man o' the year

Not when there is profit in it at the rate of £4k or more a month for care costs.

Availability of credit. If they carried on stoking the fire the trend would continue but, at least for the time being, lending criteria has been tightened. It probably wont last, unless the bankers think they can make more money from repossessions than creating money.

I know of two people with interest only mortgages. One has plan of selling to repay and downsize. The property has sporadically been on the market over the past 5 years. They have dropped the price a little but never received an offer. The other is not only interest only but also an offset. They are behind with repayments but just able to keep from the next step. I hope the situation deteriorates as it happens to bethe most obnoxious people I have to deal with.

Average is about 2% now and falling. Last 10 year bond auctions were 1.13 % in April and 1.31 % in March. Last bond auction at more than 2% was June 2015.

"If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly" otherwise she can kiss goodbye to her second term.

145 properties in last 24 hours in my search area (10 miles of ba2). Usually it is more like 20 or 30 and peaks at about 60.

Whether you need a VAT or not it may be worth requesting one. I have just done so and been given a £3 refund on a £17 purchase on Amazon in lieu of VAT receipt.

This could make the Unite election tomorrow (result next due 23rd) important as if McCluskey wins he will again be able to manipulate a puppet to top of labour party keeping them unelectable so Tories will be in for a generation.

Anyone explain what constitutes qualifying income here? I assume anything that is taxable. So income from ISAs is exempt? How about dividends from outside an ISA. I assume this would be counted, so self employment is not a means of escape.. Am I right? Just asking.

BA2 and BS39 but I am in Notts at the moment and it is not much different. God how hopeful I was reading the 10% falls in Cambridge on another thread. It becomes less and less likely that I will ever buy. Not wasting my good cash on the sh1tboxes available. When I started looking I had 100k deposit. Now I have £350k and am further from buying than ever.

The death of the housing market seems greatly exaggerated where I look. Even the crap which has sat on the market for 7 years or so is selling recently. Prices gone crazy. God help us!

In my experience Oban is either so busy that is difficult to obtain accommodation or so quiet it is difficult to find an eatery open at lunch time. Ok I exaggerate a little but we were the only customers in one once. Seriously only the ferry keeps people in Oban otherwise they would quickly head out on a ferry or further up the coast.

Mr Chilvers is a telegraph regular. Link

On the house price front I see few sales in my areas (Bath area and Notts) and steady growth in price cuts. On wider economic front North Notts town has several unlet shops. Not seen to same extent for a long time.

I feel your pain Joe. I have the same investment apprehension and frustration. I am sat with £350k which will be at least £400k the end of 2017. Sounds fantastic I know but I am not going to spend this on a little sh1tbox and I can't get a mortgage to buy what I want, although to be honest there is nothing on the market at the moment that would tempt me even if I could. The last house I was interested in sold in March for a price we could afford if we could have secured the mortgage. I do want a house but that will soon be less relevant as my eldest will leave for university in Sep 2018 and my youngest 3 years after that. Wife and I will retire in 2021 and we will then travel for much of the year. Most of our £ is sat in accounts paying b*gger all although the £48k(value yesterday) we do have invested in PEPs has increased by 30% over the last year. We have had them for many years. The surge in the financial markets makes me more apprehensive that we are set up for a fall with more and more temptation to invest it feels like a set up where someone is engineering a way to separate a lot of people from a lot of money. I have even accelerated paying off the business mortgage but at 1.75% now less tax on interest payments there is little financial incentive to do so. Does make me feel better though seeing the capital fall so rapidly. It now stands at £280k so we could pay all off now if we chose to. I have a TD Direct ISA account (recently opened) and will use up my allowance for this year and soon after next years too. I will then start to transfer in Cash ISAs and open an account in my wife's name to use her ISA allowances too. I am holding off booking our US holiday for August at the moment hoping there may be some recovery in the £ but may easily go the other way. We have not had a family holiday as such for about 6 years. Incidentally I am at the moment driving a 16 year old Saxo - it is difficult breaking this frugality!

After years of threatening and a year of frustration unable to access documents to prove identity I have now opened a dealing account and ready to wet my feet. Although I have had PEPs for years this will be a new experience. There is a reluctance as markets are at all time high but I must start using ISA allowances more effectively than the paltry per cent I can gain in cash ISAs. There were more notices of interest rate decreases in post today. What did RK post that saw him banned? anyone know?

