pablopatito

Erm, I think we're in agreement, as in a later post you say prices are down around 10%? I'd agree that 10% sounds about right. I certainly haven't seen a house that has sold for more than it sold for in 2007, but there will always be the odd house that defies gravity. And for the very rich, buying their half a million pound homes overlooking Collingtree golf course, austerity Britain may as well be on a different planet for all it effects them.

Houses in NN4 are still selling well below their 2007 peaks, but have recovered from their 2009 lows. Don't let an estate agent convince you otherwise. A few vendors ask for 2007 prices, but they rarely get them. The problem is lack of supply, and if you're not in a position to wait for a reasonably priced house to come on the market, you may have to pay too much. Most four bedders in Wootton are still stuck at £250k, whereas in the peak they were going for £275k, although one did sell recently for £257k - who in their right mind pays £7k over the stamp duty threshold?

NN4 watch. Prices have been rising over the last few months, but supply has been very small. Most houses sold last year, and for close to the asking price. There's a slight uplift in supply this year, and prices look extremely optimistic. But of the 13 new houses listed on Rightmove today for NN4, five are price reductions, so clearly the market isn't as buoyant as estate agents are claiming to sellers. My STR fund is currently earning 2% interest, compared with 6% in 2008 (oh, I was so smug and happy back then!), so I really can't afford to carry on renting for much longer. I will probably buy the next realistically priced house that I don't hate

I've always been under the impression that the cost of food is largely determined by the cost of transport, storage, marketing, labour, tax and retail land value, and not raw ingredients. How much of the cost of Weetabix is actually the cost of wheat? It can't be more than a few pence, surely? Yet we're always being told to expect price rises whenever it stops raining in the Midwest.

I love her logic. How do you solve the problem of not having enough houses in 20 years time? Answer: reduce the number of people. I might try it at home. "We're running out of milk" "OK, let's get rid of one of the kids". Another solution would be to keep the 50p tax rate, because according to the Daily Mail last week, thousands are deserting the country which should leave enough houses for the few of us that remain plus some extra Poles. That woman makes me sick.

Can someone post a link to the Daily Express article saying "Great news! House prices set to rise 13% thanks to Labour's immigration policy"

Schools I believe. I don't think the Caroline Chisholm catchment area row has been settled. The LEA want to exclude Grange Park, but the school wants to include it. As an academy they can supposedly have control over admissions, but I'm not sure it's as simple as that. Take Caroline Chisholm out of Grange Park and prices will drop like a stone - it basically becomes East Hunsbury in the middle of nowhere with a long bus ride to a failing school. Annoyingly, it also explains why Wootton prices have actually gone up.

I don't get so called sheltered accommodation, or homes listed as "Over-55s only". There's a load come on for sale in Grange Park, all like this one: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-36771709.html Over 300 grand for a small 2 bed flat in the middle of nowhere? I get the appeal of "Care Team on-site 24 hours", but I'm presuming you pay for this via a massive annual service charge rather than in the price of the flat. Is it just a lack of supply keep pricing this high? Surely rich old people have better options than this? But they seem popular.

Name and shame!

Same here in Wootton - everything seems to have been snapped up in the last few weeks, including all the dross. Even my wife is now saying there's no point in buying at the moment and I'm currently looking around for jobs elsewhere, preferably up North. Like she says, what's the point in mortgaging ourselves to the max to buy a house we don't even like! A 3 bed terrace in Shropshire would do me right now. Just need to find a job

I was interested in the article because my dad was a polytechnic lecturer with multiple degrees who also did exam marking and published a few successful books. We never seemed to have a lot of money growing up. We never had takeaways, we only ate out on birthdays as a special treat, holidays were a caravan in Wales, we always drove Ladas. The house always felt cold - I remember my dad firing up the paraffin heater every morning and us all huddling round it, I think we had central heating but I don't know if it was on much. I wasn't allowed to go on a school ski-ing trip because we couldn't afford. Yet we never felt poor. I think it was accepted that a lecturer isn't as rich as lawyer or an accountant or a business owner which a lot of my friends' dads were. But we always considered ourselves middle-class and relatively well off. We lived in a posh area, but most of my friends' families didn't seem to have any money either. I'm interested in how perception of wealth and poverty seems to have changed since the 70s. Of course wealth is relative. I'd compare our circumstances with those of my mates from the council estate and therefore consider myself wealthy. Its obviously a made up article though.

I presume (and hope!) they won't be paying £400 a week. This is a neighbour's property that is currently up for rent: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-39613664.html I won't be happy if a family of unemployed Londoners move in.

Let me qualify my statement then and say net migration of skilled labour is all that matters (or "middle class brains" as the Telegraph would put it).

