Ah-so

I have always thought it a particularly uninspiring building. In fact, it used to be somewhat nicer before the facade had a makeover. I would take 30 Cannon Street over it any day.

But some are inspiring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_Cannon_Street Yes - a beautiful 1970s office building.

And they also clearly foresaw the need for future bars and restaurants when they built those arches.

Victorian houses might be quite squashed, but planners had remarkable foresight in typically making roads in excess of 4 cars wide, so that cars could park along both sides of the road as well as allowing 2 cars to pass each other that are driving along. At least they could until the SUV came along.

Yes, in 2009 and practically every other year subsequently. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6127790/Maths-couple-millionaires-quit-buy-to-let-market.html

I think that you will find that the percentage of the house wealth owned by the over 40s is now significantly greater that it was 20 years ago - that is the context from which you would get a more nuanced perspective.

We may get a localised crash if he tries to sell 300 properties simultaneously, as promised, but as he has been announcing the sale of his empire since 2007, I would not trust a word he says. However, it would fill me with great satisfaction if it goes wrong. Something tells me that this thread as some life left in it. There are 91 2-bed houses for sale on Rightmove at the moment, and none of them seem to look like one of those ghastly Wilson places, so for the moment, his stated intention to sell seems nothing more than words, not actions.

I would be delighted - I would welcome a 50% HPC.

Saw this in the paper. What really surprised me is that you have been able to speculate on currency for many years through spread betting platforms. It has 2000 members yet is already worth £2m. It offers advice on investments in exchange for money but has no reference to the FCA on its site. Yes, FX is an unregulated investment but I imagine that this is based on derivatives that are. Edit: it is not even a trading platform - just an information platform offering tips. As FX is not regulated then trading advice probably won't be either.

It is difficult to do the maths in this and I would never listen to that old fraud Kiyosaki who is ultimately just another BTL peddler. But thinking about how much better off I am financially from buying in 2005: Asset (house price growth): +£220,000 Interest paid vs rent (dead money cash flow): +£150,000 Home maintenance and insurance: -£30,000 (hard to calculate because some spend was more than maintenance eg new bathroom) Opportunity cost of deposit and capital payments totalling £140,000: given the tumultuous period, but let's say +£40,000. So on the plus side I am up £370,000 and loss of perhaps £70,000. But given how much lower my mortgage vs rent is I have added financial benefits of extra pension contributions with the tax as well as the extra experiences and peace of mind from a more secure position. I admit that I am "lucky" - my increase in wealth is mainly down to government intervention - low interest rates and printed money and it may be a one off. But I am happy that that it is part of my life that I don't need to worry about too much.

5 years ago perhaps, but the market in the SE has recovered somewhat. Prices are up 25% to 35% in Maidstone over that period. Much as I would like to seem them go bust, they have been bailed out by the government.

Good post. Like you, I am an older member on this site, although actually bought in 2005 when I could afford something that looked affordable even if it wasn't the type of place I thought I would have expected to live. But property should not be something that makes people split up or move abroad. While I think that property is significantly over-valued, I don't think it will ever return to 3x the average wage. We are probably going to have a dip in the next 12 months+ and that might be a chance for some to enter the market. If things fall further then people can follow the market down a bit. But I was puzzled why some on HPC did not use the post financial crisis period to get on the ladder when they could afford to.

Your relationship should come first. If overpaying for a property for a property is a sacrifice that you need to make, then so be it. After all, if prices rise or stay the same, you will have made the right decision in the end. If the fall, you do at least have a "I told you so" up your sleeve whenever she disagrees with you about anything in future.

While the interest of some home owners is to see house prices rise, and FTBs generally want to house prices to fall, the conflict has historically not resulted in any noticeable problems. The conflict is more realistically between FTBs and BTL, who all want the same properties and if one buys one, then it deprives the other. Where the buyer is a BTL, then a FTB must rent from a BTL. That is a real conflict.

Which would be just over 25 years since this site was founded - you could potentially have waited a whole mortgage worth of time waiting for prices to fall. While I would like to see an almighty crash, I can't really see one coming. We may well have a cyclical dip coming over the next couple of years with prices perhaps down 10 or 15 percent. That might be the best time to buy.