ShouldBeWorking

My rightmove emails have no price range set... but there's still hardly anything. When browsing rightmove I always check the 'show me STC, under offer etc' box just to bulk out the list a bit.

Interestingly I think both halves of the semi are for sale with the same agent at the same time. This half is 10k more expensive (that tree looks a bit ugly IMHO): http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sa...y-21017935.html

I lived in Howard Road for about 3yrs, my wife for about 11 and we both were quite happy there. Our neighbours were very friendly and we loved being able to walk along the river to town and out to Fen Ditton. I was able to cycle to work along the river-- very pleasant. The only downsides for us were: 1. the trend of paving over front gardens for guaranteed parking, reducing the amount of on-street parking available because of the lowered kerbs 2. relatively large number of people with vans, reducing parking further (we occasionally had to park about 50m away, not disasterous just annoying) 3. the traffic on newmarket road on a weekend/shopping day and after a football match (although at least the spillover parking never made it as far as us) 4. litter from McDonalds (although the local Green party were actively trying to help there) We moved to get more space (2BR maisonette to 4BR house in Chesterton) and we miss the old place. Oh well!

We spoke to two solicitors about gifted deposit schemes and they both said that there were two possibilities: 1. if the gift of the deposit is included in the contract (such that if the deal falls through the gift is never made) then the buyer will be obliged to disclose this to their lender and the lender is likely to object on the grounds that the property is overvalued. 2. if the gift is made in a 'side-deal' then if the sale falls through and the buyer keeps the money then you have to go to court to get it back. We were strongly advised not to try either of these options. I wonder how the big developers managed to make these schemes work in the first place (perhaps lenders were well-aware but just didn't care?). I wonder what the actual terms of the Haart deal are.

Perhaps people thinking of selling are adopting a 'wait and see' approach while people whose houses are already on the market are a bit stuck because if they take the house off again, they've wasted all that money on a HIP...

Awesome. They even showed the graph.. brought a tear to my eye.

Perhaps the gov't should link IHT to house price inflation from now on.... then if house prices crash, they're slightly hedged as the threshold drops

Maybe it depends on the institution? From what I've seen, there's a massive divide between the post-doc researchers who have bad pay, low wages and short fixed-term contracts and the lecturers, who do seem to have jobs for life (like US tenure I guess). I've never seen one of the latter get fired; the worst ones just get left by themselves until they retire. Having said that, I've met lots of very talented, very hardworking lecturers who do deserve to be paid well. Pity the system doesn't do a good job of distinguishing the good from the bad.

Yeah my parents (who live near Belfast) were saying how every time they build something (they're fond of creating extensions) it feeds directly into an increase in the rates. I think the process is fairly automatic, if you do everything by the book and get the planning people and building control involved. Some people they know have converted attics into bedrooms unofficially, to escape the tax... but I presume they can't advertise their houses as having these extra rooms when they come to sell.

In the bit I just saw they said that the UK has space for another 1.5 billion homes if we wanted to build on all the land. Pity I can't vote for this policy by pressing the red button on the remote They highlighted the plight of a family of ducks who look set to be evicted from their little field by big nasty houses.... Won't anyone think of the ducks?! Talk about trivialising a serious issue.

I regularly send funds US -> UK and I initially asked both UK and US banks for help. Not only did they offer crap rates but they both insisted I be physically present to authorise each transaction. Slightly inconvenient when you are paid in one country and live in the other! If you get an account with XETrade then you can wire money (relatively) easily using a web front-end. They can direct debit funds from UK banks and EFT them from US ones. I believe they themselves are a Canadian outfit. They seem to do decent rates for currency conversion. They'll also post you a cheque/check if you prefer (thus avoiding an 18dollar or so wiring fee). It was a bit of a hassle to set up: photocopy passport, bank details, brief telephone interview (all in the name of fraud prevention I'm sure) but since I set one up it's been painless.

Frightening. OTOH maybe they all read the Halifax report for Q4 2005 which said that house prices in Cambridge fell 3% over 2005 (in nominal values, more corrected for inflation presumably) and are desparately trying to sell and make the money back? (Gotta put a positive spin on this somehow!)

I just had a look... my cheque was cashed today so my wife and I are also officially debt-free! Time to open the ISAs, increase the pension contributions (in my case I'd better start a pension, ahem), crack open the (Tesco special offer) wine, figure out how to invest in equities and start saving for the future! Good luck to everyone who's still working to pay off a debt -- hang in there! (Now if only we could afford a house. Oh well. Good things come to he who waits and all that...)

How d'ya reckon houseprices.co.uk makes money / intends to make money? Do you think those google ads bring in > 15k? You're right about a mobile service being cool though. I could well imagine sitting in an EA's, covertly texting a postcode and receiving back a list of all the recent transactions. I could even imagine paying for it... hmm

I think they mean the one on Castle Hill: The Castle Inn Tempting... it is on my way home from work too...

I think the west cambridge flats (JJ Thomson Ave off Madingley Rd) can be rented by postdocs and other non-student people associated with the University. I think there are other restrictions though... I think you can't rent them for more than 2 years in a row (IIRC) for example. Plus the location isn't great and I think the bus doesn't run at the weekend.

Sunday Times article Sounds like my kind of place... I've always wanted to live in a secret undergrould lair. Oh and I liked this bit:

When I first went to Uni (about 10 years ago) everyone seemed to get a student Barclaycard with about a 500 UKP limit. If you wanted to buy a one-off expensive item (such as a computer) you had to ask them very nicely first. I never bothered with one of those, instead I waited til I got a job and applied to my regular bank, who promptly rejected me! [ All I wanted it for was the insurance when buying stuff online ] I reapplied and they accepted me the second time, with about a 2k limit I think. Then my job (fixed short-term contract) was finished and I went back to being a student. It seemed like every 6 months my credit limit was upped by about 500 quid. My typical outstanding balance was probably about 200 quid (for flights home), paid off in full each month. So as my income fell, my credit limit rose. By the time I finished the second stint of uni, my credit limit was about 8k: equal to an entire year's stipend (grad students get decent grants, unlike undergrads). It scared me that I could borrow an entire year's income at some ridiculous APR! I think what I'd ideally like is a low-limit: say 500 quid but with the option of increasing it for _single, named transactions_ (like a hotel bill, or piece of expensive equipment). I could write to them and name the vendors and approximate amounts in advance perhaps.

Yeah that was shocking. I suppose he borrowed the money in euros (to take advantage of the super low interest rate!) and has now exposed himself to the whim of the foreign exchange markets. Woohoo. Not. Wonder how the bankruptcy laws in France work?

Yeah, annoying. Probably just a blip though. I'll have to resume my campaign to undermine local sentiment by wearing my Mr. Housing Bubble t-shirt when shopping in Tesco

Yup, I've been enjoying reading the competition over on SP (as a lurker, when I should be working). I was pretty impressed with the slickness of the online game though... it occurred to me that flash applications like that could be quite a powerful propaganda tool. Maybe something like this is needed, only with more of an HPC-slant... to complement the awesome HPC video :-)

A friend sent me this link: mansion impossible With lots of effort and determined clicking I managed to make a cool 10 mil and bought the mansion. If I can do it then so can you... just remember: "Prices can go down as well as up!" :-) (apologies if you've already seen it... I did a search and couldn't find it in the archives)