North London Rent Girl
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Posts posted by North London Rent Girl
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On 29/11/2017 at 10:08 PM, Kurt Barlow said:
My Cousin is a Senior Planner at one of the inner London Council high development areas and they can't get staff because people are hitting mid thirties, starting families and saying fook this and moving out to the sticks or up north. In her case she is fine as Daddy paid a substantial sum towards her two bedder in Enfield. Basically in London even earners on 50K plus are fooked unless they have a big trust fund or lottery win.
Blimey, well, there we have it. With all the props to the market, all the shared ownership scams, it's not enough to make living here doable.
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18 hours ago, fru-gal said:
I don't think we will have to wait a decade. Just look at how quickly "unelectable" Corbyn caught up with the Tories in the 2017 election. The Tories are getting more and more unpopular and that mixed with the whole "Boomers voted for Brexit", there is a lot of anger out there. Factor in changing demographics (more young voters added every year whilst older (Tory\) voters decline. I really think we will be seeing a political paradigm shift much sooner than we think.
+1 agree completely. 'Much sooner than we think', quite right, and we'll wonder why we thought it was so difficult, it will become the new normal in the blink of an eye. We sorted it out after the war and we can do it again, it's pretty straightforward - good regulation of the rental market, including a lot of state provision for the rental market, and our housing problems go away. To be fair, they should sort out of the pensions market at the same time to give people some other options. Again, not that undoable, there are some much better models on the continent. Why do we believe these things are just unfathomable and beyond us?! Oh, that's right, the blinking greedy rich wanting to run everything solely to squeeze as much filthy lucre out of it as they can.
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7 hours ago, winkie said:
Imo this is nothing to do with an individuals place of birth......there are dysfunctional and desperate people from all places, born to all types of parents, lack of education and life opportunities, including those born and bred...the world is full of people who do what they must to survive and improve on their lot, they will travel where they can to get what they can, if they can...... Britain is a very tolerant place to be and has in the past been very generous to all people.....human nature is that people will congregate amoungst people they see as similar to themselves, some will integrate well others will not....when inequality is growing, growing numbers from all places are in competition for the same resources......when our leaders keep saying there is no money left in the pot, more people will feel they will have to fight harder for the same needs, less social mobility, opportunities to improve on life chances......who do they blame? the people or the system that orchestrated it?
+1, go The Winkster.
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22 hours ago, Debbiebegood said:
Please stop blaming immigrants for the terrible mess created by the natives.
Seconded, quite right, it's ridiculous, we mustn't scrabble around fighting amongst ourselves, we need to turn around and look up.
I don't respond to xenophobic posts on here any more but I love it when other people have the heart to do it, nice one.
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On 28/11/2017 at 12:36 AM, UnconventionalWisdom said:
This weekend I will attend a leaving do for a mate of mine who is a GP. He's lived in London for a few years and has given up as it's too expensive and there's no long-term prospects. He tried renting a flat on his own for a year but was skint because of the large rent. Shared for a few years but has made him depressed. It's an insane situation when people needed by society are shunted. I also knew a surgeon who had to live in a HMO. If things continue as they are we'll have problems employing teachers, doctors or police in the capital.
Given how things are, I bet we are already having real problems hanging on to people we need, but it's best not looked into or explored because then they don't have to do anything about it. Even old-school shared ownership - by housing associations, for key workers, which has been going on at least as long as I've lived here, suggests housing has made keeping people here difficult. I think it used to be teachers and social-workers, though, GPs and surgeons? Definitely an escalation.
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On 27/11/2017 at 7:45 PM, longgone said:
slightly off topic but i have booked 2 nights in a central london travelodge christmas week for less than £30 a night
. my calculations say that is 900pcm on average surely that is better value than renting considering it is W1 no council tax no bills no making your own bed and cleaning is included. could be a new Airbnb.
anyone know of someone living longterm in hotels ?
Ooh, do you get brekkie?
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On 21/11/2017 at 2:30 PM, ebull said:
Well so we don't hugely disagree with each other on what is rich either. But others in the UK probably would.
However for both your aims I believe the correct and more effective tool is taxation not compromising principles of freedom. This telling companies what to do is a bizarre sort of half-nationalisation. Taxation is much more effective, understood, accepted and expected.
To force houses with permission to be built, give a maximum1 or 2 year period after planning is granted to build, thereafter charge council tax per dwelling to the land owner whether or not he chooses to build them.
