capitalist89

I agree - cunning - the parents get to retain the illusion that they aren't flushing their 20% down the toilet. Never underestimate the power of wishful thinking - some mugs will go for this.

Perhaps Britain will prosper by exporting wishful thinking to the rest of the world - judging by the FTSE at the moment we must be manufacturing massive amounts of it. In the meantime we even import 50% of our veg! We hardly make anything any more, we import massive quantities of food and North Sea oil is running out. Thank god that our nation's capacity for self-delusion appears limitless! Wer hatte denn diese wahnsinnige Idee? Aber natuerlich - Der Gordon!

If you think that benefitting from someone else's misfortune is immoral, even if you weren't the direct cause of it, then I guess you'd have to say it's immoral. But we all benefit from the exploitative trading arrangements that underpin our western way of life and if we aren't worried about a few million starving Bangaldeshis and the destruction of the rainforests why would we care about our neighbours whose lives have been ruined by repossession? Is it legal? Yes - so why worry? Morality went out of fashion with Jesus.

Going to need to reduce the per capita consumption of food as well to offset the massive growth in world population. Obviously there are rather at lot of people in the uk who would benefit from that in the short term but in the longer term its probably not viable even for the 'generously proportioned'. Probably going to have to rely upon the old staples of famine, war and disease to sort things out in the longer term. Could always cut down the rain forests to grow cattle food I suppose - surprised no ones thought of that before...To quote Bill Bonner in MoneyWeek , "maybe its time to short the human race".

I don't get the cash reference either. As for "the inevitable", I suspect that overpopulation and the switch of power from west to east will very shortly leave the key decisions out of our hands. The next generation are going to have more important things to worry about than house prices. Que sera, sera.

Hi all Sold up at the third attempt last spring and decided that buying again would (for the time being) be the equivalent of burning wads of tenners. Almost had a fall out with my old mum last week - she is convinced that if we don't get back into property quickly we're going to miss out on all the last minute bargains as the market is about to turn!! I find it a bit sad that the UK seems so obsessed with home ownership when we're on the brink of an eco-apocalypse, but mainly I just try to enjoy the view.

There are a lot of people out there desperately looking for the 'green shoots'. I've been monitoring things locally over the past year and this spring there are certainly a lot more SOLD signs around, but my mate hasn't had a viewing on his flat for the last 5 weeks, which suggests that the market isn't exactly awash with potential buyers. And there are quite a few properties that have been on the market since we sold up (thank goodness) and rented 13 months ago. I'm guessing dead cat bounce this spring. A temporary bout of irrational optimism.

But are the (state-owned) lenders possibly less eager to repossess now because of government pre-election arm-twisting? It does look as if the CML's 75000 seems unlikely to happen this year - which will surely distort the market and artificially support house prices in the short term by restricting supply? Will there be a flood of repossessions later this year? Or must we wait for Cameron and co?