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House Price Crash Forum

Charlzy

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Everything posted by Charlzy

  1. Thanks for all the comebacks. I'm off on holiday to Slovenia in 2 weeks time and will see how we like the place... It does sound like a great palce to buy as long as you avoid the major earthquake zones...
  2. Dogbox Where was this? We're looking around Lake Bled and/or clsoe to the Italian border.
  3. We're booked to go to Slovenia in August. The Cape Verde option has come up on the blind side and just doing a bit of research now. Many thanks Dogbox and Soup... You don't say much about Slovenia. What put you off that one?
  4. I'm looking at buying a small place in either Cape Verde or Slovenia as a holiday home that me and my young family can enjoy over the next 10-20 years. Obviously we'd like to rent it out when we're not there. Does anybody here have any experience or knowledge of buying/living in either of these 2 locations. many thanks...
  5. It's articles like this that make me believe that we're already in a declining market. When the market is truly strong there is no need to dig around in these kinds of stats to prove that everything is okay because increasing values are so obvious. In the last few months expert after expert have been clinging to these kinds of reports in an attempt to convince everyone that all is okay. There will be blips along the way but I suspect it is going to be a long and slow downward spiral from here.
  6. 100 years ago, if you'd have said the British Empire would be finished in a few decades then people would have laughed at you. The US has been living on borrowed time for a while now. Super powers are never crushed by opponents they generally rot from within. You only have to look at the "have it now", "me me me" society in the UK to understand that the cult of the individual, so prevalent in the west, makes pretty much any major, long term war impossible. Power balances shift throughout history. It will always be so. China and India will become more powerful but it will not be a smooth ride to the top. There are many problems for them to overcome yet. The two crunch moments will be 1 after the Olympics (which the Chinese believe will be the start of a new era in the world) and 2 when the first stirrings of dscontent occur within the population. Historically governments look for a small war with which to rally the population and distract them. This is when things will become problematic for both China and the world order. Many people talk about Taiwan as being the crucible of these changes. Maybe, maybe not, but the question will be whether China can bring about their will or whether they siffer a US-Vietnam/USSR/Afghanistan black eye.
  7. The birth-rate in all nations has been seen to decline in proportion to female literacy rates. Education (as well as infrastructure and opportunity) is the key to managing population. Western nations have a huge problem with falling populations.
  8. In Reigate 3 years ago there wasn't even tie for the for sale signs to go up. Anything advertised in the papers were already sold by the time it hit your door mat. You basically ahd to turn up on the day a property was listed and offer the full asking price to get the property you wanted. These days it has all changed. These new builds TS is talking about are going to hang around for a long time. There's always money moving in from London but they want period hosues, not these new builds.
  9. This is exactly right. In 1993 I was studying for my PhD and My wife and I considered buying a house. In fact we had the surveryors report done and everything. All the homes we went to look at had people in with negative equity. I was so nervous about it. In the end we called it off. The banks couldn't do enough to try and get us to change our minds. Nobody was interested in property at all. I couldn't believe that anyone would buy it off us. Didn't actually buy until 2002. We got a small 3 bed terrace in Surrey. We knocked them down from 180k to 160k. An EA tried to tell us it was now worth £270k I laughed all the way to my front door before putting my toe up his backside and sending him out into the street. We had our second child this year and suddenly we feel that the hosue is too small and we need a garden. I look at the next jump up and it just seems way out of reach. Only a crash could allow us to move on without signing our life away. I keep telling my friends who are about to embark on BTL that prices can't go up again until they come down. You can't have unprecedented rises for year after year and then 18 months of flat prices and then huge rises again. They keep telling me that now is the time.
  10. I know a BTL professional who had retired to Mallorca when the last crash happened. He relocated back to UK within 6 months and says that he made more money during the crash than at any other time. He's back in mallorca now, i wonder for how long.
  11. I'm not sure if this has been thought through properly. having read the book "The Long Emergency" based on peak oil theory. People will desert urban spaces. There will be no work there as we know it now.
  12. Doogie, could it be that there are more divorces and people living alone than back then so more proeprty is needed? Also the two income family means that there is mroe money in households so more money tos epnd on houses (hence nobody is actually any better off).
  13. House prices go in cycles. I've now seen a couple of them in my lifetime. Despite the ups and downs the trend is gently upwards. Is this because of population growth? As population declines (a serious issue never discussed by politicans) and the spectre of peak oil hovers, will the trend for house prices be down?
