mightytharg

I'm in London and pretty jealous of you if you can snap up a six bedroom house for 650K, the two bedroom flats cost that here. Also just doing my masters so behind in the education stakes. I'd suggest with your commie qualifications and Labour party membership you'd fit right in at the local council. 150K a year and subsidised housing. In the meantime don't be nasty to your students, even the dumbed-down modern courses are a bit tricky for some of us!

It's simple democracy in action. Poor people have tended to vote for Labour, therefore Labour want more of them around - hence their economic policies. Just vote for whoever you think has most chance of defeating Labour. Two possibilities 1) You win, economy improves, you become richer. 2) Labour win, notice the poor have stopped voting for them, so have no reason to keep more people in poverty, you become richer. It's not exactly rocket science.

Well I think they should raise the thresholds and reduce the stamp duty, or abolish it. Your doublethink about higher taxes making things cheaper is plain nonsense. The point about £750K houses not being the average is a bit unfair too. Why should struggling Londoners have to pay £36K to move while champagne-swilling northerners (and scots) in a similar house get off scot-free. Especially unfair since it's the people in cheap housing areas who elected the government that has caused all the problems in the first place.

Thinking like nimby scum. This board has been taken over bu buy-to-letters trying to protect their investments. Of course more housing is a good thing.

You mean you could have a Wii in the toilet?

My accountant isn't all that good at the international stuff unfortunately. I think you're wrong about not campaining for higher taxes too. Where is the part of the article where they suggest that no-one should pay CGT or taxes on investment income?

What about five-fruits-a-day advisors or diversity coordinators at the local councils? These flats might be a bit cheap and pokey for them, but as a starter home or buy-to-let they might be interested.

Can I actually do this? So far, I've just left my fortune from overseas overseas and my money from England in England. It would be great I could send my English money to Switzerland and avoid paying tax! If I eventually bring it back to England, what tax would I pay? e.g. could Isend 100 grand to Switerland and make 5 grand profit on interest, leave the five grand profit in Fondue-land and take the 100K back to blighty without paying tax? Remember folks, a few grand saved in tax could save a child's life in Iraq or Afghanistan. Does anyone else find it disturbing that there are actually organisations campaigning for higher taxes? Turkeys for Christmas again.

Better than alive and well in London. At the auction this week, I couldn't afford a house, but thought maybe I could afford a shed or a garage. No such luck, the garage sold for £723,000 ! Jools Holland couldn't afford it either, so that made me feel better. With the garage you also got the princely sum of £400/year ground rent.

Because you went to a shit school. We'd covered most of this by the time we were twelve.

I thinik you'll find that in this topsy-turvy country, council housing for scroungers has to be built to a higher standard than private housing for honest private-sector workers. I tried to get hold of an ex-housing association property that had been used for asylum seekers, unfortunately I didn't have the SIX HUNDRED GRAND needed to buy the house.

These surveys are just a commie scam. They define poverty as "having lest than 50% of the average income". Obviously they can "solve" the problem by raising taxes high enough for most of the talented people to leave Britain. Hey presto, poverty is gone (the kids are poorer than before, but never mind). Surprisingly enough, there might be a shilling or two in it for the MPs and their salaries, perks, pensions and expenses etc.

Whilst I'd personally love the market to flatline, I don't think prices not rising for a month quite gets us there. I thought flatlining was what those beepy machines in ER do when someone's heart stops?

Email in favour of this if you are a buy-to-letter, or property investor. If you want a house price crash then email to say you are AGAINST the proposal. Taking more than 20,000 homes off the open market and handing them to various ne'erdowells will make the property shortage much worse for the rest of us. Taking billions of pounds our money to pay for it makes us even further away from being able to afford our own homes. Even worse, many of these homes are given to the very people who are restricting the housing supply in the first place - making them less likely to care about the housing shortage.

No glimmer of hope. The place was packed with people, all seats taken and barely room to stand at the back. The three houses I was interested exceeded their gude price by more than 60%. Selling for more than anything on the street had ever sold for (and other houses in the street were bigger). I expect the unsold properties were because people are confident they will sell at higher prices later, so they set huge reserve prices and are in no hurry to sell. Not a good day for us bears. Maybe interest rates will go up by half a percent tomorrow.

My Plan B failed as well. Bid 151,000 for a flat. Was closer this time, it went for 153,000. Never been to an auction before, it's interesting.

No bargains for me. I bid 435,000 for a decaying terrace house with a guide price of 380,000 - went for 600,000! I guess I'll keep saving.

I was inspired by your post to rush to try and buy a luxury apartment in Sovereign Harbour. Imagine my disappointment when I found prices were four times higher than your post suggested. It's seven-fifty for a rubbish flat outside Eastbourne somewhere. Looks like the people in Brighton have it easy. http://www.rightmove.co.uk/action/publicsite.PropertySearch

Have you ever been to a village? London is a sophisticated big city, villages are little places full of inbred yokels. Complete opposites. If you do go to a village, maybe you can get a job as the idiot.

So they took his DNA??? Can anyone got a strand of Leo's hair, so we can check out that other rumour?

Don't be put off by all the tales of hard work in investment banking, there's plenty of room there for slackers too. Even at Goldmans, Morgan Stanley etc. Working as a quant is a bit dull, but it probably would be more interesting if I understood some of the Maths. It's also kind of fun watching all the traders make or lose millions and listening to them swearing at each other. Your Physics should be fine for the job. Just make sure your stochastic calculus is good and you understand the heat equation. They'll probably want a phd anyway, so the normal route is do the research first and if you fail at that (most people do, theres only half a dozen top physicists) then you go into investment banking. See the book "My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance" by Emanuel Derman for more details. Not much idea about the cash, hope it's good... (some of the people on this site might not like you though, Mr. Black probably is responsible for the house price crisis but I expect he didn't realise what he was doing at the time).

But, no-one's printing new houses as fast as they can, but someone is printing money like there's no tomorrow. Consider these alternatives. 1. Savings - the money supply continues to expand at 14%, overall your savings will lose 8% and you get to pay extra tax. 2. House Buyer - your house stays the same so you don't care if money becomes worthless or not, you break even. 3. Borrower - you win big, you buy the house with a 100% IO mortage. At the end of the year, you owe 14% less, a 28K tax free profit. I think this explains the situation. Hope I'm wrong though, I'm number 1.

Just to add my experience. Since Autumn, asking prices in the centre of London seem to have gone up about 50 - 100K for a basic two-bed flat. The GF tried to look round a house this morning but could barely get round it because there were so many other people trying to look at the same time. Price had only risen 20K since November so maybe that's why there was a rush on. It's CRAZY out there at the moment...

I remember my teacher takeing us for a walk around the town and showing us the old houses with the windows bricked up. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see some sort of return to this when the council tax is based on how nice a property is and the views from it. Won't people just make their houses look worse to save money. I bet council taxes are way higher than the window taxes were, back in the day. Also, I'd expect a big rise in crime statistics. You will get a council tax reduction if you are in a high crime area. I hope there aren't too many innocents locked up in prison for crimes that no-one committed (but were just reported by well-meaning citizens trying to save tax).

Oh well, never mind, my department isn't on their list. They sound like communists anyway. Good luck with the Msc/Phd.