frenchy

the thing is that the LR is up to date according to solicitor (and my paperwork) so RM and Zoopla would have received the data whenever they download/pay from the LR database. It is almost as if they are cherry picking what gets reported on their websites. Or am I being cynical...

I bought a house at the end of the last year (exchanged first week of January). I got a reasonable price for it, 201k. They were asking 240k but needed to sell quickly to move to an already ordered park home and I had the money for it. Land registry has long been updated and reflect the change in ownership and the price paid. HOWEVER, the sale does not appear on house price website (including Zoopla and Rightmove). The house is still shown there as having last been sold in 2000 for 105k. I contacted my solicitor and she confirmed that everything is OK indeed. What is going on? Have Rightmove and Zoopla decided that I paid too little (they "value" the house at 15% more. My concern is that there is another house for sale in the street which is identical apart from being detached instead of semi (same sqm according to EPC, same number of rooms, same drive and garden size, same condition looking at pics, same year built - but having said all this our garden is better secluded). It is on a 275k and has gone STC. I am worried that someone else is going to get ripped off and pay over the odds because they can't see how much I have paid. Any idea what is going on? My purchase was a normal straight forward deal (not auction, not repo, not distressed).

Houses have been going up for 10 years in a row, people never thought Houses would do over £200,000 there is going to be a short term correction. But long term I'm expecting higher prices... Exciting times... Bubble and myopia anyone?

Does the median earning include benefits/tax credit...? This is a serious question considering the fact that after child benefits, tax credit (and the rest of it) it would appear that household "earnings" are no less than 40k ish.

I put down 100k and then overpaid another 20k within 2 months of taking mortgage (from April). Will have paid it all in 4 years hopefully without using up my current savings if I can keep working. I did indeed make 10kEUR on my EUR (4.5% after tax), next to nothing on my CHF and nothing on my GBP mainly because up to the point of buying I had very few GBP (the 15k in NS&I is from last issue). I made some gains by staging my return to GBP but could have gained a lot less had I delayed the purchase by just a few months. There is tax to pay on this as well but admittedly it should be offset from rent. How many however have near 200k in the bank though? Or even 120k? A typical 20% deposit wouldn't allow for much offsetting! Bottom lien is that I haven't got another 5 or 10years to waste in someone else's run down house to see if prices eventually come down. Even if they actually come down significantly (e.g. the equivalent rent is significant) then what is the point waiting. I trust the situation would be different in other parts of the UK where rent is completely disconnected from asking house prices.

I am sure my lady friend cannot remember this conversation (I have not seen her since 2003) but I will certainly never forget how daft I was that day. Not that I regret not buying at the time but I could certainly have. The thing is I would be selling an overpriced house to buy another overpriced house for the family, so would have not gained much...

The house is 120sqm including garage and conservatory and shy of 100sqm excluding garage/cons. so we are looking at 2k/sqm. I wouldn't say it is a posh part of Bristol but I think it is a very nice part of Bristol and nicer that the so called posh parts of it (regardless of price). I thank the Mrs for that who saw what I then failed to see... Anyway, the reality is that prices of essentials have pretty much double since 2000 (essentials = utilities/petrol/cars/insurance and maybe food but can't recall what I used to pay 12 yrs ago). I accept that wages have not gone up by much more than 40% in that time frame (mine has gone down in fact) but prices have. How can you expect house prices to halve when the price of everything else has doubled? Time is going by, this malarkey has been going on for 12 years, it is a very long time and even if for the next 10years house prices stagnate or slowly drift down as they are doing at the moment, consumer prices don't seem to stop going up and rent still has to be paid at level that don't seem to be going down either.

Let me remember too what I said in the past. I remember in 2001 (or 2002) sat at a table outside a pub telling a young female work colleague that house prices in the UK were way too high and would be crashing any time soon (I lived in Portsmouth then). She laughed at me, I thought she was an idiot and didn't have a clue... who was the idiot? Then I remember coming across this site in 2005 and waiting for the paint to dry ever since. Read my post, I spent 50k on rent since 2005 to barely break even if that! (and I am even talking about the rent I paid between 2000 and 2005). As for Ireland, USA, Spain, well they have let it happen. The UK has instead preferred to inflict a 40% devaluation and a subsequent 40% consumer price inflation. And even thought the GBP has since strengthened I am still waiting to see consumer prices fall. Why should I sell? I don't care what my house is worth, it is my house! I have paid the funny price with the funny money I earned doing some funny work in the UK for the past 10yrs.

There is no income anymore! I have 15k with NS&I, never been able to put more in it was withdrawn twice too fast. I have managed some decent returns on a EURO account but this is all gone now as well. The 90k savings I have (in EUR/CHF/GBP) barely return the lowish mortgage rate I have got fixed for 5yrs.

