AgeingBabyBoomer

Hard work indeed - however, you must realise that 90% of your efforts have benefitted the peolpe from whom you bought the property - very little of your profit is returned to you. Your own resources are working very hard to pay off the windfall gains in land value enjoyed by the previous owner. That owner expended no effort to achieve those gains - you did. ABB

I don't get it with the baby boomer bashing thing. Despite being a til end baby boomer, I too will get shafted over for a state pension, and a private one. The reason our promised pensions aren't going to exist is because our government has frittered the money away on bad economics, electioneering giveaways and pointless wars. They have known the demographic profile for forty years, and have failed in their responsibilities to provide for them. The private pensions companies gambled my hard earned contributions on the dotcom boom - and lost, so I can look forward to a nice letter explaining to me that my pension fund hadn't performed quite as well as predicted etc..... I have paid tax, NI and pension contributions throughout my career, so have the rest of my peers. I want to know where all my money went to. I do not subscribe to the belief that is simply being consumed by my parents generation -that is just political spin desgin to divide and conquer. ABB

Interesting comments, I did my degree in the eighties,just before the loans came in. At that time Thatcher was cutting budgets to the bone and Unis were forced to cut back on Science and Engineering and offer 'cheaper to run' courses. The ramoing up of the student bubble had begun, though I think in my time only 15% of people went to uni. Choice of degree does matter -they ar enot equal. On joining the wonderful world of work, armed with my II(1) in Chemistry I was immdeitely dissapointed. Most of my peers who had not gone to uni were earning more, had more experience. and most scarily could do their jobs wih ease. I found it difficult to concentrate my emergies, and could not understand why my three years of study pplus a year in industry didn't sseem to have any relevance to the project I was working on. I quickly realised that the learning had not stopped, only just begun. Degrees only open doors, you have to make the effort to walk through them, and work afterwards. I would say my degree got me the interviews, but I won jobs as a result of my other skils, and after a while my experiences. Having said that, a 'good' degree is worth it, it proves the intellectual wiring is in place and that you learned how to learn. For sure you will not know everything you need to survive in life by the time you have graduated - but if you don't know how to do something, you now have the tools to find out. The real benefits don't kick in until you are in your thirties MO. ABB (over forty now...)

Well, when Milton Keynes was firt set up, it had a remit to provide cheap housing. The UK commercial builders refused to tender for the contracts, so they went ahead on thier own initiative. Whicih is why there are some odd designs floating around on the older estates. It seems that this levy would be unlikely to reduce prices though ABB

Well Hurrah! Though I think the whole Sipp myth was clever electioneering. To most people 'A'- Day was synonymous with Sippis, properdee and luvverly tax-breaks. I reckon there is a lot of other rather less juicy stuff coming along with A-day, but Sipps would distract the chattering classes eniugh to win votes and prop up the market for a ibt. It was fatally flawed, even a Tory government would never have done this - it would bankrupt the nation. So the U-turn shouldn't really surprise us - the fallout will be amusing to watch though ABB

Would the figures not get skewed by a major shift from repayment to interest only mortgages. They seem much more prevalent these days, and aren't really covering the full repayment. The affordable monthly amount thus allows a much larger loan to be taken out at lower interest. Two things follow: - more of the capital repayment cost is excluded from the average - the repayment amount is much more sensitive to changes in interest rates. So I would argue the gentle rise we see now is in fact beyling a sharper peak. Plus the general value should be much more volatile to changes in IR. ABB

I suspect he is both covering his rear, and trying to sell the valuation to the lender by indicating that it is BMV and by implication less likely to attract NE. What is most telling is the use of the word 'usually', like it is usual (historically) for houses to sell at 7x multiples. - which it isn't A more accurate term would have been 'recently', but that would weaken his and your arguments about BMV. Incidentally, would the property be a viable renting proposition at the higher end of the range? ABB

Well, I do feel for the old lady - mainly because she is an old lady. (Many old ladies get hugeh amounts of possibly undeserved sympathy this way). We seem to be making many assumptions abiout the size and value of the house, and also we don''t know all the circumstances - like why the daughter cannot move closer to her etc. The 'house move can kill a 92 year old' whilst true is also germane, since that effect is a reuslt of our cr@p and corrupt conveyancing system, and independent of HPI. The thing it *does* highlight however s this: Most of the population has not been active in the housing market at all during this boom, so they are not responsible for the ramping, the billionare seminars etc. Many may be aware of, and feel good about, their paper gains. Now the boom is gone, and they try to realise them, they cannot. In most cases their sale will be brought about by personal circumstance, not a desire to 'cash in'. The cash from the sale may be desperately needed for something more urgent, but through no fault of their own, they are now obstructed from selling. Or at least selling without a large paper loss wrt the 2004 price. There will be many vicitms among the locked-out, and the locked-in of the crash - sadly only a few will be getting their just desserts. ABB

