Scooter

Oh dear PG, I seem to have upset you! What is this property guru stuff about by the way? Does you fantasy about hotlines to the MPC extend to thinking you run some kind of multi million pound property empire? Hmm, I think that is about a likely as you actually being Hulk Hogan. Like I said, just a sad little waster sitting behind a screen trying to inflate his own ego most likely... S.

See PG's comments yesterday on hairy bikers (unless they have all been deleted) for some explanation... He seems to be having some kind of crisis about his sexuality, albeit YMCA and the Village People is a bit retro... S.

Just curious mate-don't get too upset about it. I just see this sad little bloke whose only accomplishments (in his own mind) are what he (i.e you!) sees as sharp putdowns on an anonymous property forum. Your avatar, I guess, is what you aspire too but almost cetainly cannot attain. S.

If you are this lame when you are hiding behind your big, scarey avatar, how lame are you in real life? I am guessing very... Like I said, you seem to amuse yourself though, which I suppose is something. S.

You sound a little rattled PG. I wonder of the mods realised that the Hairy Biker link was a cookery site? Sorry if you were disappointed... S.

Apom, I can't work out if you are agreeing with me or disagreeing. I think most of the odd abuse is coming from PG, not me. I honestly think a stranger on a webpage who works himself up in text about people he does not know (i.e. PG) sounds a bit odd to me, by which I mean odd if you ever met them in the flesh. I would much sooner talk houses and crashes... Why "Bernie" by the way? S.

Deny, It is easy for you to say "the City can keep its contribution", "not in your name" etc but where do you actually think the money to run the country comes from? Not from the corpse of our manufacturing industry (sadly), maybe a bit from the service industries but both are very much at risk from cheaper alternatives in India and China. When you say no one would miss the City, you mean you would not miss it (you do not speak for anyone else necessarily) because you hate all those people you do not know but actually if the City's tax revenues were removed, I think you might miss it. I agree there are faults with PFI et al but I was talking more generally about tax revenue to pay nurses, doctors, teachers, the police and other public workers who actually contribute to the country. S.

Roman, Will you be PG's friend? S.

Deny, You have been wound up by some fairly crass comments about wealth and salary but your response is loaded with bizarre and unreal stereotypes as those from other people. Do you actually know anyone who works in finance? If you have a maths degree, you could get a City job maybe but if you don't want one fine but why attack those who do? It doesn't sound like you are contributing much to economy at present-it is the City that is paying for the new hospitals, schools etc. that I guess you might use occasionally. If you get paid very little for a lot of work and you have a proper degree, maybe you should get a better job (plenty of things not related to finance and all the things you hate) and stop moaning at people who are doing ok for themselves. S.

I am not suggesting you are gay (or remotely bothered if you are). I have no idea what sex you are. I just think you need a friend or partner. You seem to amuse yourself though... S.

EA based in West End finally admitted that despite all the supposed City bonuses, London as eternal fountain of money etc, there is not an endless queue of buyers willing to pay any price for even the tiniest of spaces, although he did insist there is a shortage of decent, London property, which is probably true. London can and will fall IMHO... S.

No reading disorder, just a bit curious that you seem to be a bit of a fantasist. Why not get yourself a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a cat or something instead? Much more healthy than posting nonsense on the internet... S.

...but I seem to remember your little bird swore blind there was a 0.5% rise on the cards a couple of months ago. What happened to that? Your "source" sounds like bollx to me unless you can drop the mystery and say in general terms who you have been talking to (if anyone.) Suggesting a hold on interest rates is what the majority of pundits are saying currently for the very obvious reasons in your post, so no prizes to you or your bird... S.

So you bought offplan and it is nearly finished-what makes you so sure it is never going to drop by more than 20%? Sorry but it sounds like wishful thinking to me. From what I have read, newbuild flats are being hit badly already in London and elsewhere. Have a look at Propertysnake. S.

Sadly even £70,000 does not get you that far in London.

If you are right (I may have misremembered at £60,000 which still makes property prices look mad to my mind) then I agree with you even more that it will come crashing down. When who knows... S.

I am not so sure. There are only about 4000 people earning £1m+ bonuses plus rather fewer Russian oligarchs than the Mail would have you believe. There are also plenty of City workers I know who are not about to bang a large wedge into property at what may be the top of the cycle just because they can. Also, from an investment, as opposed to somewher to live, the stockmarkets may well look like a better home... S.

