Topher Bear

This was reported on bbc breakfast along with am article about mortgage interest benefits. It would seem that the government have just cut back how much interest they are willing to pay. Was 6% but is now 3.6%. Was pointed out that a large chunk of people are on rates over 4%, meaning large numbers of unemployed can no longer afford their mortgage. Banks response was that for people in 1 month difficulty they don't mind, but for people with no forsefable means to pay, ie unemployed, they will have no choice but to pesosses. We may finally start seeing those pesossesed properties coming onto the market in big numbers! By early next year, fear may have turned into capitulation!

I can't download spreadsheets from this connection. If someone could summarise nsa figure and last months revised sa, would be appreciated. Looks like quite an upward revision for july!

If your looking for imagination in online gaming try Myst Online. Its free too! This was one that failed early on due to poor take up of broadband, its around now but not quite what it was meant to be, staying afloat because of fans.

Interesting and entirely believable. Have you ever tried to take this to the media? I really think they should be exposed for the charlatan system it is. The threatening letters they send out when they make mistakes are reason enough!

Quite possibly both. There is a known bug in the code that randomly takes children off the system. I know about this because it happened to us, and was told this by the customer service people. It has taken us 4 years and letters from our mp and ombudsnan to get our ctc back to normality. The helpline staff were rude and incompetant accusing me of lying about my daughters age. I found the customer service staff much friendlier and more competent. But every time I was given a case worker, i'd call up to speak to them a few months later and they'd moved on, the case had to be opened twice! This bug also prevented them from putting the children back on! Other errors were being told we were both disabled and working on the first form, then that being corrected to one of us not being disabled but not working before finally getting it right, both not disabled and both working! Also they wanted to see proof of a child we didn't have that they tried to add to the system! Good luck with sorting that one out!

For those recieving mortgage interest relief, have the amount taken off thier income support allowance. Its not that great a deal, I do far better when I get housing benefit on top of other benefits! I am definately seeing more properties having their prices reduced, it is gathering pace, and today I see that a local developer has sliced about 10% off the asking price of thier remaining overpriced undersized boxes. And many more with big properties trying to get top dollar! Would you pay 1.6 million for a 4 bed farmhouse? Thats the latest, but plenty of in town 4 beds trying to get over 350k

It's just an insurance policy. It only works if the agreement is of fixed term, which is why we often get the thumb screws to not go onto statuary periodic. Now I come to think of it, i'd like to see how the landlord proves they haven't been paid any rent!

Yeah. It was trying to buy in that area back in 1999 that gave me the heads up as to an impending problem. We couldn't afford camberley without a 100% mortgage (now I know I should have done!) So ended up looking in aldershot, struggled to find anywhere in our budget, after a month decided to stretch ourselves from 75k to 80k only to find everything had gone up by that much! And you couldn't wait even a day on a property or it was gone. And you also had to offer over asking price! Then the dot com bubble burst and the tech collapsed, which destroyed the area. Still can't believe the number of brand new empty offices when we go back and visit!

Not to mention the cost! How are we supposed to save for a deposit when we have to shell out several hundred pounds every 6 to 12 months! In regard to the original topic, sounds like the only person the bank will end us talking to will be the demolition man. I can't see it selling even at auction with only one other resident!

From a socialist point of view the reduction in housing benefit is bad. It is taking money away from those on low or no income, thus pushing them back towards poverty. Its just that the more money for renters suffers from the law of unintended consequences. It takes a certain amount of economic and psychological ability to realise this. Someone should try and explain it to her that the policy will help those she is trying to help. She is just naive.

WRONG! First up they are wanna be borrowers, not yet borrowers, and second, it is the opposite of disaster as it will protect them from taking out a huge debt that would burden them for years, throwing away saved cash into a dramatically reducing equity!

+2 I've served my time, and now I just want to get out. I've considered giving up on waiting, but the price difference between purchase and rent is so huge (even if I could get a mortgage) that it is simply un affordable I have that its almost impossible to save now as so much goes to the landlord and all the costs involved in new rentals when we are forced to move. With the high cost of living with 2 kids, wife and one wage, the deposit has barely budged! We want to buy a second car, a new sofa bed and our computer is going to die on us soon, but we don't want to spend the deposit money. I want to start a new business designing and publishing board games, but once again don't want to use the deposit money to start up, and it will be a darn sight easier to do if we owned rather than rented! So no, I am not happy they have extended it. In fact i'm livid and depressed about it!

Topher Bear back in the game of predicting house prices! Looking at the falls we are now getting I think it is entirely possible to get am average 1% fall a month from now to end of the year. So thats 6% added to the already 1.5% gives us 7.5%. Considering how quick it went last time, I was truly suprised, I am going to stick my neck out and say 8 - 10% with am outsice chance of greater than 10% What about government intervention and support, difficult to see what they could do without reversing whole chunks of their curren rhetoric. They've painted themselves into a corner now!

