Kyoto
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Posts posted by Kyoto
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London rents are shocking. I don't understand who are are paying them....
Even on £50k+, you're going to miss £1500+ per month in post tax income. Paying that for somewhere that still aint that salubrious would break my heart.
I agree with the above poster that buying actually starts to add up if you aren't that fussy. We are currently negotiating and 1 or 2 bedroom flats commutable to London in the £140k range.
With the required 20% deposit, that puts us down at around £500 per month mortgage on the base rate tracker we have a work benefit.
London is an absolute cess pit of a place, but I've been able to earn much more than I could outside and have socked it away so I can make my escape soon mortgage free similar to Orbital.
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Playing devils advocate though, mortgage debt is 'better' as in theory you are swapping the £120k mortgage debt for an asset worth £120k.
On top of that, you're getting a yield from that asset in terms of having a roof over your head and not paying rent.
The same can't be said of spending a £10k loan on nothing in particular....
Flaw in the plan is that the house obviously implies much larger figures, longer terms, and uncertainty about value of the asset, but they are still a different kettle of fish.
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And we want what? A government that ploughs ahead with big fights on minor issues?
I don't understand why "U-Turns" are considered so negative.
Surely reacting to public opinion is a good thing in principle.
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Be careful. I bought a flat with 73 years left. Quoted £8k to renew. 5 years later when I came to sell, renewing the lease cost me £17k! Lesson learnt. I wouldn't buy another leasehold with less than 85 years left.
Eek. It's the personal anecdotes like this I am interested in as I've read a fair bit about it. So thanks.
Did you not find the £17k fee negotiable? After all, you didn't have to renew at all did you? Seems like a battle of wills to me as a lease renewal in 60 odd years is no good whatsoever to the freeholder, right?
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We are looking at a flat but have been told the lease is 68 years.
Our mortgage company are fine with it, but would you guys say this was short enough to be concerned about?
What is involved in extending the lease? The EA has suggested around £8k, but we can't bundle the transaction in with the purchase as seller is in a massive rush and therefore pricing quite keenly.
How negotiable is it? I would have thought the lease holder would have been happy with £3k today than nothing for the next 68 years!
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Doesn't Zoopla also have last sold information.
Last time I tried the LR, I couldn't find the last price resource, it just keep asking me 15 quid for a copy of all the docs.
^
Case in point, an HPCer doesn't know this information is available.
Type "house prices" into Google. It's freely available.
Wish this was more widely known.
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Not lost the job (yet), but my pay has been cut in real terms, and the standard of living has reduced - money doesn't go as far (particularly when travelling is involved), and the general worry about what the hell will happen has had an even bigger negative effect than any material drops. And not being able to get a sensibly-priced house means that my standard of living isn't where it could be anyway.
You seem to be trying to defend the indefensible.
I just think that the anger about bankers salaries is misplaced somewhat.
There's lots of reasons that contributed more to our current mess than high salaries in the city.
e.g. credit bubble, lax regulation, bloated public sector, unbalanced economy, public sector debt, government bail outs, trade deficitis, benefit dependency, property bubble.
People are complaining about the bonuses, but don't seem in any way angry about the system which has contributed to the current mess and still continues to exist.
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Question to all of the people in this thread and others who have ever made any negative comment about these nebulous "bankers"....
Since the financial crisis, have you lost your job or had your pay cut?
Has your personal living standard gone down since the financial crisis of 2008?
Genuine question as I don't see where all of the vitriol is coming from... I suspect there is more than a touch of green eyed monster in some of this banker bashing.
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You fail to understand the point Chuck. For those who have been the victim of years of HPI there has to be justice.
People losing their jobs doesn't really equate to justice for us.
The vast majority of people don't care about house prices, they just wanted to provide for themselves and their families, and they had to play the game by buying into the rapidly rising market.
Lots of people were silly spending so much money and taking on so much debt, but I'm sure they didn't buy houses to be malicious to you or anybody else.
Any STRer sitting of tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds in the bank, or who has maintained a good job paying above average salary doesn't really have a right to wish bad things on the man in the street whilst preaching about justice.
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Who buys shared ownership? It's the absolute worst of both worlds!
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A friend of mine is probably one of the 15 since he is a council chief exec and earns well over 200k.
