pjw

Why Ireland? They haven't got any jobs.

you do seem obsessed with self-certification mortgages - I have one myself...

LOL!

Actually, he has given an airing to the house price crash point of view, and yes he seems a nice person. Funny how he always referenced this site in every article!

I'm not a supporter of the Labour Party, but it has struck me that Miliband has the opportunity to make waves. Why should all parties fish in the same area of the pond? If he stated that the objective of the Labour Party was to get houses DOWN, we might have a real choice at election time. Sell off the state's share in the banks. Tell the banks there will be no more bailouts - pass an Act of Parliament making bailouts illegal, so the banks know that even in an extreme crisis, it would take a long time to repeal that Act even if the government did want to do a bailout. Tell the banks that if they fail, mortgage debts will be written down compulsorily to screw the shareholders and bondholders of the banks (see Iceland). Replace housing benefit by £500 a month flat accommodation element in benefits, regardless of where you live and how many children you've got. Make mortgage all non-recourse - just send the keys back to the bank and move and you will hear nothing more. Replace council tax by a land value tax - the tax falls on the freeholders who benefit from HPI and not the tenants. The landlords may try to pass the charge on, but tenants can move to cheaper areas. Remove all tax incentives for BTL. Each person should have a maximum of one mortgage. The most you coudl get is a husband has a mortgage in his name on his residential property and his wife has a mortgage on a BTL property. There should therefore be no huge property portfolios of BTL landlords. Replace 6 month assured shortholds by 2-3 year tenancies, and make it retrospective to existing assured shortholds. Make shared ownership illegal - mortgages for 25% of a property are just a fraudulent product denied to support house prices. If people have to go for that - it means prices are too high. Make banks repossess defaulting homeowners quickly - eg institute a 100% tax on the outstanding value of mortgages in default for more than three months to force the banks to offload straightaway, regardless of the impact on house prices. Introduce legislation to cut out estate agents, and get Rightmove to accept personal listings. Make it a government goal to halve house prices over one five-year Parliament. It would be fascinating to see a real choice at election time - the UK might even start to resemble a democracy!

Hello? Master bedroom: 9'1" x 11'1" The "master" lives in style nowadays in prosperous Britain!

£209K for that house - in Huddersfield? They were HAD. You can call it detached if you like, but this is high density housing - effectively packing the houses in just as closely as a row of terraces. The house is tiny!

I'm not convinced the US recovery is sustainable either. This feels like a lull before the next phase of the crisis.

I stopped reading when I got to "federal policy". This is about the US.

+1

See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/10062273/FCA-regulator-to-collect-and-share-mortgage-borrowers-personal-data.html The FCA wants to compile a database that it admits contravenes human rights on mortgage borrower's incomes, bonuses, childcare commitments, outstanding loans and credit, etc. I hope they don't expect me to submit any of this.

The French are ultimately a closely related European group, and they came here because they were Protestants and so could fit into Britain's religious culture more easily than in France (cue the difference with assorted Islamic extremists). No one alive is exclusively of Huguenot descent - they have married in and all have Anglo-Saxon forbears now.

See http://www.moneyweek.com/investments/property/rest-of-the-world/profit-as-canada-housing-bubble-pops-64000 for discussion of how Carney "saved" the economy by pumping property and is getting out now when it finally starts to pop.

No, we're not a nation of immigrants. The British are descended from Angles, Saxons, Viking and Celts - but these were all originally related European tribes - and their arrival predated the time that England became a united nation under Alfred the Great. They became a single nation - point out to me where the Vikings suing for discrimination are in the UK? As you can see, the closely related groups formed a united nation since a time before England was a united country. It is just prejudice to say that we are a nation of immigrants, when nearly everyone in 1945 was descended from those ancient population groups that formed the English nation in the 7th and 8th centuries AD. You can buy McDonald's in China - does that mean that China is American? So what if we can buy curry here - what is the connection? Willingness to integrate with people who PATENTLY AREN'T BRITISH is not "the very essence of Britishness at all" - it is the very essence of national suicide! Your view that people "born... white in Brimingham have no place in Britain if they're not willing to integrate with foreigners" is quite chilling. If English people reject integration with immigrants, how can they be said to have no place in their own country? Unless you are planning a genocidal solution against the English?

You mean they exercise their right to free speech? Expressing your view on any nationality should not lead to "getting banged up"... or not in a free country.

Comment is superfluous. Mandelson can only say this if he knows he will not be held to account.

Ian Cowie writes that house prices are rising and traditional valuations, based on multiples of income, may be outmoded (see link at http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ianmcowie/100024542/house-prices-first-time-buyers-surge-by-20pc-despite-predictions-of-doom/): Of course, we heard all this before with the "new paradigm" economics of Gordon Brown, when traditional views were outmoded - apparently house prices could continue to soar much more rapidly than incomes - until the 2007/8 crash... Now Cowie claims we have another new paradigm!

Yes. £150,000 a year because "I care" - embezzled straight out of the charitable donations.

Good - charities are all fraud anyway - they make sure to pay themselves well above the average wage, plus pension contributions and expenses, and the large ones like the NSPCC and Cafod don't spend a penny doing good works until half the money is swallowed up on themselves. They're just businesses.

Well, in my case, the Bank of Scotland is not passing the low IRs onto me.

Former deputy governor of BoE described Help to Buy as a short-term political fix: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/10043936/Top-economists-attack-George-Osbornes-Help-to-Buy-scheme-as-a-short-term-political-fix.html Note this (about Fathom): The article goes onto say that Carney will do QE to buy mortgage debt - not gilts - well, he can buy my mortgage debt, if he likes? I've been living in hope that QE would eventually lead to money being handed directly to the likes of me to pay off my mortgage...

I hadn't noticed them rising - where I live in the North they are still falling - but Cowie has once again referenced the house price crash forum in his latest article today at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/propertyadvice/10040867/Home-front-when-will-house-prices-stop-rising.html Come on, own up! Who is it? Who on this forum is Cowie? Masked Tulip, is it you? Or is it Bloo Loo?

This person sounds like a fraudster! If you are in an NHS Dentists, they can do all the work you need. There is no need to refer you to their friend over the road for £900. Google NHS Emergency Out of Hours and find a hospital anywhere in the country that has such a service and turn up and go.

Mass immigration of dentists from Pakistan? Has anyone ever met a dentist who was English?

Yes, their policy is for a five-year moratorium on immigration, which would reduce the need for housing.