koala_bear

What Amazon actually said was about good inwards to their warehouse from 3rd parties seller not deliveries to customers. (e.g. "fulfilled by Amazon") i.e. they will be focusing future delivery acceptance to their warehouses for the next fortnight for high sales volume goods in the current climate. A lot of these goods are fairly low churn rate for the entire delivery size and arrive by the container load so in most cases will still be in stock. The idea is to focus goods inwards staff and warehouse shelf space on the recently in demand goods.

Both pushed heavily into lettings when sales volumes dived and now their rental revenue streams are under concerted attack (fees crackdown and BTL landlords exiting). Cost base has been increasing with increases in business rates and premise rents. The main reason for the merger (and lots of other smaller local ones taking place) is to enable branch closures and volume per branch to increase (many EAs appear to have little to sell or rent!)

Sales volumes up - is this a sign that some landlords are selling up (have seen a few locally going to FTBs but the plural of anecdotes is not data! hence would be good to confirm if this is a regional/national picture). I'm still struggling to understand buyer finances unless the majority of FTBs have parental /inheritance support

OVO are going to get had on this one, the question is how much... The new supplier admin costs are much lower than traditional ones; they have cheaper better IT systems that don't have decades old legacy issues (and were designed for the internet!), don't have pension fund issues or layers of bloated management. To come out of this OVO will need to transfer the customers to their systems ASAP and get the SSE legacy systems shut down and major job cuts. OVO have effectively bought some older customers who tend not to move. OVO also now need to realise the cost of being one of the big 6 when the government comes looking for funding for initiatives. A good move for SSE as the others will find there aren't any buyers for their retail businesses. Energy retail is not a good place to be unless you have low costs and big marketing budget. The broker rule changes will probably the final straw for the big 6 on the retail side.

My including more mortgage data to they mean switching from just ex HalifaxBoS to the whole Lloyds group new lending? Or are they chucking in remortgaging as well as the transactions numbers are at historic lows?

Given the number of properties they lease and will be handing back the keys on at suitable break points, that is a huge write down on the rest. Some tactical property devaluation to aid rates valuation claims?

Jack Wills just sold by administrators to Mike Ashley. More Landlords likely to be getting nervous. Loads of stuff going and not near quarter days either...

Three of the Waitrose store are being sold to LIDL!!! Bromley, Oadby & Wollaton The Bromley one is actually Downham in LB Bromley ('30s council estate) and opposite a working mens club! Probably best described as an oops moment...

I mean who in their right mind would loan money to Donald? Oh wait...

Isn't this just the return of an old issue that many of us old timers remember, namely that changes like this in the Halifax are actually mostly a indication of changing lending terms and valuations at the Halifax rather than what the market is actually doing overall. What it is saying is that they relaxed their lending terms in a given month not that HPs overall have gone up. At a guess they probably had at years worth of stable data as prices stopped "rocketing" and reassessed their valuation criteria becoming less bearish in some regions. (See thread on buyer not being bale to get mortgage co to agree with seller valuations. They probably realised they were losing market share and responded.

The cost of replacing life expired coal fired generating equipment was vastly undercut as the price (and size scale economics) of CCGTs made it non sensicle to invest in coal fired generation hence the dash for gas which would have happened without an environmental agenda.

We been forecasting this for a long long time! (at least 6-7 years ago when I was here more regularly) ...but we never guessed how many times the PPI claims gold mine would keep getting extended!

Council tax rises were deliberately kept low post 2010, the LA cupboards are now bare and social care costs are increasing massively especially in some areas with above average numbers of elderly. Business rate hikes haven't turned out to be as lucrative as anticipated for local authorities either.

The biggest issue is the Nimby type councils that have effectively retained existing residents as they get older and forced younger people to live elsewhere as that is where the homes/ jobs are. All the retirement type towns at /near the sea in the south are /are going to cause big issues for councils. The big financial metric is % of 65+ residents as it is also an indicator of business rates too (or rather lack of as they tend to have retired and don't work!)

It just high light how nuts it has got in the SE! The question is how long before it starts unravelling to a noticeable extent?

On the same day as the latest report into probation reorganisation failures came out.

My favourite was about a decade ago when the buyer's surveyor* was a good mate of the buyer (both good mates) and came up with the biggest defect list of all time (most of which were easy to sort) *Doesn't usually do normal surveying just lots of litigation / listed building issues.

FENSA paperwork being in a state is very common so I slightly feel for the vendor on that one. Actually checking paperwork properly is good step forward for surveyors + solicitors and definite sign they don't fancy being sued and want to value more sensibly. A simple solution to the window issue would be to discount based on window replacement.

At least another 18 months, it will all be blamed on Brexit confidence issues this year.

Anecdote alert: Several friends have been looking to buy over the last year or so and have been putting in offers (sensible SW postcodes), all have fallen through. The issues in all cases wasn't the buyers finances (they are sensible and numerate) but the surveyor valuations coming in 20k-30k lower killing transactions... The biggest problem with buying they are facing is that there are very few properties on the market that surveyors acting for most mortgage companies will agree the value on. Most sellers appear to have failed to notice that prices locally stopped going up 18+months ago (in general, area being gentrified rapidly appear to still have been increasing till last summer)

Or their next tax return! Lots of middle America paying far more than expected!

Federal Government shut down, history shows this is mostly lost spending rather than deferred when staff eventually get back pay as they tend to save it instead.

Both are former Merton councillors, along with a couple of junior ministers...

Sounds like nuisance tripping prevention to me! I forget what is safe the cow /horse front rear legs difference as i think that is some where in the mix too! I gave up writing letter/email when they took the brown paper envelopes from the manufacturers to allow plastic consumer units and history has proved me right on that one. AFDDs are pretty waste of time as there are far more effective methods improve electrical safety in virtually all cases.

It is considered safer not to have RCD protection on circuits power smoke / fire alarms but apart from that I generally agree. XLPE insulation has much longer lifespan than PVC and might be a better bet given most installations are used beyond the nominal PVC lifespan (conservative). VIR has been gone from new use in over 50 years...