Back in the old days when country folk rented from rich landowners, they had much better security of tenure. The house came with the job, work well and your family had a roof over thier head that they could treat as thier own. Generally families could live in the same house for generations even though it was not thier own! A good landowner would recognise that a happy secure worker was a good worker and would not go out of their way to intimidate their tenants. These days we seem to have returned to this serf-dom, except the land owners are greedy middle classes who would really rather not have to deal with the likes of us! And make sure that they keep laws in place that keep us from being able to put down roots! Yes the problem of locals priced out is an old one, extra costs on second homes would help to some extent, but there are so few rural economies left that it is difficult to see how locals could afford to feed their families even if they could live in their villages.

All that chart shows is how the falls compare to the falls in the last crash, but what it doesn't show you is how the rises compare to the last pre-crash period. I expect it will show that this boom was far bigger than the last one, which suggests this fall will be far bigger than the last one. Maybe someone can put that plot together?

We are now 1.9% down since january and 1.5% down since december. With the drops accelerating we should easily be at least 5% down this year. We will need an average of 1.5 down a month for the rest of the year to get 10% down for the year though.

I've been watching my local market just down the road in chippenham for 18 months. Its possibly begining to spread out from bristol. Last few weeks I have been seeing a lot of properties switching agents and a few price drops, small at the moment, but volumes have been steadily increasing since february. Last year volumes were steadily decreasing. Some places have gone and come back. Lots of new to the market houses are coming on at very high prices, but I don't think much is moving at all. It does look as though its gearing up for some real price movement. I think I am seeing what you guys in south east were seeing a few months ago, problems are a spreading.

Lots of advice here, so i'll only add a little. if you invite friends to live with you I hope you don't mind mess, they are bound to be messier than you and not as house proud. If you lost your job and decided you had to sell to pay off mortgage before bank does it for you, they may not be so keen to move out. Seen it before. You must already know carrying that much debt on a cc is am absolute no no. However you do it, get rid of it in short order. Finally, if you sold up and pocketed the gains, assuming you could find a buyer, which is looking unlikely at the moment, the money stashed will count against you when claiming benefits, it seems the government will do all they can to keep home owners as home owners. To be honest I could not care less what you do, you can crash and burn for all I care. You have a house and I don't!

Well that was a big waste of time. No-one is interested i talking about this topic. Lets face it guys and gals, were ******ed, plain and simple, and no-one gives a flying monkeys, coz I'm allright jack! Whats the point anymore! TB ps, I put in 7 different house related questions, some with a personal slant, some about financial stance, some about the social situation, some about the economy relation....not one..They got through 3 maybe 4 questions, but they did pick 9 they might have asked.

Thanks all, got 6 questions there, gotta go!! Report later. BTW Olly Gardner is on, she used to work for Shelter.....

Ooh! get you! Honestly, In terms of house price news, this is relevent and urgent. This forum is about house price news. Planes crashing are not relevent and would go in the other forum. This is urgent, coz I only have two hours to get some questions together. If your not interested in the topic then butt out of it and go visit "plane crashes r us" website, I can send you a few good pictures if you like, get them from work! Now onto the topic in hand, before we were rudely interrupted. I can submit as many questions as I like, so I'll choose a few that I have enough knowledge on to be ale to pull off as my questions, and maybe my own too. we'll see if they pick any. Thanks for those who do care! Regards Topher Bear

Well I would have to make a few adjustments for myself: Why can I not afford a house for me an my family to live in at the age of 37 years old whilsts earning cira £40k a year. I live in Chippenham. I am stuck renting a Huge Mansion that i would no-where near be able to afford if tried to buy it! I might try the giving birth ad moving house question with regard to security of tenure for tenants. I could try, why is it landlords get to know every detail of a tenants financial life, while we are not allowed to know anything, yet it is us who will suffer greatly if the landlord defaults on the morgage or goes bankrupt!

Hi All, Sorry I've been away a few weeks, something got a hold of me and I've had to go re-visit old forums (of the Myst variety)...ayhoo, thats another story. (apologies, my n key is giving me problems!) Right now, The Radio 4 show any Questions is here in Chippenham tonight. Broadcast live at 8pm I need to have some questions. Can anybody provide a really good HPC related question, that might get a chance of being read out? I'll need them fairly urgently, by 6 pm as I need to leave the house by 6.15 and listen out for me :-) Topher Bear

Hi. Not sure if I can start a topic from my mobile, so I am testing this first. Will edit if it works.

I'd love to start a business, a modest one which won't make much money, though could open the door to greater things. However I don't see that I can right now. 1- with everyones spending in decline I don't see that any business is going to do very well, even long standing businesses are barely surviving. I'd be a fool to try right now. 2- I have some savings to invest, but that is supposed to be deposit money, and even if I was succesful I wouldn't get thee return for several years. 3- not being a homeowner it is very difficult to run a business from a rental and banks wouldn't like to lend to me for extra investment cash flow. So to me I see the housing bubble is also choking off new business as well as all the other social ills of th country.