...but the average salary in London is circa £60,000 last time I looked, so about 250% average UK salary (granted very unevenly distributed in London), so the multiples don't really stack up. S.

That is an odd comment by Conway-if six times salary is not overextending, what is?

London finally breaks away from Britain By Edmund Conway Last Updated: 12:01am BST 31/05/2007 So it has finally happened. Slowly, silently, and without most of us noticing, London has detached itself from the rest of the country and is now floating off serenely into the sunset. There were cracks and moans as the tectonic plates started to shift in recent months, but it was not until yesterday that the Land Registry finally confirmed it. House price growth across London has hit a five-year high, it said. Meanwhile, values in many other parts of the country are dropping, with property prices in Yorkshire and Humberside tumbling at their fastest rate in at least seven years. The economic dichotomy is expected to yawn wider still in the coming months, which prompts the unsettling question: might vast swaths of the country be sliding towards a housing crash while London experiences the biggest boom in recent memory? advertisementIt looks increasingly likely. More than ever before, London and the South East are behaving almost completely independently from the rest of the country. The smartest parts of the capital are experiencing the biggest boom since the 1980s. Prices have been catapulted sky-high, as bankers, hedge fund managers and lawyers cash in their bonuses on property. Thousands of multi-millionaires from around the world want to live in London's poshest postcodes - think Mayfair, Chelsea and perhaps Notting Hill. There simply isn't enough room to house them all, let alone the less well-off families who are priced out of the market. At heart, it is simply a dramatic mismatch between supply and demand. Meanwhile, in the rest of the country, house prices are flatlining at best - and are falling in many regions. In these counties and cities, which are rarely touched by the money gushing out of the Square Mile, life is getting very tough indeed. Interest rates have climbed up from a post-war low of 3.5 per cent to their current level of 5.5 per cent. Many City experts think there will be a further couple of increases - the next of them perhaps as soon as next week. This is causing problems for property investors, too. A study this week from RICS, the surveyors' association, showed that buy-to-let landlords are having to ratchet up rents at an almost unprecedented rate to try to make any money from their investments. In fact, an increasing number are being forced to sell up. Rates at six per cent may not seem like much of a hardship in comparison with the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the government lifted borrowing costs as high as 15.4 per cent - but don't be fooled. Because we are all now more indebted than ever before, we are much more sensitive to even the smallest twist of the screw. This will only get worse. If the Bank of England does lift rates a couple more times, the proportion of our monthly incomes spent on mortgages will hit the highest level since the midst of the last housing crash. But a word of reassurance: even if some parts of the country do see house prices fall, the impact on the economy as a whole will not be as severe as in the last crash. Back then, prices slumped dramatically and left one and a half million people facing negative equity. This time around, banks have been more reluctant to let people over-extend themselves, and so aren't lending quite as generously as they were before. They, after all, are the ones who pick up the bills if people start defaulting. The fact that we now have an independent Bank of England is another key advantage. Unlike in the late 1980s, when borrowing costs were set with the disastrous aim of making the pound shadow the Deutschemark, the Bank will react if the housing market tanks and will cut rates if things start looking hideous. Gravity will soon catch up with the London housing market as well, though in its case what happens to interest rates will be far less important than the fate of share prices and bond markets. The best that households can do right now is to tighten their belts as much as possible, avoid running up new debts and think very carefully before plunging into the buy-to-let market, where the potential returns are now looking far from tidy. Whether it is buy-to-let or simply over-indebted households that eventually ***** the bubble remains to be seen. And as for the timing, and the amount prices fall: well, as the Bank of England Governor, Mervyn King, frequently says, guessing that is a fool's game.

Excellent-I wouldn't mind taking a nice villa off their hands at some point for a sensible price. Unfortunately I have Madrid or Barcelona in mind, not the pueblos de los chavos in Alicante... S.

..a bit of both really...

Care to hazard a guess as to how long this feverish buying at ever crazier prices will go on in London?

It is funny. It will be funnier if I am finally proved correct in expecting a crash but I am wavering a bit. Who would not with this sort of thing going on? It still feels like the dot com bubble or 1989 pre-crash. S.

Anectdotal only but even so: Nice 3 bed, large garden flat in my road, Belsize Park Nth London, been on the market for about two hours this morning, potential buyers invited by text and by 10.30 about a dozen people were jostling to get around the place, asking price £1.5m. It will probably sell for more. It just feels like the craziness will continue for ever but at the same time the desperation just screams "bubble" to me. I am not sure whether to be happy or sad. S.