BuyingBear

If you have a population exceeding 1 billion you only need a fraction to become 'like us' in order to replace the consumption of the West, the top 10% of consumers in China far exceed the population of this country. If you really believe people are different and self-sacrificing I would simply point to the frenzy surrounding the Shanghai stock exchange over recent months, 500k brokerage accounts openned in a single day, but even still only a tiny proportion of the population is actually participating in the markets, but that tiny chunk is so large it drives things hypobolic.

That relies on the notion that productive countries actually need us, in reality they have millions of aspirant consumers of their own only held back by their undervalued currencies. Peter Schiff addressed this quite well with the story of the newly divorced man looking down in the dumps and asking "so, now who's going to spend all my money?" Wealth will have to be reflected in these productive nations, this can only mean lower living standards in the West once our inflated currencies weaken and find their true value.

The penny is dropping, the lucky ones' may be able to find a middle to low ranking public job with access to a shared ownership scheme. The government will effectively be your employer and your landlord, better not do anything to upset them.

Where's the law that says an average working person should be able to afford an average home? These are quaint notions, the banks, REIT's and top 10% of earners will eventually own all property, the rest will rent for their entire lives, a lucky few might inherit though there may be little equity left once it has been extracted for healthcare and IHT. There is no room for a middle-class when you have a race to the bottom and global levelling, you have an elite and a dependent under-class with very little in between. The yobs and the snobs.

Err, they already are, exactly that course of action was decided back in August 2005! They certainly were not basing their policy actions on its impact on inflation 18 months down the line, look where we now are.

Quite true, NuLabour will inflate and devalue, we simply have to ask ourselves, why has it taken them so long this time?

The RPI is already almost there.

merely a ferry ride away.... in France!

Since Ronan Point. It's strange as that was a council block, clearly a completely different beast from 'luxury apartments'

UBS, HSBC, Morgan Stanley et al wont touch them because they all know the sort of crap they've been securitising for them over recent years.

Portsmouth; where urban chic street cafés, high class bars and sophisticated women are merely a ferry ride away.

They 'do' a New Century and go bump.

I saw them being built last year, they're right next to that tower the council built, 'The Folly' or whatever it's called. There's also another 'luxury' development on a main junction next to a high street that only seems to consist of pound shops and pawn brokers.

Many have bitten off more than they can chew in Florida.

It's because BTL muppets all snap them up off-plan.

That's called an endowment mortgage, no?

It all depends on Sterling, if we see the carry trade unwinding and sterling takes a hit this will drive input inflation for our imports. I'd say our fate is firmly in the hands of the BoJ.

If the default rate exceeds a set margin then the buyer can force the seller of the security to buy it back. How much sub-prime junk is masquerading as investment grade mezzanine?

Those figures neglect to include cancellations, and they're running in the region of 50% for new build.

Why work hard, innovate, develop new technology, add value, employ people and pay taxes when you can simply sit on your ar$e on top of a pile of bricks and do far better?

Look at the above graph, even in the midst of a global boom the UK market is even more insane compared to others thanks to our unique planning system and nimby base. Something to be proud of.

Fighting over their castles OF ALL the forces that have changed Britain over the past decade or so, the long bull market in housing is perhaps the strongest—and the most anonymous. High house prices have done their work quietly, reshaping concentrations of wealth and stoking clashes over supply. Other rich countries have had house-price booms too, but Britain's has been faster and more furious (see chart). And high levels of home ownership (Britons are more likely to own bricks than even Americans but less likely to own equities) have magnified their effect. As problems go, the fact that the proportion of properties fetching £1m ($2m) or more in 1996 prices has increased more than tenfold since then (according to Nationwide, a mortgage provider) seems a nice one to have. For a decade, buying a house has been a one-way bet, which is one reason why more people are anxious to make it. But this windfall largely represents transfers from young to old. Those who have houses may choose to help their children get one too—over 40% of first-time buyers now receive help from their parents, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders. But children whose parents do not own homes will be left behind. For people who worry about inequality, this is bad news. Income inequality on one common measure, the Gini coefficient, has remained broadly constant for a decade. Meanwhile, inequality measured by asset ownership has risen. That is partly because assets other than houses have risen in value too. But hot house prices have a lot to do with it. John Hills of the London School of Economics (LSE) says that between 1945, when old wealth began to decline rapidly, and the 1970s asset inequality declined. In the 1980s income inequality rose sharply, but asset inequality stayed flat. Since the mid-1990s, asset inequality has increased markedly. High property prices have also intensified conflicts over supply. MPs frequently receive complaints from constituents about new housing developments in their neighbourhoods. (Britons seem to excel at this form of grumbling: parties set up by British expatriates in Spain to block developments prospered in elections there on May 27th.) These are now balanced by complaints from parents who worry about their children staying at home indefinitely, stretching adolescence into a fourth decade. Since 2000 the number of loans made to first-time buyers has declined to levels last seen in the early 1990s, when interest rates touched 15% and many people could not afford to borrow. [...]

"he gave little away for now beyond saying interest rates were low" I fear Greenspan may actually be Chance Gardener, he has kept us all fooled for years.

The pair in question are clearly special.

It means the Leeds BS are their new landlords, in effect.