South West (Bristol). Incidentally & anecdotally, although I have long had the updated land registry titles showing how much we paid; there is no reference of this sale on any of the websites (Zoopla, Rightmove, Mouseprices...) and the house is shown on those as having last sold in 2001 and now being valued at 240k (40 more than I paid for, it is a 3 bed semi from 1962, very well built by previous owner of the land who built a few at the same time). The cynical side of me thinks that there may have been some cherry picking as on the same street there has been 2 sales (different types of house but not a lot bigger) at the same time for 275k (semi bungalow with larger garden/drive but similar sqm and little room to extend without making a mess of it) and 330k (1850 detached house with low ceiling and in need of some work, similar size plot and perhaps more sqm or at least more room to extend - but loft too small to convert)

No, I wouldn't. I bought a house recently because it is pretty obvious that what should be happening won't be allowed to. I paid 201k for it, asking price was 240k and I imagine it might have sold for 250-260k at peak. The only reason I managed to get it for 201k is because the seller actually needed to sell, otherwise I guess the house would still be on the "market". So you could say that I saved 40 to 60k thanks to the long awaited HPC right? Only I didn't, in the time it took for the price to "fall" by 40k I paid 49k for the privilege of renting a shitty damp & cold house which in 6yrs did not have any maintenance done to it (apart from a fan in bathroom). Had I been renting the same house I now live in, I would have paid 59k (we actually viewed the house next door to where we now live and the rent was £825pcm and it is now more like £900pcm). So for 6yrs I lived in a crappy house and spent more money than if I had bought in the first place. At least for the same (incidentally less) money, my kids have a home and we can do what we want to it / in it. And BTW, I have an 80k mortgage with ... 90k savings in various banks.currencies. If I sold, I would be pooping myself with 200k in cash, earning next to nothing, at the mercy of currency fluctuations and bank solvency... How do I feel about all this? Let's say that if I put my feelings (against governments, banks, corporations) into practise I would end up on the news and shortly after behind bars...

what is your problem?

And the relevance to HPC? Don't tell me you put it in the PM subforum, it is irrelevant full stop. There could be a knitting subforum in which to discuss crochet and the jumpers but it would still be irrelevant. Mark IV Why don't you team up with GC and eff off to a PM website to help restore some credibility to HPC?

And the relevance to HPC? Don't tell me you put it in the PM subforum, it is irrelevant full stop. There could be a knitting subforum in which to discuss crochet and the jumpers but it would still be irrelevant. Mark III

And the relevance to HPC? Don't tell me you put it in the PM subforum, it is irrelevant full stop. There could be a knitting subforum in which to discuss crochet and the jumpers but it would still be irrelevant. Mark II

And the relevance to HPC? Don't tell me you put it in the PM subforum, it is irrelevant full stop. There could be a knitting subforum in which to discuss crochet and the jumpers but it would still be irrelevant.

This is absolutely right. There are only a handful of sports shops in the UK and as a result they are way overpriced. Calling JJB a sport shop is farcical indeed, all you can get there are fancy trainers to wear in pubs and clubs, shiny footballs that probably rarely see a foot and golf clubs for chavs wannabe golfers (as I presume the posh golfing class does not shop at JJB). The day you will see Decathlon type shops all around the UK then you will know brits have started exercising. The fact that there is no business model for such shops in the UK says it all...

I am a bit confused with this "change of direction". As far as I know in France you can retire at 60 (or whatever) provided you have contributed for at least 40 years. So indeed if you have studied until you 25yrs old you can only retire at 65 even if the retirement age is 60 or 62. Doctors for example who usually study until the age of 27 (9yrs study to be a doctor, which puts into perspective the qualification of GPs in the UK...) retire no earlier than 67. So as TSM points, rather than a retirement age, it should be a number of years in work that defines retirement age (as is the case in France) and so rather than increase retirement age from 60 to 62 France should have increased years worked from 40 to 42.

could not have put it better.

you dont, that's why you go to france on winter holiday like the rest of the brits

it is as unsustainable as in teh UK however, unilke the UK, there is something to show for France debt, great roads, trains, bridges, power stations, public transport, modern hospitals. For a similar level of debt, what has the UK got to show? Where are your brand new roads taking anywhere you like fast? Where are your public transports (and I don't mean smoking buses, I mean subways, tramways, cycle paths, dead cheap park and ride, etc.). Where are your high speed trains? Where are you modern water systems? Your underground electrical network? Where are your free museums (don't tell me they are in London I live in the SW)....

I think you are the one who doesn't get it. Young French people come to the UK to make money not to enjoy the country. If you are young, no kids and happy to rent then the UK is great. In other words if you don't need to use non-existent services, public infrastructures, crap schools, poor hospitals, etc, then living in the UK is all right provided you get a high salary. The problems start when you want to buy a house and raise a family. You realize that you cant afford a shoe box, everywhere you go with the kids at weekends cost a small fortune, nursery fees are un-affordable, the education system is rubbish unless you are prepared to spend 10k/kid/year on private schools and then anyhow you do have to pay 10k to go to public university. You also realize that there is no regulation in the UK whatsoever, being gas, elec, water, banks, pubilc transport, you are being ripped-off left right and center. And I will not mention the weather, the fact that don't have ski resorts. If like me you had your kids before realizing how crap the UK is for families, then you are stuck until the (english) wife can speak decent French. There are many aspects of France that I dislike, to cut a long story short, not everywhere else is good, but the UK is really shit nowadays. Let's hope it will change sometime soon.

Hi there, I don't know enough about Downend (although would not want to live there) but there is one thing I am pretty sure of, if they paid 370k for it, you will not get it for anywhere near 250k. It is probably only worth 250k if that, but who is going to accept a 120k loss for a 6 year period when you still have armies of idiots out there prepared to pay 350k for it? There is nothing between 250k and 300k so if it is not going to be 250k, the best you can hope is 300k Beware not to lose all credibility with EA or else they will not take you seriously next time you view. Good luck

thanks to zebbedee, rozza, zanu and everyone else contributing to this thread, your advice is very much appreciated!

indeed, it is the UK afterall... I will tell my friend to add a CCTV sticker on front door, that should cover it