Fancypants
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Posts posted by Fancypants
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Reminds me of Dr Fox - "there's no evidence for it, but it is scientific fact"
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No avatar sounds the least of Monty's worries.
But good luck with all this rum business Monty, I do hope it works out.
It has been both fascinating and highly instructive to observe Monty's gradual transformation since he first joined this site.
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not seen you about these parts for a while partner, you been busy?
I'm lurking hereabouts... tend to be a lot more relaxed about things these days since the winds are now working in our direction. Plus its a great deal harder to get on at work now - a mixed blessing I guess.
The invisible hand still goes about its work though
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I reckon 3.2%, just to give it the added kick in the teeth of being a new record (under the new regime)
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I'm in shared ownership, my housing association claims that it hasn't really noticed much change in it's volumes of sales.
I was of course speaking to the sales department, so I am not sure if they can be trusted much more than an estate agent.
I am very close to someone who works in the accounting dept of a large London HA. I can assure you that they are (and have for around a year) seeing a precipitous fall in sales volumes.
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Saltburn is a nice place to live. Guisborough is OK.
Middlesborough is very grim in places, but OK on the some of the outlying suburbs. Same for Redcar.
Billingham and Stockton are ok-ish. but I wouldn't personally live in either, or indeed Middlesbrough or Redcar.
Actually, scratch the above if you are single or merely a couple. They are not too bad really. I guess I wouldn't bring a family up in them though if I wasn't really well off and couldn't afford to live in the very best parts. The reason being that they are low aspirational in many parts of them and I would be concerned my kids might develop this lack of aspiration.
I would personally reccomend Saltburn. Or Guisborough as a second choice. Simply because social deprivation is in much less evidence
Finally, avoid the small towns and villages from Loftus up to Redcar. Grim is the only word I can use to describe many parts of them with only one or two notabl exceptions
its all about Skinningrove baby!
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all this chat about fuel prices being too high seems faintly ridiculous when one considers the amount of traffic still clogging up our roads. It would seem from this that the price of fuel is actually still too low.
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a glimpse into the future (dated 9 June?)
ARLA: Average rent down 9%Monday, 09 Jun 2008 00:01
ARLA: Average rent down 9% Printer friendly version
The price of rented accommodation in the UK property market has experienced a sharp downward correction, despite ongoing turmoil caused by the liquidity crisis.
While potential property buyers defer purchases – waiting to see if prices will fall further – and remain in rented accommodation demand for rental accommodation has been on the increase.
As such rent has been peaking at record high levels.
However, this trend appears now to be reversing with the average cost of a rented house down seven per cent, and the average apartment nine per cent, according to new research from the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA).
"We are seeing corrections in individual locations throughout the country," said Ian Potter, head of operations for ARLA.
"The main cause of these is the developments of new blocks of two-bedroomed flats coming on-stream. In many places this has had a positive effect as it has allowed the rental market to provide stability in housing at a time of volatility in the sales market.
"It also demolishes the myth of soaring rent levels. As before in volatile times, the rental market is proving to be the white knight for housing as a whole."
Average rents for a house range from £3,000 a month in London to £931 a month outside the south-east.
For flats, the rental difference is £2,000 a month in central London, £854 in the south-east and £585 a month elsewhere.
However, demand for property still outstrips supply in some areas.
The proportion of letting agents reporting this imbalance at its highest in Greater London and the south-east, followed by prime central London and the rest of the country.
Overall, the proportion of agents reporting more tenants than there are properties available to rent remains at a historically high level of 39 per cent.
In further good news for landlords void periods have continued to shorten. This quarter they have fallen from 24 to 22 days.
Tenants are still staying in properties for longer for an average of 16.3 months against 16.1 months in the previous quarter.
Finally, the average capital asset values of rented houses have fallen by 2.4 per cent in prime central London, one in the rest of London and the south-east and 5.1 per cent in the rest of the UK.
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Elliott has always been good. Hardly surprising given how much time he must spend on here...
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Wow.
The million-strong group of monkeys formally known as "Roger Bootle" has, by complete chance, written an article of some poise, cogency and validity! I never thought I would see the day...
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Have you been hiding in a Yorkshireman's trousers?
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Hello ladies. Wanna bury your snout in my trough?
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oh, for a reconstruction of the Nuremburg trials with a whole new cast...
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It is not a recession, ok?
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Is the deposit a sign of a binding contract in Spain?
If so, it might be too late to gazunder (assuming the Spanish legal system has something akin to Specific Performance)?
I really have no idea. I just thought a threat to walk away (abandoning the £20k in the process) might actually motivate the developers knock off a hefty sum off the outstanding balance.
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How does everyone reckon a spot of brutal gazundering would go down?
My uncle has put down a £20k deposit on an apartment in Murcia (this happened while we were still somewhat estranged, be assured I would have counselled vigourously against it otherwise)... and is now getting hammered by the falling value of his property here (the balance will come from the sale of that) and the falling euro.
I feel like suggesting he should play a little hardball with the developers and threaten to walk away unless they shave a big hunk off the balance to complete the sale. I reckon if I do the sums with him, he might realise he can afford to do this given that he stands to lose more than £20k through the currency shift and the drop in UK housing if he doesn't.
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I've decided I prefer 'Il Durche'.
Nice. I trust the trains will be running on time.
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Where did you see this boss?
