Buddleia

Someone explain these figures. The CIA links doesn't work. Is this public borrowing? Who does Brown borrow the money from? And where do they get the money from?

So what if it's near a school? Who the hell could raise children to school-age in a flat that size? The poor gardenless mites ...

If your friend wants to be safe then what's wrong with a decent high interest savings account? Sure, inflation may rise, but so will interest rates and and the return on the money. The chance of an Argentina-stlye financial meltdown reducing your savings to toilet paper are very remote IMO. Now if you want to speculate ... that's a different matter and I refer you to the gold-heads reading this forum.

The Grauniad and the Torygraph are the only two papers worth reading now, I'm afraid. The Times has become a farce.

The news blog keeps me coming every day. That and the occasional thread.

I actually bleated out loud in surprise when I saw the news, a few minutes after it appeared on the bbc web site. Less ability to borrow = lower offering prices. Full stop. This boom has been driven by shoddy lending. Now the tap is being ratcheted shut.

Given that rental yields are dropping to miserable levels for landlords, below even a decent savings account, the flow of money into BTL mortgages _should_ be dropping, despite this sort of desperation spotted by gruffydd. A year-on-year negative figure for the number of BTL mortgages taken out would indicate that the speculative BTL boom, a prime driver of HPI, has priced itself out. Is there any evidence that this is happening? All Google tells me is the Nationwide crowing that BTL mortgages rose to 11% of all mortgages taken out in the year up to Feb 2006.

... despite the recent splurge of crash interest stories from the Meeja. Buy to let - Does it still add up? (thisismoney.co.uk) I love this : "Just do your research but dont expect to make big bucks out of renting ,the big money comes when you choose to sell of your buy to lets." [sic] For me, this summarizes the entire BTL bubble.

Neither. I am complaining that developers are cashing in on this ludicrous boom by throwing up crap flats everywhere they can find a place to pull down, principally to supply the BTL market. Result: forests of Barratt hoardings, glitzy show-rooms, and an over-supply of rather poor-quality two-bed flats with black granite work surfaces and spot-lights. This stuff isn't housing ... it's built with investors in mind, and it's destroying the character of our towns.

Regarding your second criterion for prices to fall, "there needs to be more of it", then this is exactly what I have observed in my neck of the woods (SW London, Kingston Vale). Over the last four years, developers have: 1. razed the delightful Duke of Cambridge to the ground and turned it into luxury flats 2. converted another delightful pub into luxury flats and the odd detached house with microscopic garden ("Parkside development - Live the Dream!") 3. turned a car dealership on Kingston Hill into ... er ... luxury flats 4. ripped down the Esso station near Robin Hood roundabout to convert it into even more luxury flats (when these ones get built, they should surely come with a health warning, because the 85 bus will steam past barely inches from the Julien balconies) ... not the mention the gargantuan flat developments that have erupted in the heart of Kingston - you know the sort - "Gasworks View, urban life on the river's edge! 850 units coming soon". This has happened all over London.

Back to business: what yield would you have got on that property if you could have filled it with 4 tenants (5 if you converted that breakfast room into a dorm)? Given that capital appreciation will almost certainly be zero or negative in 2006. It's a genuine question actually, as I'm sure you're no fool, TTRTR.

It is desperate, desperate spin. Note the way the Capital Economics is introduced as "well-known market sceptics". There there two things I have noticed about the BBC. First is that there is never a negative House Price story. Second is that there is never a positive Northern Ireland story. If you are in the UK edition, those two links at the bottom of the home page linking to NI stories are invariably filled with crash deaths, rapes, violence, Troubles. Shame because the beeb is the best website in the world.

It won't crash ... it will be a slow dribble of negative HPI fought tooth and nail by the VIs. Dr Bubb: I'm not paid in gold, nor is anyone else, so why should the current commodities boom affect real house prices?

I agree that everything the Beeb puts out out house prices is laughable positive guff ... but WHY?? Why should the Beeb act as a VI? I simply don't get it.

