Crowed

Just checked and it has stayed the same, £250 ground rent and £2700 service charge - I assumed it would be loads more now

Back in 2008 when I bought a crappy east London house for £900 a month my mates bought a very nice flat in Stratford for £800 a month, which was less than the rent we had been paying on a worse flat near by. But it came with a £3000 a year service charge - I couldn't believe they thought it was worth it - but then I guess in my first two years I spent about £5k fixing my house, so in some ways when they came to sell a couple of years later we were pretty even - that said I can't imagine what the charge is now...

Sure I've posted this here before - my first proper job out of university paid me £22k in London - in 2004. The same job at the same company (in London!) pays £26.5k today! Back then I paid £282 a month for my share of a 4 bed/3 story house in Bow, travel card was £25 a week and beer was £2.50 still in some central London pubs. A curry for 2 with a bottle of wine in Masala Zone was £25 After a couple of years of pay rises and saving I'd got a car bought in cash, and bought a flat with my girlfriend. While eating and drink out as often as we liked and going on a good few holidays. No idea who anyone starting out, can afford to do anything now - it is wild. Wages have crept up, costs have gone wild. No idea how my kids will afford to rent let alone buy.

I cannot wait to go back to square one with labour - I only hope they can deliver something like the society and services we had 14 years ago.

https://fortune.com/2024/02/25/office-commercial-real-estate-crisis-doom-loop-conversion-housing-subsidies-demolition/ Also on https://archive.is/Ou5Sb Quote: The demolition phase is coming. As remote work keeps employees out of the office and vacancy rates sit at all-time highs, commercial property owners are desperately trying to avoid default: by upgrading their spaces to attract new tenants, converting their space into apartments or simply offloading their assets. One longtime industry professional doesn’t think that will be enough - I can see opportunities to turn this places into flats, but will people want to love there if there are no jobs locally?

I trust election calculus https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/prediction_main.html - predicting Reform will get 0 seats, or 5 at most. They are usually pretty good, but let's as how these figures change as the election gets closer - gut feel they will hurt the tories more than Labour - though they may do some 'red wall' damage to both parties. In most areas I bet they will lose their deposits...

Yes plenty of tax traps out there - but I've never seen them as a reason not to take the money. Especially as they mean my next increase, bonus or role will be taken from a higher starting point. I've seen loads of people posting about not taking increases here (and on other forums) but I've never met someone in real life who's turned out a payrise. Plus the pension cap has been lifted (from April this year) so that isn't an issue any more for anyone. Someone else posted about more snr roles having 'more stress' and asking if it is worth the money. In my experience there is no 'more' stress - just different. You just have to get used to passing some of your old work and stresses to your team, and focusing on the new stresses. When I look at the big big boss of my company, they are not carrying every stress of the business - they have to build a team they can trust to take those stresses on, and focus on the big stuff. At every level my job has been the same since I was about 24 - the next jump felt stressful at first, but once you know your focus and what is important, then it is no 'harder' than the old job was. Just different. That said, I can imagine I've just been lucky and that many IT jobs (and other jobs entirely) aren't like this.

Was just a pay rise, no additional responsibilities - I hope to get similar again this year. I have no issue with my tax bracket or the tax I pay - I personally would be happy to pay more if I knew tax was being collected more broadly from those (companies) that can afford it. If your employer is not increasing your wage at least inline with inflation, you are being screwed. I can't pretend I'm good at this though, since I've been in this role my salary increases have outpaced many people but hasn't kept pace with inflation. We are all being screwed one way or another.

Really? I went from £78k to £85k in my last pay rise and my monthly salary went up by £400 a month, so £4800 across the year, not bad out of a £7k bump - did you lose out on some benefits?

I'm only borrowing 19% of my homes value, so the deals are usually better for those sort of loan. But the specific loan I saw doesn't appear now - best I get with zero fee is 4.14% with HSBC

May be in the next few years, and I can see it hitting testers initially, but we still urgently need good engineers, architect and designers - most big companies aren't ready for ai to do a lot more than customer support augmentation yet. Plus massive demand for engineers that can write applications that use GenAI tooling.

