Scooter
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Posts posted by Scooter
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This takes the govt's fiddling of the figures to new heights!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4695823.stm
Brown rejigs rules to help budget
Chancellor Gordon Brown is planning to change the definition of the economic cycle to ensure that he meets his own fiscal rule on balancing the budget.
The Treasury now says that the budget gap should be measured over a nine-year period rather than over seven years.
Another fiddle, just like changing the inflation measure a couple of years back. Why do most Brits not get it?
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How do explain the fact that Nigeria regularyl has massive oil shortages, even though it is a huge oil exporter?
Sometimes it's just third-world incompetence rather than the start of the global apocalypse.
Lots of oil but very few decent refineries. I won't be walking round Pt Harcourt again for a while-'orrible!
S.
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Couldn't agree more. I live in NW3, not much of a mortgage left and I have been boring my friends stupid for a couple of years over the impending HPC. Actually a few have finally come to agree in the last few months and some now pretend that they agreed all along.
I doubt £30,000 is average salary for Hampstead but even so, three/four bed garden flats-my target purchase-seem to be in the £700,000 to 1.4m mark for 1700-2500 feet on average, which I consider pretty stupid. I am bored to tears with waiting but I am loathe to line someone's pocket at these levels...I do not understand who would pay £150,000 for a Hampstead 1 bedder if deposit £15,000 and a mortgage for £135,000 required four times a £33,750 salary say.
I am not seeing much selling at all and the same old properties on the websites that have drifted down by say £10-20K, a derisory 1% or so drop. The stalemate must surely end soon...
S.
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Found this on the BBC. Might explain why people are still quite confident about house prices not falling, "Ive heard it all before and missed the boat etc."
Interesting-it really could have been written this week so there is the effect of crying wolf, or appearing to perhaps, over HPC. That said, various factors worldwide and here (eg BTL taking the place of FTB) conspired to prevent HPC then but not now I suspect.
S.
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Things just aren't looking good if you're "into property"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/main.j...ixpright12.html
Rightmove "worth £150m" on an annual profit of £2m? Surely £20-30m would be nearer to it or less looking at the prospects for the housing market.
S.
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Anyone who writes "Dear Friend" to a stranger generally arouses my suspicion, oddly enough...
S.
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Friend of mine just bought a house. He bought a couple of years ago now, when the prices were already absurd and just recently sold it (for a nice profit) and bought a bigger, more expensive place in a nicer area. He plans to do much the same kind of thing with the new place as the last place, i.e. do it up and sell it on for a profit. Firmly believes that houses will not drop much and the usual blurb about long-term investments etc.
I shouldn't begrudge him his success and I do feel glad he's doing well but I still can't believe he managed to sell the old place. I know I shouldn't be getting annoyed with how long this is taking, but FFS can I please have a decent house for affordable money???
Someone put some graphs and evidence and stuff up showing how thing are going sharply downhill.
Failing that, someone give me some vodka.
Argh! :angry:
He can believe what he likes but he has just bought an even larger place than he has ever owned at just after the peak of the bubble. He may well come to regret this and will be telling you he has no intention of moving for years and is therefore not bothered by short term housing fluctuations. That may be true but he has not realised any liquid profits and will have a debt on a depreciating asset for years to come, when a bit of STR could have allowed him to buy the same house for less in a year or so and pocketed the difference.
It is dull waiting for it to really happen but happen it will. Patience!
S.
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Remembr that old anecdote about the guy who sold out just before the crash when he overheard shoe shine boys comparing stock picks..... when the admin girl in the office has just bought her second BTL you know there are going to be tears.
Rockefeller I think.
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Just a quickie for all of you who missed it.
Wed 13th July Working Lunch
They had an article on the pru visiting their customers. Later on in this the chairman (or similar) stated the Pru was getting out of the property market. Obviously there is no security there.
Just thought I'd share some nice news.
Didn't the Pru recently repackage an existing portfolio of commercial property as a new investment trust and flog it to private investors as a new way into the latest frothy, sorry wealth-creating market? I suppose they meaning the Pru would be out of it at the right time but their clinets would be in it just in time for the big falls.
This from their website: "Prudential Property Investment Managers (PruPIM) is one of the largest institutional property investors in the UK, with growing investment in the international property market, particularly in Australia." Doesn't sound like they are out of property just yet...
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Still a lot I'd say at least 400k for anything decent within walking distance and it won't be great at that price. More realistic is 500k+ in Ricky and 600K+ in Chorleywood or any of the villages. These house still seem to be selling although lots more on the market.
Thanks. Occasionally I toy with moving out that way from NW3, especially as my brother just moved to somewhere stupidly large in Radlett.
S.
