New Bear

It looks as if the olf manufacturing heartland is showing the signs of strain. Here are some Home.co.uk figures for Coventry, arguably the epicentre of the latest wave of manufacturing decline and uncertainty. This is probably the extreme opposite end to the London situation but the picture for apartments looks desperate. The centre and its periphery are stacked with new and recent new builds that are just not selling. Edit: sorry, I see these links do not work. If you are interested just use the house price trends facility on home.co.k http://www.home.co.uk/guides/house_prices_...ntry&

Agreed, a well informed discussion. But as I understand it JP is saying only that the Fed and other CBs will attempt to inflate their way out of their problem. It's not bound to succeed, indeed is fraught with difficulties, and will in any case only defer a crisis (for around 18 months?). There is still a recession waiting at the end of the process even if it succeeds... But whatever, I've been trying to work out the implications for house buying. From a HP perspective it seems there are a number of possibilities, including: (i) the housing price bubble deflates with falling nominal prices

Same thing happened to me this week. An EA who hasn't sent me emails for months has started again. Interesting.

I've just caught up with this thread today and want to say a big thanks to kuurus and few others for injecting some real knowledge of what university lecturers actually do into the discussion. Pioneer31 said "Some of the comments on this board make me realise just how CLUELESS some people are." How true.

Hi KoN. Do you have link to that Economist article?

Yes, a very interesting point about the discourse of home ownership and the construction of social problems. Interests come into it strongly though IMO. Why is the locking out of home ownership of the young not presented as a social problem? Because there is an intergenerational conflict of interest about house prices and the means of mass communication are more sympathetic to the older generation?

If my calculations are right then the 30K reduction is about 6% off asking price. I believe that's about the average figure at the moment. Believe me I'm not at all belittling your efforts but I would see how far you can push it. 10%? That would give us a little bit of insight into how soft the market is right now.

You could well be right and there are arguments being made for your selection of asset classes. But according to Paul van Eeden, a well respected and level-headed analyst, commodities may have peaked. His main argument is that the recent run up was largely speculative. The argument from BRIC demand is false - it is mainly substitute demand - and a fall off in US consumer demand will lead to less demand for commodities in BRIC countries. He certainly gave me pause for thought. Edit to add link: http://www.kitco.com/weekly/paulvaneeden/jan212005.html

I well remember sandbagging friends' houses along this stretch of the Cam as it rose in around 1980/81 - though this was back a few hundered metres along Riverside towards the Elizabeth Way flyover. I certainly wouldn't buy without checking the flooding chances and the availability of insurance. Also from the look of it these new flats are built on the old gasworks site - it was declared dangerously polluted at the time it was decommissioned - but it could have been cleaned up of course.

On demography and missing the golden age of housing see this paper: "The Baby Boom: Predictability in House Prices and Interest Rates" Robert F. Martin, November 2005. I don't have the link but you can Google it and see the PDF. Abstract: This paper explores the baby boom's impact on U.S. house prices and interest rates in the post-war 20th century and beyond. Using a simple Lucas asset pricing model, I quantitatively account for the increase in real house prices, the path of real interest rates, and the timing of low-frequency fluctuations in real house prices. The model predicts that

I agree with you.

You can't include it in an ISA - not sure why. You have to phone trade - again I don't know why but it doesn't take long to do.

How about 2035? For the evidence and argument see "The Baby Boom: Predictability in House Prices and Interest Rates" Robert F. Martin, November 2005. I don't have the link but you can Google it and see the PDF. Abstract: This paper explores the baby boom's impact on U.S. house prices and interest rates in the post-war 20th century and beyond. Using a simple Lucas asset pricing model, I quantitatively account for the increase in real house prices, the path of real interest rates, and the timing of low-frequency fluctuations in real house prices. The model predicts that the primary force

No not compensation - just a duty on banks to lend so responsibly and a cost to them if they can be shown not to have done.

Maybe this explains the situation you describe: http://www.home.co.uk/guides/house_prices_...ntry&lastyear=1 And longer term this: http://www.home.co.uk/guides/house_prices_...=coventry&all=1 These are asking prices BTW