Got to 285K on a 320K asking price earlier this year ... newbuild luxury flat in Wimbledon Pulled out without a quibble 10 minutes after finding HPC.co.uk

Lol ... I almost bought a 2-bed "luxury" newbuild flat in Wimbledon earlier this year and was put off the idea exactly ten minutes after finding HPC.co.uk. The Land Registry date came out (6 months later ) and shocked me: The two-beds were being marketed for 320K ... I'd negotiated down to 285 before pulling out - and that was hard negotiation as well. Started low at 250K. Some poor sods paid 300K and 305K. But the last two-bed to go - identical to the others - was sold for 248K. THAT'S SOME DISCOUNT!!! I imagine it was the last unit in the block and the builder was desperate to get rid of it (and the pretty agent sitting in the show-flat all day). But the unjustness of it shocked me. "Valutation an art, not a science": Absolutely.

What a ghastly, ghastly proposal ... Read it as: young Jamie isn't allowed to MEW any more, so he's looking at punters to fuel his 3-year round-the-world holiday. Or is he looking to pay back what he's already MEWed?

GROAN ... think of all that Stamp Duty ... where the fark has it all gone? Methinks Gordon's done very nicely thank-you-very-much.

But : From this article Different debt? Actually, given much of that 29% is mortgage debt, what did the 65% consist of 1997? Disclaimer: am not an economist.

Topic says it all: does anyone know what proportion of UK residential property is owned by BTL'ers? No reason except to satisfy my curiosity - I've been loudly telling people for ages that rampant speculation is the heart of this boom, with the BTL'ers leading the way. But someone told me today that private landlords only own a few percent of residential property and I was off my nelly. I suppose what I should ask is: what percentage of UK property is owned as a BTL property and has been bought for this purpose in the last ten years. BTL : Buy to Lose, I fear

That's a good, good article. "Reinforced boom and bust"

Have you got a link for the OECD report? If the Irish economy is out of step with the European big hitters (basically Germany and France), it's going to be affected badly by ECB interest rate movements that will be chosen to promote recovery in the big hitter economies, rather than to promote stability in a country whose population could fit several times into Berlin. Scary times to be a small player in a big pond.

The bigger they are the harder they fall! Are there are Irish bulls out there still plowing money into the Irish market, or is it all going overseas? Anecdotally, I've heard a lot of Irish desperate to own bricks somewhere in the world but priced out of Ireland are throwing money into shacks in Spain and even South America.

Was talking to two lovely Irish ladies last night. They were bemoaning the cost of property in Dublin, and the inevitability of having to rent in an obscenely priced market. Yet both were still desperate to get "on the ladder", talking silly schemes of "buying with a friend". Neither saw prices coming down. I mentioned that over in the UK, the housing market appears to have peaked last year; that prices were in fact in slow decline; that the Irish housing cycle cannot be too far off the UK cycle, and that they were far better off staying renting for the moment. Not a good idea: I was told that the Irish property boom is totally different to the UK boom: - the Celtic Tiger has roared for 10 years and shows no sign of stopping - skilled Irish migrants are returning home flush with money and with an eye on property - the propulation of Dublin will DOUBLE (sic.) in the next eight years, maintaining pressure on housing - Irish economy is not at all dependent on UK economy, so it doesn't matter what happens in the UK ... and plenty of anecdotal stuff like "Oh, if property's going to crash how come they are getting away with charging 3 Euros for an espresso on Baggot St. etc." Seems to me however that Irish property is the most exposed in Europe : - Ireland has the injustice of the biggest house price rises in Europe (179% between 1997 and 2004) - Ireland has a primarily service economy dependent on overseas investment (Dell, HP etc.) and vulnerable in any global turn-down - its interest rates are controlled by ECB, which - face it - is more concerned with stoking recovery in the continental power-houses than protecting a property boom in Ireland Opinions?

Cheers Jason! It was a lost cause anyway - the FTB'er had a mind-set thicker than porridge.