Improvement to this and the buying to speculate problem is 10x CT for any dwelling without a resident who is fully tax resident and domiciled in the UK. Either you pay extra CT or pay full income tax. If 10x is not enough, increase. Land hoarders pay the extra too.
I think you've come up with a really good mechanism for implementing it. BTW like your idea of multiple ctax for houses without a resident who is fully tax resident and domiciled in the UK as a general rule. I assume that would include empty places? I know the ctax is for services but no reason not to use it to so some other good...
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33 minutes ago, disenfranchised said:
But forget housing for a minute. How many people under 40 do you know running a business they started requiring a premises? I've watched a couple of friends try, and give up - broken, in the main, by the cost of rent and rates. In the case of one in the automotive sector, costing £25k a year and swallowing 50% of year 1 turnover. I have watched another change her dream of owning a coffee shop into a coffee van, because commercial rents are so ruinous. I know two who run a kitchen and bathroom company they started after the crash. They use a small amount of rented space as storage and have a sales van kitted out. They are very very good at what they do, but are unable to take it to the next level as the cost of any kind of premises is prohibitive. In every case, they simply cannot compete with established (often multi-generational) businesses which have either acquired their own premises before property prices went ballistic, or built themselves up already to have the cashflow / financing to cope. QE has made this harder not easier - rather than resulting in lending to businesses it has simply lead to more price rises.
Great examples, and this must be happening all over the place - very determined people just not being able to get ahead. I know one bloke who has converted an old horse lorry into a catering van with accommodation and he's living in it full-time so he doesn't have to pay rent - rents in the area are horrible high. Great solution well done him but it seems to me that even the most resourceful are being pushed to the limit.
Edit - oh and thank you so much for 'Selfservatives', first time I've seen it, magic.
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3 minutes ago, Sancho Panza said:3. Borrowing Binge
Huh, Switzerland, well I never. Anyone?
All lovely bear breakfast, thanks very much.
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9 hours ago, ebull said:
I would not call borrowing to build council houses at 1% interest and using the cash that would have paid housing benefit to pay off the loans as crazy commie nonsense. I'm totally up for that [rather capitalist] plan. Based on it being good common sense. So I agree with you there.
With respect to far too much. Is the threshold a fair bit more than you have? What if was defined as half or two thirds of what you have. Are you still happy for that to be controlled by someone else according to what they think? Extending reach to be global enough there are always folk who make any of us look very rich.
Also "supposed to have as their main business". Happy for someone to tell you what to do?
I know you're talking of companies but they are just groups of people [owners/workers].
Compromising principles of freedom are not anything I agree with.
Morning Ebull
"With respect to far too much". I don't mind people having a yacht, great holidays, a beautiful house, what you will - I am, what did Peter Mandelson say, something like 'extremely relaxed' about people getting really pretty rich. But when the wealth has been funnelled upwards to an extreme extent and a small minority of rich people have so much money that they cannot spend it and it's beyond a reasonable quantity of savings/investments, the money looks for assets and all hell breaks loose. If you think back to the post-war years, the 'embedded liberalism' system we operated - capitalism made to work better for the general population, with labour representation and a reasonable redistribution of wealth - I mean, to my mind, there was plenty of luxury and glamour for the rich in the 50s and 60s - they lived lovely lives. Now that there's all this idle money being funnelled into asset classes like houses and shares in banks, the social consequences are terrible and we need to act to make things fairer. That's all.
"Happy for someone to tell you what do to?" - well, if I'm pretending to do one thing whilst actually doing something else, something that's having seriously horrible consequences for a lot of people, I'd very much hope someone would step in. Have you ever heard a high-up from a big building firm say, "well, we are doing some building but we're just sitting on a lot of the land we buy because it's soaring in value and we don't have the cost of doing anything, it's a more efficient way of increasing the price of our shares". You'll never hear them say it because they know it's wrong!
As for companies, they're not just groups of people, not big, public companies, anyway. They have corporate personality - they are entities with their own rights and obligations. And because of the duties that directors have, companies are basically greedy - and they have no conscience so they're only restrained by what they can get away with. I say 'because of the duties that directors have' but, funnily enough, if anyone suggests reforming their duties there's one hell of a stink. I do know what you mean - when a company is of a certain size it is basically the sum of the people who work there and the main relationships are human relationships.