Don't get too carried away - I recognised that straight away as St Ives and there is another branch of Taylors just 3 miles away in Huntingdon serving the same area really. Also (remembering from when I was in St Ives) there were at least 8 other estate agents in St Ives which is ridiculous for that size of town.

I think the paying of interest on an extra 20% will push many into unaffordability. It seems if you were unable to afford 5 years ago your financial situation is now unlikely to be that much better. But now you are loaded with debt and commitment. A consequent increase in divorce rate and surge of properties onto the market can only result in one thing - lower house prices!

I think the prospect of the interest free period for the first Help to Buy loans will taint the Help to Buy concept. Although this may be a little while away yet (April 2018 I think) the effect will gradually increase. This will accelerate the downward pressures and taint the Help to Buy concept as the idiots who sleep walked into their commitments realise the reality of their situations. Without reinvention Help to buy is then dead and becomes a reason for complaint rather than celebration.

Some bizarre intonations by the translator on Sky News - she sounds like Ken Clarke's daughter I would imagine.

Isn't teaching just the classic profession left behind by the cost of living and house prices in particular? 23 years in teaching showed me that teaching was always a good 2nd salary but never a good first one. We were lucky in that we were soon enough to be able to afford to buy a house, although I remember that the tax increase in John Major's time took us into new territory where even two head of department salaries in teaching and no holidays meant we were using savings to meet the bills. We each had our share of house share time too! To be honest unless you were chasing promotion teaching was always a dead end financially, but in those days the promise of pension benefits and fantastic holidays were always quoted by successive governments as reasons teachers did not deserve competitive salaries. Nowadays with house prices in particular where they are and wage increases not keeping up with inflation since I left the profession 10 years ago, teachers have no chance of meeting the expectations of a profession in terms of buying a house, running a car, having a life etc but teachers are of course not alone in this position. There has been a massive change in society and teachers have not been ones to benefit. It's house prices what did it! - (oh and redistribution of wealth to the mega wealthy and the benefit recipients). Brown contributed to this just like others.

I know several who are playing this game.

Tesco Interest rates are pretty good so we have max for FSCS in each account. I have checked and we are unaffected although I am interested to know how they have found a way in. Our accounts are only accessed from one computer and their security seems pretty good so I am not concerned.

We have not seen any change in US guests and an increase in Canadians but those from the continent almost disappeared from about 2012 and have not come back in the same numbers. There has been a more recent down turn in Australian and New Zealand guests. We did have massive upturn in Chinese but this has almost stopped again now. Our B&B competitors ARE generally winding down their businesses and some are on the market but this seems to be a lifestyle choice. In all honesty I think some of them have made so much money that they are now in position as to never to have to put up with the crap from guests any longer. Believe me you have no idea as to the extent and magnitude of this - we have had almost all conceivable flavour of idiot in 10 years running our hotel. There is little doubt in my mind that most of the B&Bs are taking a lot of black market trade, undeclared to taxman and taken in cash. There are massive tax breaks for running a B&B and very little increase in costs, especially if you don't tell the tell the insurance, mortgage or taxman. Many costs can still be claimed from taxman even though most payments are taken as back handers. For us this would not be possible even if we wished to as since 2008 almost all our trade is taken by card. Worst of all is the fact that it seems to me that B&Bs pay no more council tax than the house did before. In comparison our Business Rates have gone up massively. As for the data quoted I would be wary as we became exasperated by the supposed continual increase in occupancy levels quoted through the recession and stopped submitting our own data because of this. At the same time this was supposed to be happening many places were going bust. A better indicator would be the number of places for sale of Colliers Robert Barry and Christies. There seem to be a lot available at the moment and many sit unsold for years.

It makes me happy to read that and compare to the idiot I know who bought for £150k in 1996. Mewed later and moved onto an offset mortgage in about 2001. Then financial crisis hit so unable to obtain any other mortgage. Now paying 4% interest and owes more than £200k. Offset has to be gradually reduced so repayments are £900 per month. In 2021 which I think is when offset is supposed to finish projected unpaid capital will still be £190k. What a great bit of planning.