  14. Hi JY I think the problem is a failure in innovation. The car, TV, home computer, refridgerator are things that have changed our lives massively. These are vital innovations. Now that our societies are no longer so innovative they have to rely on design and lifestyle as a way of selling us the same things. So we want a new TV becasue its flat screen, or remote control or just a nicer colour with better looking dials and buttons. What we need are true innovations.
  15. I have to say that this really winds me up. US rates are going higher; inflation is on the horizon; there are whispers of an attack on sterling... IRs have to go up and yet in the press so-called experts are predicting a drop. Everything points to the fact that they have to go up. BUT I am cynical enough to know that this might not happen. If The BoE do not put rates up by the end of the year then we have to ask what their real raison d'etre is. The BoE should not be there to protect fools who have borrowed too much money.
  16. This is a very serious topic. Oil underpins ourlives and I'm sure that in the future people will loook back on our time on the planet as the Oil Age. If you look at the history of civilizations limited resources have almost always fallen in price due to innovation. Once the resource becomes scarce and expensive someone comes along and finds a better way of doing things without the need for the resource. $100 a barrel might be the best thing that could happen. It would force the hand of innovation.
  17. I don't go for the soft landing... Markets are sentiment driven (especially the house market). It is this sentiment that investors speculate upon. Sentiment went too high and will go too low, that's how market's work. I do think that some of the figures being discussed are too high. Anything is possible but I think a fall of over 20% over the next few years is not going to happen. 3%-5% a year for 3 years, with high(er) inflation making everything else catch up is my guess. In relative terms they will ahve plummeted.
  18. Down 3%-5% each year for the next 3 years...
  19. In the last property crash a friend's father came out of retirement in Spain and returned to the UK after fellow BTL'ers and developer friends told him that prices were plummeting. He was already a millionaire (from speculating property) and claims that the crash almost tripled his fortune. He said that he made even mroe money in the crash than during the boom.
  20. Can someone help me??? Why are there so many people talking up the market? I read a lot about people's house value but so what? I am lucky enough to have a small 3 bed end of terrace. Now we have 2 kids it seems alittle small. We have good jobs but the next move is light years away. In fact I could add another 100k to the mortage and it really wouldn't buy us anything that much bigger. It just doesn't seem worth it. I have a house and would love to see house prices fall. FTB's want house prices to fall, anybody who wants to move to a bigger house wants them to fall and even BTL'ers I know want them to fall. A friend's father made himself rich out of the last property crash by buying up repo's and renting them out. Surely the only people who don't want them to come down are people looking to down size and/or leave the country. It seems to me that so many people will be better off if hosue prices come down so why is the market ebing talked up so much?
  21. Spot on Charlie. Successive generations seem to have less time for their kids and overcompensate for this by spoiling them. This has led to an impoverished sense of respect and duty as each generation has come forwards into adulthood. The west is in decline and it is incurable.
  22. I totally agree with the sentiments of the original post. Mr late 1960s early 1970s had a wealth of opportunities. The country still worked as it should. My family tell me stories of leaving one job in the morning and walking into another in the afternoon. Kids got carted around wherever their parents decided to go. These days kids dictate to most parents (becasue they are allowed to). But (for the most part) Mr 1970s had proper social housing. He also had a union and a community. His family lived close by and he ahdn't been beaten into depression by the myth of the brand name. Then along came the 1980s. He got his own house on the estate, changed the front door to elt the neighbours know he owned it and 20 years later we find ourselves here, today... There's a lot of talk about stealth wealth and debt on this site and it all stared in the 1980s.
  23. Sorry ZZ, you're entitled to 'believe' whatever you want but nobody has a right to own anything (houses, cars, whatever...). It's the "Right To Buy" rip off that has got us in this situation in the first place. As for your reference to Ethopia I'll take it as a joke. What are your reasons for believing that everyone should have their own home (I take it you mean own).
  24. Nobody wants to live with their parents once they become an adult. Sorry, but there's more to life than saving your money. Rent is not money down the drain if it allows you to live as you please. I hope prices come down. I would love to see a HP crash but I don't believe that people have a right to buy. Why should they? If you can afford something then you can buy it, if not...
  25. A recession benefits people who keep their job and people who haved saved their money. The people who lose out are those who have over extended themselves and frittered their money away on the trinkets and ephemera of contemporary living. It migth hurt in the short term but a recession (short and sharp) always benefits the economy in the long run. There is also a selfish motivation... A lot fo people over 30 will have seen the economic cycle go round at least once and realise the opportunities that a recession offers. Position yourself correctly at the end of the recession and you can catch the up turn when and if it ever arrives.
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