All that said, I'm pleased we agree that the gov should build council houses. It does seem to be something that pretty much everything agrees on, hmm, wonder if they pick up on that in the budget, wouldn't it be amazing? Things could quite easily be so good.
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18 hours ago, Assume The Opposite said:
I don't think most people know that a deposit is a loan to the bank, and you have no legal right to that money once it's deposited. Your account is an 'account' of what they owe you.
Who said that? The Bank of England!
"Depositors who deposit their money with a bank are therefore no longer the legal owners of this money, with the bank holding it in trust for them, but rather they are one of the general creditors of the bank"
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/research/Documents/workingpapers/2015/wp529.pdf
So it's an unsecured, effectively interest-free loan to the bank? I'm used to depressing thoughts about my hard-won savings but this takes the biscuit.
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4 hours ago, iamnumerate said:
It never struck me as pro Thatcher under her. They are pro certain ideas, rather that people, e.g. you cannot say anything against immigration or landlords.
They are very pro EU, I have never heard on the BBC that the CFP started the day we applied, it was designed to let the French get access to our,Danish, Irish and Norwegian fish.
huh, you are a wealth of v good didyaknows - no I did not know that, hmm, interesting.
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16 hours ago, macca13 said:
Ive seen 2 story pre fabs for 30k+ this one attached looks a nice 3 bedroom..
its like house boats, they are cheap as chips, it’s the mooring that costs the money, so corbyn’s land tax is the killer of the house price bonanza..
That reminds me of my friends' nice house in Germany. I'd be chuffed with that, few climbing plants and a bit of colour in the garden, it could look really lovely in 10 years. And look at the proper big windows - not the submarine windows you get on newbuild estates here - e.g. https://www.charleschurch.com/
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5 hours ago, ebull said:
Crazy commie nonsense ... exactly, it equates telling people what to do with their capital and I agree is not a good direction.
Ebull, we haven't got to know each other - the building of council houses by the government is exactly the kind of 'crazy commie nonsense' I'm seriously up for! Also, I don't have a problem with people being told what to do with their capital when they just have far too much, they hold on to it and it wreaks havoc with the economy. Builders are not supposed to have as their main business land speculation. In times of war governments of all stripes ruthlessly stamp out speculation because it is such an evil and prevents the productive use of assets. We're not in a state of war but let's not leave it much longer...!
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1 minute ago, winkie said:
.....been sitting on it five years too long already.
this thing is building momentum - well, let's see what happens with the budget, am sure it will put in place similarly radical and effective policies, who would doubt it?
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Just now, Maynardgravy said:
I think my point is being missed. Five years is far too long IMO.
Oh, Mr Gravy, my apologies - you mean foundations down within 6 months, landscaping by the end of year 2, like that? Magic. Never going to happen but ee, lad, ye can allus dreeyum. God, wouldn't it be great. Imagine, builders really building houses, eh? It's political correctness gone mad.
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15 hours ago, Beary McBearface said:
Truth be told the complaint about the 3 March broadcast was to get a feel for the revised complaints framework now that the role previously carried out by the BBC Trust has moved to Ofcom. There may be more merit in complaining now that Ofcom is forcing the BBC to reveal more about the complaints it receives.
I have to say that I think that BBC editorial teams treat all complaints with utter contempt; their operational definition of balance and impartiality revolves around what they as BBC editorial staff felt like doing at the time. What has actually surprised me is the laziness of the journalism. It's not that they fail to achieve a balanced perspective because they have an axe to grind, it seems to me that what is actually explanatory is that they are easily manipulated because they don't do journalism. A huge amount of BBC news and current affairs reporting seems to involve picking up a 'story' that originally span out of a PR person contacting a print journalist and then getting in touch with somebody in the related industry and treating them as an expert. The argument is made in The BBC: Myth of a public service that after Birt's reform 1990s reforms the BBC comes to see its role as being divided between consumer affairs and reporting on business with a big emphasis on presenting 'business' in a positive light. Buy-to-let sits oddly in this paradigm. The BBC (reasonably enough) identifies buy-to-let borrowers as the consumers of buy-to-let and sees mortgage brokers as the 'business' which needs to be given a chance to explain itself. The tenant (or would-be owner-occupier who may have sought to buy the underlying home) is not even in the picture.
How interesting - the book looks great, thanks for the tip - I did not know that it came out against the General Strike.