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yes. theres still time for him to come out fighting and beat down, what is a pathetic challenger.
but hes in the wrong camp and totally going ahead into the teeth of the storm. not an ideal leader.
trying to fix something so massive and so costly its going to bring him down and the country maybe to its knees.
he should simply tell it like it is. show some truth. its not his fault, so much as the greedy buyers, banks and media too.
but hes in a great position to play the 'this country needs some hard truths' card. and gordons the medicine for the hangover.
we have 'all played our part in' by telling people the truth, that the housing market has to die before the economy can breathe again
is probably something people actually, suprisingly would maybe want to hear right now. but he could also add the young families unable
to function in such a badly overpriced market, and that he will let market fundamentals bring the market down to a 'natural. sustainable and fair' level.
and if those gekko tories say ANYTHING he can remind them all about the massive tory party debt, the introduction of btl by the tories and the key probllem, the tory council stock sell off.
he could turn the whole thing around if he could stop pandering to the speculators of the country and reminded himself
of his true position. thats the leader of a country of CITIZENS, not just people looking for easy money.
c'mon gorden. dont get beat by the tories ffs.
Excellent call Fred. Sadly Gordon and the political orthodoxy that surrounds him are woefully lacking in bottle.
Mind you, I think the approach you suggest will grow in popularity in the coming years. We're gonna see some pretty seismic shifts in the political and social consensus as this whole thing plays painfully out. I'm just concerned that more unpleasant forms of extreme politics will benefit.
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You'll NEVER get a serving politician to admit that there's nothing that they can do, or that things are only going to get worse.
That would just be political suicide. Why? Because people are just gullible. all it would take would be for the opposition leader to then stand up and say "Well, WE know how to fix everything. Vote for us, and it will all be ok".
And the people would fall for it too.
who was it that said we get the government wee deserve...?
thanks ICBINB for helping this thread back on track (I suppose I knew that entitling it "Gordon Brown" was guaranteed to bring out the rabid Brown-haters).
Lepista - you may be right, but I suspect that a government would be better to "manage expectations" a little better, rather than desperately issuing empty assurances that they'll solve the problems. Unfortunately, Brown would seem to have swallowed his own publicity of the last decade.
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May I just add -
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I thought that IRs went up in 1990 before the ERM exit.
But..I can't find any graphs in Google to back that up.
Does anyone have something they can post to prove or disprove my view?
Indeed they did (the section of the BoE website showing the historical data is currently down, so I can't show you the link) - but folk memory tends to conflate Black Wednesday with the HPC/recession/fall of the Major government instead.
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Thanks for the kind words Dog
with respect to the causes of the Tories' defeat in '97, obviously these aren't easy to precisely discern in retrospect. However, if we dismiss the economy as a factor (understandable, as recovery was in progress by 1997) then maybe Brown can afford to be more sanguine and just let things take their course. I think governments are more able to withstand sleaze than being suddenly revealed as incompetent/inadequate.
I suppose, to put it another way, I am trying to point out that HPC/recession does not automatically equal electoral defeat - whereas a government trying vainly to battle with the overwhelming influence of international money markets is far more inimical to its own health. Perhaps the resulting loss of self-esteem was what allowed the sleaze and in-fighting to grow in prominence - one might even say that a very similar phenomenon is becoming apparent now.
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It seems to me that our PM has gravely mis-read how to deal with the current economic situation, and is undermining his electoral prospects as a direct result of this.
No doubt he remains somewhat fixated on the fall of the last government, and the many reasons for it. In common with much of the electorate, his memories of the last HPC/recession would seem to have become rather muddled and so his determination to "fix" the current problem is ironically going to lead him down the same road as his Tory predecessors. This determination is characteristic of all governments, which tend to over-estimate their own ability to influence such things, more so now than ever before, I suspect.
Let us consider 1992. The Tories actually won a general election that year, in the teeth of a recession and what was then the biggest HPC experienced in the UK. When folk reminisce about these times, they mistakenly link the 15% rates only briefly touched upon later that year with the HPC, when the whole ERM farrago was actually long after that particular housing bubble had burst. This shows that a government can win an election in spite of grim economic conditions and falling house prices.
What destroyed the government's credibility in the eyes of the electorate were those events of "Black Wednesday" where public money was deployed to shore up the £ for political reasons (as much to combat inflation as to keep us in the ERM - given that the UK was in the latter primarily to help with the former). The government was terminally damaged for two reasons - firstly, the enormous loss of public money for no apparent gain (except to Soros and his ilk) but also because the government was revealed as ultimately impotent in the face of the international money markets, that it itself had helped to nourish and nurture. The Tory administration had over-reached itself, and in doing so exposed both its limitations and its arrogance - neither quality being especially endearing to the electorate.
My fundamental point being - perhaps, for the sake of his own electoral prospects (surely the one thing that he cares about above all others), Brown would be best advised to simply let the housing market correct of its own accord. One suspects that Joe Public would actually be happier to accept this if Brown at least tacitly admitted that he was powerless to change it, rather than steam in promising he could rescue it, waste billions in public funds, and suffer blatant and humiliating failure in the process.
Not only would this probably be advisable for the government, but I'm sure most of you would agree that it would be best for the long-term future of the UK too. Sadly, I doubt such humility can be expected from any administration, particularly one that has won 3 elections and been in power for 11 years.
Today's Stock Market Thread
in House prices and the economy
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My how things have changed, that we no longer see 20 page threads devoted to poor but not devestating days on the stock market. Let's see how this one fares.
Link
(banks & miners fall? Deflation?
)