marketed at - but what they are selling at. As a case in point - I looked at some houses around 12 months ago which were 30% above the LPS value - 4 bedroom houses in the Belmont area, and both were gone within 3 weeks of coming to market. This is at a time where banks ARE NOT lending like the used to. As I say - this is just my experience from the last 6-18 months and in a particular part of Belfast.

Sorry to hijack this thread, but it doesn't look like it's being used at the moment. My wife and I are both British born, though my parents are immigrants from Asia. With that in mind what areas would be good for us to look into in Belfast? We have been looking at BT4 (Sydenham, Belmont); are these suitable areas for us? We have a flexible budget, but would like to stay under £150-160k. Where would you recommend to look for that sort of price? I work near the Docks, and we would like to be within 10 mins drive of the city centre. Thanks.

Are we really going to have this bad of a house price crash? See, some are quoting that house prices must go down to 75k-90k average, but isn't the government (by force BoE to lower interest rates) just bringing inflation up? Therefore, in everyone's minds their house "value" doesn't drop a huge amount (say average drops down to 150k, for example) but the average salary, because of rising inflation, goes up to 40k. Is this a more likely outcome than houses formerly selling for 180k dropping as low as 90k?

The first time I've ever heard sarcasm over the 'net.

Oxymoron? Discuss! *ducks*

Very low. I believe with decent SEO, and a decent plan, that's achievable within 2-3 months tops. The only reason I could see to even consider purchasing would be if it comes with a great domain name, that in itself has some intrinsic value, or if the website itself has had decent investment in the functionality. However, it doesn't sound from the description that either of these would necessarily be the case.

Shared ownership, but with no rent? Has anyone seen this before? http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-180...=1&tr_t=buy

That's incredibly low, is it really "established"? I would value that very lowly, has that number now declined from a huge number in the past?

Would the period from January 88 - July 89 be considered a dead cat bounce in terms of house prices? And following on from that - are we likely to see one NOW, or was the dead cat bounce this time around from Oct 05-Oct 07?

You're joking right? Surely a 20 percent decrease, means the price will decrease BY 20%, not TO 20%. Reducing BY 20% will bring the price to £184k, or am I being dense?

Let me start by saying; I bought at the end of last year; and I feel it was a good decision for me. The mortgage was less than 2x my income, and slightly more than 1x our combined income. We plan to stay there for at least 10 years. From what you are describing, this decision could be potentially disastrous for you. I would wait, and see how things turn out. If, and this is a big if, the house prices drop 30% in the next year - and you keep your job securely - then you will be able to buy 100% at the same price (or less). If you do buy and anything bad happens in the housing market, you're absolutely, royally screwed. My best advice would be - don't ever get to the point where you are living off both of your salaries. We try to put the whole of (preferably) the larger salary away every month and keep it for a rainy day, or use it to speed up the mortgage payments. T

According to this I'm a 784. I've never had a credit card in my life however, and have applied for one recently (as an exercise, than to use it) and got rejected. Heh.

Thank you - you put my point much better than I did.

1) - He didn't state highly skilled, he stated "decent"; I'd interpret that as junior/standard at most; by no means senior or highly experienced. 2) - http://www.cwjobs.co.uk/JobSearch/Results....=0&LIds2=ZV ; where are all these £80k jobs that the "highly skilled" DBAs are working in? 3) - Being a DBA is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the most difficult job in Computing. Yes, it can be VERY high pressure, but in reality, once you're familiar with what you're doing and the RDBMS that you're managing, it's mostly routine. Compare that with Analysis or Architecture, or writing real time parallel debuggers and £80k seems like an awful lot. 4) - When the HPC comes - won't this salary demand drop?

I'd say looking after a couple of kids, cleaning and cooking is a heck of a lot more difficult than being a DBA 9-5.

Once the HPC comes they'll all be flooding in then? As if.

How many of those are agencies fishing?

Good IT staff are never without a job. Unfortunately in our industry more than any there's a huge quantity of duds. However, if you interview well and are competent at your area, there will never be a shortage of people offering you jobs. I interview candidates very often, and the majority (I'd say more than the 40% you reported) are duds. We lose around 40% at the CV stage, then another 50% or so at the in house test; around 80% usually fall over on the talk through - in terms of personal skills, or writing code under pressure; leaving around 5% or less of the original applicants with any chance of getting the job. Usually out of these there is one outstanding candidate who will get the job - and probably walk into most similar roles, so you snap them up. As I said - if you're good, you're usually not out of a job; and if made redundant will find a job fairly easily. This could all change though.

4 weeks in Australia in 2000 was my last holiday abroad Last holiday at all? Honeymoon for 2 weeks in 2006. (I'm guessing Guernsey is not technically abroad?) I'm such a party animal!

Hi Lepista; Consider the following: A new spreadsheet with A1 set at 7% as per your example A2 set to 25, A3 set to £120000, A4 set to =-PMT(A1/12;A2*12;A3;0;0) showing there is a monthly payment of 848.14 on that mortgage per month (if 7% is fixed for life of mortgage). In A5 I have "5" (the number of years I want to see how much has been paid by). In A6 I have =FV(A1/12;A5*12;A4;-A3;0) showing that after 5 years of paying 848.14 per month (50,888.10); I have knocked the amount I owe on the mortgage down to £109,394,58. In A7 have =A3-A6; you then show how much you have paid, in A8 have =A4*12*A5 By changing A5 the answer would be a ) 2 years - spent £20,355 paid £3804.26 off the mortgage b ) 5 years - spent £50,888 paid £10605.42 off the mortgage c ) n; (have a play!) d ) 25 years - paid off the mortgage, but spent £254,440.51 doing so Does this make sense? Tim

Hi guys, Here's a spreadsheet I came up with, that does the Buying vs Renting, it takes a few more variables, but seems to give a good enough indication of which will lose you more over time. t Edit: I'm a newbie so not allowed to post attachments. Oops. Lepista - you should be able to get the mortgage amount left with FV (use negative for initial principle, and positive for payments) Tim

No! It's a crash of 35%. Otherwise UBS are predicting a crash to 3%. And I somehow don't believe that's true!

Why so? Last time I checked the prediction on this site was a crash of 35% with a timescale of 2008-2012?