LondonToManchester

You can ask your landlord for a longer agreement i.e 5 years why don't you? I am a landlord and would gladly accept.

Know your rights. If boiler is broken and landlord does not fix: 1) get 3 quotes to fix. 2) pick middle one. 3) Get fixed and reduce money from rent You can do this legally.

What if the person leaves?

I think if we introduced the following rule it would give everyone piece of mind and let them get on with there lives, without worrying about house prices. If you are 30 and earn less than £40k you cannot afford to buy and should spend your life renting, Unless you have already bought Just to make it clear if you earn £39k at age 30 and £40k at 31 you should NOT buy. Now when you hit 30 and you know you will never buy you can plan around this. Try and get renting contracts fixed for 2 years to keep your moving / agent costs down. We need to get away from the mantality that everyone has the right to buy. NO they don't only people who can afford to meet the cost should buy. Look at all the benifits ranting provides i.e never having to worry about the boiler repair bill. What do people think?

To make money why else? You can't live of it!

TBH i would be lieing if I said I did not like the feel of power owning property gives me I know I'm sad

Dude I'm asain it's in my Blood (Joke)

Computer Programmer C++/Java I love programming just hate all the ******** around it. Pays well esp in London.

Theres some good advice there. I'm going to be 30 this year and I hope that by the time I'm 50 I can give up the 9 to 5 have someone else manage my properties and just enjoy life. My other thought is that one day I will have kids hopefully and I don't want them to have to work as hard as I have to. So once I'm gone my property can help support them.

Man I wish I could keep out of all markets. I always worry I might miss out.

It can be disheartning when a market does not go the way you want it to or expect it! I know how that feel

Around March last year alot of the long term bears (I think also including this site administrater(could be wrong)) bought properties. They created threads basically saying that they had bought but still thought properties were going to fall. They manage to pick the bottom of the market and have probably made quite abit of money (on paper). I should have taken this as a massive buy sign and increased the size of my portfolio. I also should have listen to the people on this site 3 years ago telling me to buy gold. What about the rest of you?

Quick q how far are we from 2007 peak prices? Have we passed them yet?

Yea but you will stay there for many years not be forced to move along after 6-12 months! Plus you can make it a home something renters can't do!!

/Cartman voice GOD DAM HIPPY

Yea there is always a risk tenant could leave. so you got to weigh up pros and cons

1 ) poor FTB have been priced out for ages BTL took there place long time ago. They should work harder. 2 ) Interest rates were close to 6% a while back did not stop house prices increasing 3 ) Not as bad as people thought it would be no more 3 million drama 4 ) I am still BTL and making a small profit. I plan to never sell the properties whats not viable? 5 ) Thats what you think HPI occured last year when everything was messed up this year everything is better so bigger HPI?

Must make schooling a problem?

Only one of my tenants lost his jobs. The council/housing paid his rent for a few months before the guy got another job. Planning a 5-10% increase in rent this year the price of videogames is going up!

Dude you still renting?

Unemployment has started to fall and the economy will be out of recession later today. The banks are even starting to lend again on BTL properties. Everything points to prices being higher this time next year than what they are today. BUY NOW or risk being price out FOREVER. We are starting to see a divide in the UK between people who have property and the rest. Renting is all good if you plan on never starting a family and are able to move every 6 months!

The agent I use charges £25 + Vat for a reference, it's perfactly legal to do so. I don't like it either but what can you do?

Well guys I have decided to stop contributing to the site. I wish everyone one good luck including the bears and hope no matter what happens you all end up happy. Goodluck!

Oh yes I'm sure it does! But what I have found is that the tenants these guys give me stay alot longer. I think this is partly due to after having paid a large fee not wanting to pay more fees. The cheaper agents just provide crap paperwork things not being signed so then I have to go to the hastle of chasing it up. Thats why I use the more expensive agent. BTW I am in no way saying cheaper agants offer a crapper service, I'm just saying thats the case in Didsbury Manchester

Other than food what other essential commodity is on it's way up? A year ago I was paying £1.15 for petrol this morning I paid £1. Seems good to me! Edit to add all inflation numbers seem to be falling so how are living costs increasing? Some would say that the basket of items does not represent real inflation which I partly agree with. But the basket does represent near term changes in interest rates.