r thritis

You dont have to be barking mad or stupid. If everything you see on the TV, everything you read in the paper and every bit of advice you get from financial 'experts' is supporting the view that the prices will only ever go up, and your only hope of ever getting on the ladder is to buy now, the average person will accept it. Only those that start examining the fundamentals will see beyond the mass histeria. It was the same when some geezer proposed the idea that the earth was spherical and not flat.

There's an echo in here! Scroll up!

Thanks for clarifying. I can just about see some logic there. They shouldn't really call it 'year on year' though as thats misleading. It should be something like "Smoothed YOY" or something like that.

Sorry for being dense here.... But surely the YOY figure is not open to seasonal adjustment or fiddling? How can it be interpreted more than one way?

So it is -0.9% or -3.7% YOY?

Unlike yourself who has been around since way back in 2006.

I guess we move in different circles. I could name a taxi driver and a plumber It is interesting though how many academics seem to have such a poor grasp on reality (a certain Stephen Nickell springs to mind). I guess many of these guys have never really had to make a living in the real world. They just float around in a kind of theoretical fog.

Its a strat for me!

As title.

We're not panicking Mr EA, but you should be.

No they weren't. However, whilst it was a flippant remark, you do need to enjoy the journey as well as the destination!

I would suggest that it wasn't caused by the abolishment of MIRAS, that was just the trigger. Affordability was very much an issue in the last crash also.

Inside Track was just about flogging (very expensive) seminars to the gullable. I suppose the writing was on the wall when they announced last month that they were stopping the seminars. Having done that, they had no further source of income. Remember that all the other spin-off parts of the business are actually seperate companies, like the Instant Access properties, refered to earlier. This was obviously the strategy from the begining. Presumably the millions they have made have been quietly syphoned off, and folding the company protects it from future lawsuits.

- 1% MOM allowing some to report that although prices have fallen this month, the drop is not as sharp as the previous month, indicating that the worst may now be over.

Blimey, you'd have more fun in a monestry if you follow that advice.

Just an observation: The downward gradient is very consistent. It has been almost a straight line since November.

Happy days! I got an Inside Track leaflet through the post just a couple of weeks ago. My favourite part of it (when discussing what you will learn on the seminar): How to make money in the good times (easy) How to make money in the bad times (easier)

Yes I can see how they might find that a trifle irksome!

I feel good about it. I am happy that I had the courage of my convictions not to buy, despite being under enormous pressure to do so at various times in the past couple of years. We have still not reached the point where the HPC is a 'done deal' and widely recognised as such. When we reach this point (and its probably 6 months off yet), I want to reopen some of those dinner party discussions, not to say 'I told you so', but to genuinely try and understand why my views were treated in the way they were. I could have coped with the fact that my contention that house prices may fall, could be regarded as an incorrect view. What I still don't understand though, is why I was regarded as nothing short of mentally ill, for holding that view. Why could the huge majority of people not even entertain the possibility that prices could fall, despite most being aware that historically, prices had fallen before. This is what I want to understand.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtm...cnnation128.xmll Just how is the 'current gloom' a bad thing for potential first time buyers?

Seems unbelievable now doesn't it? Just like the provision of 125% mortgages. You have to get back into the mindset that prevailed before the crunch. The value of property could only ever go up - to think otherwise was not even a consideration. Indeed, even to speculate about the possibiity of falling prices was seen as utterly ludicrous. In this rosy, happy world, IO mortages could always be paid off just by downsizing. There was absolutely no perceived risk to the lender.

If I ever went to view a house and there was a smell of baking bread and coffee, I think I would collapse laughing on the doorstep at the sheer corniness of it.

Best thread I've read on here for ages. I like the cut of your jib, number 18.

Nick Tart is basically saying that the sales are up and down like a Tarts Nick (ers).

Its a speculative bubble. And where is the seasonal ajustment?