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Stuff is finally coming down here. 3 terraces were for sale in my area 2 years ago for between 380k and 400k all were taken off the market with no sales. One went back on again and taken off again another back on at 360k down from 385k. As a matter of note the main agents in town built a horrible house in the spare garden of another concil house they owned That was on the market for 350K for months finally dropped to 320k still no sale so has been rented out for 1100 a month so they have lost big time what a shame. still maybe not as it only cost them about 100k to build and the land was free.
How much these days for a 4 bed detached round Ricky and are any selling?
S.
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Guess it won't be long now until the sensationalist tabloids start printing headline tales of panic and woe.
Good to see some efforts made by The Times here, to sensibly inform us.
(Dated 8th July)
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/...1684644,00.html
Same old b****cks from the halifax economist Martin Ellis though: "The economic fundamentals underpinning the housing market are sound.” Bit bored of hearing this sort of nonsense...
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Anyone have a link to a free chart of the GBP /USD so I can keep an eye on things, just for interest sake really.
Historical is fine maybe updated daily or something?
Cheers
Mr T
I use xe.com for immediate fx pricing.
S.
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The BBC appears to have noticed that the dollar is staging something of a come back against the Pound and the Euro.
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4648891.stm
Seems to that the ECB and BOE are both caught between a rock and a hard place and Mr Greenspan is welding the rock!
Excellent-I am sitting on a large pile of dollars currently, received and taxed at $1.87
. But how low will the pound go? I am thinking/being advised around $1.65. Either way, it looks like it ought to prevent UK interest rate cuts, unless of course you think the MPC can be manipulated by Gordon Brown 
. S.
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Opinions seem to vary, but all things being equal (ie no boom & no crash), what is generally the best month/s in which to sell your property?
Any month about a year ago...
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My brother finally managed to palm off his problem 1-bedder in Belsize Park for £290K (it took him about 10 months to sell but he only had to drop by £10K in the end).
He exchanged a couple of weeks ago and completes next week. More fool the mug that's bought it!
"Mug" sounds about right... There are a number of 2 bedders in NW3 going for that or less, albeit not fantastic buildings. Your brother was shrewd or lucky but can rightly be a bit pleased with himself...
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Interesting. You'd have to be quite stupid to pay £170,000 for a bedsit. Especially when you compare it to what you can rent for the same monthly outlay (in which case, some unfortunate gullible BTL'er will be lumbered with all the repair costs).
Hope this chap isn't a maths teacher...
Just what I was thinking. £170,000 for a studio-what a mug, and I live in the area so I am not easily shocked by stupid asking prices...
S.
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Been watching prices on 3-4 bedroom flats for a year or more now-result, the same old trash up for sale month after month, virtually no change in (obscene) asking prices, virtually no sales. There are lots of "for sale" and/or "to let" signs up, often on the same buildings, especially in the less favoured roads. I am bored of waiting to move within the area but cannot argue with the economic logic of an impending HPC. Anyone else looking round here?
S.
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Regarding a US strike on Iran, supposedly an attack was not authorised for before June but this was not necessarily saying that an attack should take place in or even soon after June. The new hardline President, however, makes an attack a lot more likelt as the Euro 3 negotiators now have little prospect of success. This will have interesting effects on the price of oil, if it happens, as well as increasing the risk of terror attacks in Western Europe and on the Israeli-Lebanese border. What this does for the dollar itself I am not quite sure. . .
S.
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Saw his infomercial jetlagged at 4.00am in California a few months back-lots of happy forex daytraders claiming to have left McJobs and now earning many tens of thousands from home....I just took it as the next fleecing of the thousands after tech stocks and property flipping.
S.
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Hi,
Lurking for a year or so but I was so incensed by the Welsh article that I sent them the following letter and received reply as below:
Dear Ms Doran,
I have just read an article by Sion Barry entitled "things are looking up for first time buyers" which I think falls within your remit. I am e-mailing to complain that it reads as unquestioning Labour party propaganda and one of the laziest pieces of journalism I have read in a while. Our country is possibly heading for recession on the back of the biggest credit and housing bubble ever known in the UK, as engineered by Gordon Brown. This article trumpets the desperate measures that Brown is using to keep the bubble inflated and house prices extortionate, just so that he can take over from Tony Blair and fulfil his personal ambitions. The fact that Leo Abse was a Labour MP until 1997, presumably Christopher Agius' employer, surely exposes this as partisan nonsense.
Yours Sincerely,
REPLY:
Morning
I have forwarded your e-mail to Sion Barry for his attention.
Best wishes
Lorna Doran
Probably won't get anything useful back but it made me feel a bit better.
S.
Jim Pickard
in House prices and the economy
Posted
Like lobotomy perhaps or has that already been tried?