ajwt2

Try the Gatmore Safety First fund. It bottoms out at a 10% loss and has a lot of the upside of the FTSE 100. Over the past 10 years it has actually almost beat the FTSE, which is a lot better than most 'protected' funds

I was shocked to see that over 15% of the FTSE 100 are now 'commodity' copmanies. 5 years ago it was nothing like that. Anyhoo, back to the original point. I'm fence sitting on the prospects of banks, on e one hand all this doom and gloom has put a massive damper on their share prices and yields are looking very health (circa 12%), BUT I get the impression things are still going to get worse before they get better. Solution? Slow, but steady drip feed into the financial stocks

Just for completeness here's the graph of house prices with and without inflation. UK Housing Prices They match up with Scotts one comparing prices to wages quite well, but as I said back in Feb 05 inflation does have a real big impact on the figures

Darn, you have effectively destroyed my argument by using my comfortable situation against me! All my further arguments can now be pulled down by "Well yes, but others aren't so lucky"

All fair comment. I guess I'm in a pretty secure situation with savings, two different jobs and enough insurance to last a lifetime. The 'Daily Panic' does make quite a good read I must admit, today I was hoping to mow my lawn, but it is a bit too wet. An interesting point you raise however is something I thought about today. Once you HAVE bought a house (and as long as you aren't in danger of repossession) then the housing market valuations have much less personal significance. I have paid my money to my deposit and signed up to the mortgage payments. Nothing can change either of those now. If my house goes up in value, well when (if!) I want to move to a new house it will be more expensive too, so I wont be much better off. If my house goes down in value if I want to move to a new house, well that one will be cheaper too, so I won't be any worse off. If you buy a house as an investment then of course things are very different

I've been busy for the last 30 odd months :-)

70% mortgaged, 10 year fixed rate mortgage of 5.4%, plus overpaying by 10% a year. So mortgage free by the time the fixed rate expires. [i'm afraid a large proportion of it is not yours, it's the bank's, maybe 70 to 90% of it (depending on your equity stake). ] Actually that isn't really true, it is all subject to written contract between myself and the bank where if I keep up my end of the deal (mortgage payments) they have to leave me be. Also I'm not 100% sure but I have never heard of anyone being refused the SVR once any special mortgage 'deal' has expired. Not even at Northern Rock (although they are trying to discourgage it). Compare this to renting where usually you have 3-6 months notice for being removed from your home, at the whim of the landlord (who will probably then keep your deposit due to some scuff marks on the wall)

I see what you are saying, no I wouldn't buy shares if I absolutely knew 100% that they were going to go down in value (and that the yield on them would not make up for this decrease in value)- instead I would probably drip feed money in over several years as I know that I probably wouldn't be able to call the bottom. But buying a home is not necessarily a financial investment, it is also a lifestyle investment. It all depends on how you put a value on things. How much would you pay to be happy?

i'm with djhope, although houses aren't that 'bad' an investment, take a look at the fidelity market chronical, which compares cash, property, bonds and shares. Over a 70 year period property is second, shares are first, and cash is last. Lets also not forget inflation, my large mortgage is happily inflating away over the years, typically over 25 yeras your mortgage value at least halves in value. Rent of course generally keeps pace with inflation. For a true comparison you need to look at the total Cost of Ownership over a 25 year period (heck you could even assume that you move a couple of times), compared to the to Cost of Renting over the same 25 year period (include the cost of planned and forced moves). An over-riding factor here will be inflation, money in your bank gets inflated away, money you borrow (which you probably gear up with your savings) gets inflated away, rent rates should keep up with inflation, and house prices should beat inflation (in the long run!). I honestly don't know which one will be cheaper but I do know that it will be nothing like the stark figures given at the start of this thread.

Bull, Bear, whatever, and yes this is probably my first post, but i just had to join in as most people seemed to have missed a huge point about buying. I bought in 2005 and my house cost a lot of money, if I had kept that money in a bank then now I would now have more money, and yes certainly the rental costs of some place would be cheaper than the overall cost of owning the house. But I now have a house, it is a nice house, I like it, and it is mine. I built a new conservatory on the back of it, I like sitting in there. I repainted all the rooms and even fitted some new flooring. Everyday I come home from work and think "gosh, this is a nice house". I don't care if I go into negative equity, I don't care that I could have more money sat in the bank earning interest, and I'm certainly not worried about some landlord deciding to sell up and kick me out (which was actually one of the factors for buying in 2005) There is more to life than money

What shocks me is how the MASSIVE rise in house prices no longer loks so massive if you take inflation into account. I found some rough graphs... Whatprice - Housing Prices