Maybe the 'market' is broken Maybe there is no such thing as a 'free market' I think it is like communism - nice idea on paper but unable to withstand human greed and self interest. Our housing 'market' is a cartel, comprising the land owners, builders, surveyors, money lenders and ultimately the government which maintains and strictly upholds our arcane planning systems. Builders sit on huge land banks which they develop at a trickle, ensuring that demand rarely falls below supply. Builders can maniputate the market by giving away carpets, kitchens etc rather than dropping the list price. Builders set the market price with new builds - the second hand mrket follows on. 'Free market' forces can only be effective in a free market We do not have that ABB

Yes, in theory, but the majority do not. Their paper gain is usually realised on retirement when they downsize. In the meantime, they keep paying till it hurts, all the way up the ladder, along with the rest of us ABB

Maybe it is because the average public sector workers job is a bit harder to offshore than that of the average private sector worker. The higher management in my company never tires of reminding us that they can hire three Indians for rthe cost of one American or UK engineer. ABB

Why is it that people abhor inflation in all its forms with the exception of house prices? BTW Council Tax is linked to the value of the house, so no surprise it has gone up so much ABB

I don't knwo the percentage of total, but in decreasing order: 1 The Crown - nicked from you and I (see the Enclosures act) 2. The Church of England - nicked in te name of God 3 and 4 Oxford and Cambridge universities - Apparently University fees were often paid in the form of land during the middle ages. ABB

Got it! http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/ind...ic=12798&st=40# Phew - took some digging - but worth it The lucky winner will be Time to Raise Interest Rate as I remember it ABB

TTRTR, Wasn't it you who placed a bet on IRs being below 4.25% by Christmas? I trust we can look forward to an an apology from you sometime soon ABB

'But if you pay for it as rent, you have no chance of benefitting from HPI' Got to disagree there TTRTR - HPI has made my rent about half the IO mortgageable value of the place I live in. Simply put it is cheaper to ren tfomr my landlord than it is to rent money form the bank. The difference goes into saving, and wating as my LTV plummets. Given the right falls, I may only need to borrow five figures as opposed to the six figure potential mortgage I was considering only a year or so ago. ABB

Missing Badger's Mount - right next to Pratts Bottom (Really) ABB

not so sure - I think even redecorating in a Grade II listed needs permission from English Heritage. Maybe the builder dumped at a discount because he couldn't get PP for the barn conversion? Anyhow 30% off doesn't look like a bull market anymore ABB

My expectations are ever more despearate vI spin, manipulation of the headline indices to disguise the size of the falls, trumpeting of the slightest rise as meaning the (previously unannounced) crash is at an end, false dawns, fake predicitions for next years HPI A resounding yes ABB

If you calculate it out, you repay around 2.5x what you borrowed, 100% of the capital, plus 150% total interest. i.e. every £1000 on the mortgage costs £2500 over the life of the mortgage. So 22.5k costs £56.25k to 'rent' over 25 years. £22.5k is not a paltry sum to me, £56.25k is even less paltry. ABB

I don't think _all_ BTL will lose out, but when HPI is 20% any fool can make money. During a fall, those who bought wisely, and can really make a business of it will. Those that thought they were on easy street, relying on capital gains, with no idea how to be a profitable landlord will lose out. ABB

Quite interesting, but aren't the two graphs showing us the same thing? if H is hous eprice and w are earnings log H - log W = log (H/W) The HBOS data looks less well correlated post 1995, I wonder if they are overestimating average earnings. The first graph would appear more trustworty - since it is based on historical, real transacions. Taking logs erases the spikes somewhat, but what is important is the absolute difference between the log values. Perhas this can be used to figure out the long term average. ie antilog(average of log difference) should give us the long term average ratio - since I always worked to the possibly mythical figure of 3.5, I wonder how close this really is, and if the difference data shows any long term bias. ABB

nodumsunreader, You are right, st is down right unamerican, sorry - not British, to keep encouraging this kind of terrorist attack on House Price Inflation. We should all repeat 20 times a day the mantra: 'House prices go up for ever' (which curiously almost rhymes with 'Four legs good two legs better) ABB

Many years ago, I lived in Germany. It was very much a save first, buy later, cash is king culture. Chequebooks an dcredit cards were a rarity, and regarded with suspicion. Even car and house purchases were often made with cash. Houses were both huge and expensive. I discovered that a family would take on 100 year mortgages, build a house big enough to hold three generations, and pass the mortgage down as the younger ones began to earn money. Nice system when families are strong, stable and fully employed. Not so sure it works quite that way anymore, especiallly in the larger cities. ABB

I would staart making noises about your inheritance, and how you might end up paying off his debts when he is gone, as there will be no money left to inherit (should it all go horribly wrong) ABB