"Throughout its existence, the BBC has been in thrall to those in power. This was true in 1926 when it stood against the workers during the General Strike, and since then the Corporation has continued to mute the voices of those who oppose the status quo: miners in 1984; anti-war protesters in 2003; those who offer alternatives to austerity economics since 2008. From the outset much of its activity has been scrutinised by the secret services at the invitation of those in charge. Since the 1990s the BBC has been integrated into the market, while its independence from government and big business has been steadily eroded."
I'm trying to recall how it covered the miners' strike - was alive but perhaps not yet political enough to notice. I'm one of those people who grew up with R4 on in the background. Am slowly weaning myself off it because only very rarely these days does it present me with a reality that I recognise in any way. 'Echo chamber, echo chamber', they might say, but I think it's theirs not mine. I'll go back to it properly once they have a public register of interests for all the high-ups - management, editors and journalists.
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13 hours ago, Maynardgravy said:
Why five years? If you bought it to build on it, build on it.
But that's the thing, they're not - and why would they? they're limited companies with a duty to maximise value for their shareholders - if they can best achieve that through land speculation, which has the lovely effect of not having to do anything whilst watching the value of your assets climb - the land (and, a bit, the stock they are building, shortage not main factor at all but it can't hurt) - why wouldn't they do it? It's an argument for reforming directors' duties but that's never going to happen so I think ebull's suggestion is a good one. The only change I'd make is that, if they haven't built on it within five years of permission being granted, it's compulsorily purchased from them at its value without permission. Easy enough to assess I should think. Yes, purchased by the government, which can then build on it itself, employing lots of people in fairly-waged jobs on safe building sites to build nice homes to be rented out at an affordable price. Crazy commie nonsense!
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23 hours ago, Diver Dan said:
I started out with a jam-jar of ashes on somebody's shelf and worked my way up to a state funeral and a prime spot in the crypt of Westminster Abbey. Young stiffs just aren't prepared to put the work in these days.
You are channelling my mum!
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On 18/11/2017 at 11:39 AM, Beary McBearface said:
I don't think that the Ofcom position that we are "not dealing with a matter of political controversy or a matter relating to current public policy" will really hold up and the accumulation of editorial choices by You and Yours strengthens a fresh complaint on grounds of due impartiality.
It's amazing that they say it's not a matter of political controversy or a matter relating to public policy but should think ofcom is largely staffed by oblivious bboomers - do we have to wait for these people to die off? Anyway, am really awestruck that you had the gumption to pursue a complaint and not just collapse on the sofa in a big helpless huff with a bottle of red like most of us do. I assume. All power to your elbow.
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3 hours ago, juvenal said:
EDIT: Topic came on at 12.37. A landlord on there thinking of selling a large portfolio. Not enough profit left in it. Seems many BTL landlords are now selling up. Well worth a listen.
The magically disappearing houses did a quick dance across the stage again, did you catch that? When the rentals are sold there will be fewer places available, build to rent outfits might cover some of the gap but not all of it, shortage, higher rents, it's going to be terrible for all of us. They're worried for their tenants, those BTL landlords, they just really care about people, you know? Sniff.
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Just heard this is going to be one of the topics today, on in ten mins - at 12.15.
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3 hours ago, Assume The Opposite said:
Credit boom started under Thatcher with the new doctrine of neo-liberalism. People associate Blair with Labour but he was a continuation of the Neo-liberal dogma with some giveaways to keep people happy. Nothing Labour at all about Bliar.
Camoron and coke sniffer Osboon continued with the dogma of neo-liberalism, asking the plebs to pay for the private debt bubble which blew up the global economy with austerity.
Couldn't agree more with all of this, absolutely, you need to look back to the late 70s at the latest to get a proper view. Since Thatcher it's been pure managerialism - 'how would you like your neo-liberal crony capitalism - boiled, fried, or poached?'.
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19 hours ago, LittlePig said:
Wow. He has just gone up enormously in my estimation. I might send this to my local MP
Mine, too, I like this sweary, political Russell Howard, bless his cotton socks.
Greenwich Council spending £46.5 million buying homes off the market
in House prices and the economy
Posted
Man alive. All the expletive development along the river and they couldn't keep a few patches for themselves and build flats, for what, a fifth or sixth of the cost, praps less? You couldn't fecking make it up. OP, agreed, dodgy local practices, quite a few palms being greased, a lot of happy chappies down there on both sides, surely - and then again later for a nice round of congratulatory hand-jobs.
I keep thinking at the moment how great it would be to have one of those forgetting flash-light things from Men in Black.