smiley

We need many more of these 'HPC is good' articles. You can be sure that, when people realise prices are falling, there'll be sob stories and complaints ("I was told I'd made X-squillion on my BTL, but now I've only made half that..."). The 'HPC is good' narrative will have to counter them.

It's a really read. Most of the alarmist talk from the NLA is actually encouraging, eg "They could put 100,000 properties on the market every year" - which would be great. The only downer is their survey, which finds only 28% of landlords are not thinking of taking on more property. Does that mean 72% are planning to buy more houses?

Working for a living is well out of fashion.

In India, there's a website called 'I paid a bribe.com', and apparently it's been very influential at getting people to stop asking for bribes (since others get to find out). In the UK, we could set up 'I paid rent to...' dot com. It could lead to interesting places for tax dodging landlords...

Do you have to spend the money on a property at the end of it? Or can you just enjoy the interest rate? If you have to spend the money on a property, then is this model going to go further? Will there be 'help to buy' lottery tickets, pensions and dentists? Is there anything which could remain immune from the Great Cult of the Property Market?

The problem isn't money printing per se. It's money printing in the way they've done it. If they just printed £1,000 for every man, woman and child, the world would be much better than letting banks print it for favoured clients.

I thought that was a very good piece by Paul Mason. Far better than the myopic nonsense you get on the BBC. (Indeed, I'm just waiting for the BBC News to come up with: 'XX Trillion wiped off share prices, but thankfully property prices are still going up, because you're money's always safe in houses...')

It's OK - preaching the choir is forgiven. I've been preaching that house prices are a massively overvalued bubble for well over a decade. I've even quoted rafts of economic facts to prove it. Most of the people I know just say things like 'well you've been proved wrong - if you'd bought five/ten/fifteen years ago you'd be rich now'. It feels like I've spent the last fifteen years saying 'No honestly, gravity really is a downward force you know' and everybody else has been patting my head while they float off into the air... Preaching to the choir helps maintain sanity.

Interesting. They're right, but I wonder how they reached '1.9' - and what it means? 90% overvalued? Overvalued compared to what?

What they mean is that the purchasing power of wages halves every ten years...

Me too. I could have bought in the early noughties, but was convinced there was a house price bubble and they should crash. I'm still convinced there's a house price bubble and they're about to crash. Not sure I can still afford to buy, though.

Technological changes could make our society more like an oil rich gulf state - with most revenue flowing from a small number of sources, and most of the population dependent on the goodwill of those who control the resource for their livelihood. But - as long as there's half-decent democracy - it should come through that, like the gulf states, the welfare state, perhaps with a basic citizens' income for all, redistributes to the majority.

I think just bringing this measure in - or perhaps just talking about it - could trigger a run on the banks.

It's such a ghastly programme. It really does exude everything that is so awful about the 'property phenomenum' in the UK.

Because the deal for renters in the UK is terrible: Very few rights, most or all of the property tax burden, and few powers to enforce landlords to act. In most other OECD countries, it is property owners, not renters, who pay taxes (eg on capital gains, or municipal taxes).