From his descriptions of the long hours strife and pressure involved I wouldn't do that job for the same money. Being CEO of a council is not a sedate paper shuffling role, your responsible for an organisation that is as large and complex as blue chip company. One of the reasons they pay these apparently "astronomical" salaries is to attract real talent from outside the civil service (this is my friends first public sector job).
I still don't think you can justify this salary. A sales guy or some employee who brings in lots of money for his private sector could be worth £infinity, but I just don't see how can that salary can be justified if you aren't producing revenue.
Even in the banks, nobody earns £200k base salary. They're paid in the form of a bonus which is intimately linked to the revenue that the person and the group produces.
You could say he is responsible for saving money rather than spending it, but when was the last time you heard about a council savings lots of money and cutting council tax or their government grants whilst delivering the same level of service?
If they want to even think about drawing this sort of money, it should be much more transparently tied into performance - reducing costs and tax payer customer satisfaction.
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LS6 - 46 new to the market vs 57 this year - 23% increase.
This is a better statistic than total on the market as it seperates out the effect of the frozen market.
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But this in turn was fuelling a spending and borrowing spree, and by the 1990s bubbles had developed in the stock and property markets.
"Land value was unrealistic and the government tried to build its way out, debt ratcheted up and the productivity of the economy really suffered," said the EIU's Mr Innes-Ker.
Sounds familiar.
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Hmm this is very relevant to us as we are about to sign on the dotted line for one of these - a base rate (+0%) tracker.
With last 2 years of falls and this as an option, it's finally made a house affordable for me.
As per Andys post above, we are operating on a calculation that the BIK will be "30% of the difference between 0.5% and 4.75%". Guess I need to double check!
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I was just about to exchange contracts on a flat when I noticed that the service charge and ground rent that had been quoted previously for a year on the website and brochure was now only for 6 months.
When viewing the property, I had queried the service charge as it had seemed a little low but the estate agent checked with the vendor and it was confirmed. I made an offer and have only now discovered, 3 months down the line and about to sign the contract, that this charge will now be double what I was expecting.
I have spoken to the EA and he was surprised as I was - he has sent me the initial documents from the seller where they had written down the service charge and ground rent per annum, but was infact only for 6 months - surely they knew that?!
I'm not too sure what to do now as I feel I have been misled, but still want the property. Should I ask for money off the agreed selling price to cover these extra costs? Did the seller do this on purpose to make the flat look more attractive??
Because it was their mistake, I definetly think it's reasonable to ask for 1 or 2 years of the service charge knocked off the service price.
You may have to be prepared to walk though.
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If you think that renting in Britain is bad, then I would advise you not to rent in Japan. On moving in, a tenant will typically pay the first six months rent up front. Plus two months deposit, theoretically returnable. Plus two months rent of what is known as key money, essentially a payment to the landlord to be allowed to move in. Plus they typically have to pay for a guarantor company, although what they actually do is a mystery, it certainly isn't a form of insurance for unpaid rent. When the two year contract finally comes to an end, you have to pay another months rent plus contract fees to be allowed to sign a new contract.
All in all a tenant must pay nearly a years rent up front, before they can set foot in the place.
I am in Tokyo at the moment and have the potential offer of a job out here.
I can tell you it is pretty expensive with the strong yen and the weak pound. I bet property rental prices are frightful.
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"Mostly it's compensation for loss of rent for flats. The biggest was 120m yen (£900,000). The claim was that the entire apartment building was worthless because one person committed suicide there. So they have to pay to rebuild it."
Jesus, don't give them any ideas!
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Aside from the house, what a great post!
Not for everyone..... but certainly for some. I tweeted this a few months ago and it is still as relevant as ever. In a free society, you do not need to ask permission to house yourself. You build a house. All that is required is that you can defend it and it does not adversely affect the lives of others. 150 years ago it was all the rage in America and millions took up the challenge to "go west". This house does exactly that on another brutal and unforgiving landscape. The UK State.Built on arable land, without permission, and it shows that you can be free if you have the courage to be free. It took the builder 4 months, a chainsaw, a hammer, £3000 and some hard work.
"Oh look, a stone age hippy" I hear. From the very same people who happily pay £2000 a week to stay at Centreparks. "A hobbits cave", say those who will spend their entire lives in hock to a banker, the council and their desks to pay for it all whilst travelling underground to work every day. And what remains when they die from stress, the all powerful state will grab what little it didn't manage to grab whilst you were alive.