"Middle class brain drain". These kinds of Telegraph/Daily Mail headlines are completely bogus. We live in a global economy where the younger generation feel relaxed about living wherever. There are upto 400,000 French people living in London, as well as Americans and Australians and tens of thousands of other nationalities. I lived in Hong Kong for a few years for no real reason other than I could. People move around - that's the nature of a global economy. For the media to speculate on causes that fit their political agenda, without quoting any actual evidence, is just scaremongering of the lowest level. If a graduate from New York goes to work in London, that's not a brain drain, that's just what happens. Net migration is the only figure that counts and what is disturbing is Tory plans to set immigration limits on talented foreigners want to take UK jobs. If you allow your own citizens to leave but block foreign citizens from arriving then you're asking for trouble.

Recent sales: 5 Holcutt Close Asking price £365k. Sold price £360k 3 Curlbrook Close Asking price £229k. Sold price £219k 3 Bancroft Way Asking price £270k. Sold price £256.5k Most houses are selling, and very close to the asking price. I've put a few reasonable offers in and got nowhere, and those houses have gone on to sell close to the asking price. That Bancroft Way house is nuts! Who buys a house for six grand over the stamp duty threshold. That's six grand to the vendor and an extra five grand to the treasury. We looked round a repo a couple of months ago that sold for the asking price. Someone paying full asking price for a repo! The house was a sh**hole.

It's grimmer than ever in Wootton. This has been on and off the market, at the same price, for about four years. I looked round it a couple of years ago. http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-36538955.html Under offer. It just shows that if you wait long enough, some muppet will always pay your asking price. I wouldn't want to pay £215 to live in a small terraced house, but someone wants to: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-21720684.html And this half-a-million pound home hasn't even been built yet and someone has snapped it up: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-24077052.html HALF A MILLION QUID!! I really want to move over towards Daventry, but the missus doesn't want to leave Wootton (and it would be a bit of an upheaval for the kids, to be fair). I'm starting to detest the place which is depressing. I beginning wish we'd never STR'd now.

A diet heavy on lentils and rice is cheap. However, I find fruit very expensive. It's not helped by the fact that my kids are fussy and I still want them to get plenty of fruit and veg. Two kids eating a banana, an apple, a handful of grapes and some strawberries every day soon adds up. If they'd eat less fruit and more veg then my bills would come down quite a bit. Annoyingly, my eldest lad prefers exotic fruit to English as well, and it's hard to tell him he can't have a healthy mango because it costs too much.

About £9,500 - 2 adults and a 7 & 4 year old. Reading this thread makes me think this is a bit high though! It includes alcohol (biggest expense at about £2,000) and cleaning products, bog rolls etc etc. Everything cooked from scratch and no factory farmed meat.

Buy at 40 and retire at 70. What's the problem. Anyway, inflation will mean that your repayments at the end of your mortgage period will be pretty tiny won't they? I'd rather than than have to pay a grand a month to rent somewhere when I'm 70. I'm considering getting a long mortgage and then overpaying as much as I can afford. That way I have the option of effectively reducing my payments during periods of unemployment or other financial difficulty, whilst increasing my payments during periods of relative wealth. Like interestrateripoff. That's makes sense doesn't it?

I'd find it unpleasant and/or uneconomic to get rid of the car because of my kids. We like to go to on country walks at the weekend, and it's either very difficult or very expensive to get to these places on public transport. The OP complains petrol is too expensive, but I still find it by far the most cost effective means of transport for a family of four. We can go and visit family 100 miles away for about forty quids worth of petrol (plus wear and tear). Going by bus and train would cost double that, as well as taking twice as long. Just getting the bus into town to do a bit of shopping costs a tenner! It's about a quid by car. Tonight I'm planning on driving us to a nice country pub rather than walking to our crappy local. I'm interested in any relationship between petrol prices and house prices. Where I live (a fairly posh bit of Northampton), loads of my neighbours commute by car to high-paying jobs in the South East. They live in Northampton because house prices are cheaper than the South East. When deciding where to live, I guess they take into account both the cost of houses and the cost of transport. Changes in either would influence their decision. To help save the planet it probably makes sense to drive less, but that would take a cultural shift in the nature of work. Living in the Midlands and commuting to the South East purely because houses are too expensive drives me nuts - we shouldn't have to live like this. I don't know what the answer is though, other than it isn't lowering fuel duty.

That's a different argument. The reality is that any current cut in fuel duty will be offset by an increase in tax elsewhere. Personally, I'm much happier cycling to work and paying 40% income tax whilst The Count bitches and moans, rather than have us both pay 42%.

"Free at point of use" then. What do you think the correct rate of fuel duty should be? And how would you calculate this?

Eh? Roads are funded from general taxation. Fuel duty is added to the general taxation pot. If you use the roads a lot (and screw the environment), you pay more. If you use them a little, you pay little. That seems fair, no? If you buy a more fuel efficient car, you pay less. That seems fair as well.

I buy nearly everything off the internet, so cash isn't really an option.

How is it theft? The tax pays for all the roads and motorways that you can then use free of charge. You're also polluting the atmosphere and causing global warming - which will eventually cost the state billions. You will pay less tax by going electric because you won't be screwing the environment - that seems perfectly logical. Then you've got all the other external costs associated with road transport - RTAs, noise pollution, policing, destruction of greenbelt etc etc.