Low impact, almost no cost and the chance to actually live a life worth living instead of being the tiniest cog in a brutal system, grinding towards inevitable death. Of course, you may consider this a pitiful existence in the same way Abramovich sneers at you in your Barretts house on a Barretts estate from his super yacht. You may consider it hard work in the same way that you now work 12 hours a day, 300 days a year whilst peasants in the middle ages toiled for just 140 days a year and partied the rest.
And you have to ask yourself exactly where humanity is headed when we actually have to protect the last few remaining truly free people on the planet from us, the "civilised."
Ouch, that hurts!
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Ah, the Washington Monument Syndrome comes to Manchester.
Start by cutting all the 'services' that tax payers would not notice disappearing - except perhaps terms of less bureaucracy and council tax bills?
Nah, slash something visible and useful that will p*ss people off.
Sickening. Next time I need a wee I will do it in the doorway of the (no doubt grand) council offices.
Didn't know it had a name. Great!
I bet Manchester council do over 1000 seperate things. They could cut the top 990 things and nobody would care, but instead they cut items in the top 10.
I wonder how many public toilets the CEOs salary could pay for!
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how very clever...man needs a house to live in so that is the demand.
Lucky for us THAT isnt the demand that controls prices....
I never said it is.
The point is, the longer the market freeze goes on, the more people are building in the wings.
Over the last 2 years, how many people might have had a child, or saved enough to buy, or moved job and are waiting to buy in the new location?
There is of course pent up demand to sell, but in a falling market the demand to buy is more significant support as most people will not want to sell for a loss.
I am close to turning bull (if I'm not already speaking it!)
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That is an astounding number of page views!
Even as HPCers, you must acknowledge that there is pent up demand building slowly.
Lots of people would like to buy, sell, or move if they could.....
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I love MBNA - they are always giving me very lengthy interest free periods on purchases.
For example if I spend more than £250 in one transaction before 28 Feb its interest free until December - transactions less than £250 are interest free until September. And these offers keep rolling in all the time - even though I always pay it off on the last possible date before the interest free period ends.
If forcing the bad debtors to pay a bit more helps me continue to get these deals - then bring it on MBNA!
Any discussion I ever read on credit cards online seems to be filled with people like yourself and others who always pay their balances in full and take advantage of the balance transfer and offers.
Can I ask, is it really worth the effort to gain a few hundred pounds interest free for 2 months? That must be worth about 50p a month at the moment?
SOMEONE must be actually leaving a balance on the card else why would the credit card companies bother! You wouldn't believe as an Internet user though.
The only thing I would find value in is the various consumer insurance and fraud protection, particularly when traveling.
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Thought I would have a flutter on house prices to make a bit of extra cash from the falls, but seems that the markets are at least as bearish as I am!
These are basically the future prices (in 000s) that the market expects, based on the Halifax index.
The good thing is that these guys (who are actually risking money) are usually more accurate than all of the VI's combined.
Edit - bad maths!
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I'm just guessing here, but probably business and first class fares have shot up long haul, but for economy you have the drop in demand counteracting the increase in fuel costs. And with all the silly national airlines still being subsidised there isn't a supply squeeze. I've also looked into flying from somewhere like Istanbul to avoid the long haul tax out of europe, but there are no savings.
Not in my narrow experience. I fly business to Hong Kong and Tokyo roughly once a year, and I think it's fell in a straight line for the last 5 years. I remember paying around £8k on BA back in 2004, around £6k in 2008. Last week it was around £3800 in on Virgin Upper including cars at both ends.
The fares do vary a lot though, so maybe that's just been luck and the company looking for better deals.
Good New For Btl As Rents Soar 17.6% In London
in House prices and the economy
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The point is thought that this is substantially less than the market rent in the London bubble.
I'm looking at paying £1000+ for somewhere habitable, or having the option of paying around £500 mortgage.
For me, I think this is coming out of low interest rates + price falls in first time buyer properties + a very real rise in rents. There's a gap opening up there where it makes sense to buy in London.
(Our figures are scewed by having the base rate + 0% tracker but I think same applies to anybody else to a lesser degree.)