Our mortgage is up in end Feb, really need to get a move on with a new deal, but this morning saw 5 year fix at less than 4 percent with no fee and 2 years not much higher - I'm very pleased I waited.

Maybe - I work in IT and we have loads of open roles, and friends back in London seem to be looking for people too.

This 👆🏽 - I don't think prices will hugely drop - but in cash they will become more affordable - until the interest rates drop and people can start bidding them up again - but hopefully it will be some time before that happens. Even at 4% prices are a lot more expensive out of your salary. Though wage inflation might eat away at that.

He didn't say in years, he say 'for the next few years' - subtly different

I looks back recently to the wage of my first proper job in 2004 - I got £22k (bottom of the salary grade for that role) which was OK to live on in London at the time. I wasn't minted but had loads of fun and even got a car after a couple of years. Same job/grade now, nearly 20 years later is £27k in London. I was paying £300 a month for a nice flat in Bow, drinking a lot least a couple of nights a week and took my gf out for dinner at least weekly. Plus saved for a car, and we used to go to Greece at least once a year then. And Glastonbury too! No way you'd do any of that on £27k in London now, the flat alone would wipe you out!

Certainly, plus I've consistently reviewed well and had a good if not great bonus. One issue is that I'm 'high in my band' so others often get better percentages than me in tbe dept, despite me still earning more than them.

Actually just used an inflation calculator, and despite what seemed like OK raises at the time, I'm actually have less inflation adjusted spending power now than I did 7 years ago - and I thought I was doing OK (I earn 22% more now than I did then, but just to stay flat with inflation my salary should have increased by closer to 30 percent)

It is nuts, I have a well paying job and we are still cutting back significantly from what we used to. Although this year and next year I've had/am due to get a good payrise, I still don't feel like my salary has really kept pace the last 10 years. Even though on paper it has - the reality is that we still drive an old car and I'm actually pretty pleased we aren't hosting Xmas this time.

A few years ago I totally agreed - I thought prices were going to drop for some reason or other. When covid came I thought that would be, and now we have crazy inflation I thought this would be it - but, all around me my friends wages are increasing by approx the level of inflation - I got 9 percent last year/early this year and have been told to expect similar again. I know not everyone get this bump, but most people I know what - some got even more than that. So I now think we will see some small drops, but I think we will flat line for the next 5 to 10 years, with wage growth outstripping house growth. So things will get better for buyers, but also the crazy people with £3k mortgages, will find ways to service them. I don't think we are going to see the raft of houses going to auction or firesale like I saw in 2009. Happy to be wrong though, while I have a house - I still have plenty of friends who don't and I really want my kids to be able to buy one day. But my days of thinking a 20 to 40 percent drop was baked it, are going.

I live in a seaside/retirement town - bungalows command a higher price here as there aren't many of them and the old people love them. I could get maybe £450000 for my 4 bed house, but not far there is a 2 bed bungalow going for £410000 and it has loads of viewing. Good for them - but this place is crying out for more bungalows, but all the builders want to build super high spec 4 or 5 bed for closer to £1m...

I can certainly hope - I'll wait a bit longer before signing up to a deal then. It's not so bad for us as we have a fairly small mortgage, I worry for friends in London paying £3k a month at the old rates...

Our mortgage deal ends in Feb 2024 - I keep an eye on the best buys, for a 5 year fix a few weeks ago I could get 4.82% with no fee, now it is back over 4.9% - so the banks aren't baking in any drops yet...

I didn't think it, but wage inflation is going to stay for another year or two for sure - I got 9 percent, but I know of plenty of friend (at either end of the spectrum) who got 12 to 15 percent - and are expecting the same again this coming year. If inflation remains high then wages will follow. Even just 2 years of 10 percent rises will increase what people can borrow - or at very least mean that people can afford the new now higher mortgage payments. I didn't think I'd see this sort of wage inflation during my working life, but wages certainly aren't going down again now they are up. I still believe we need a crash if my kids are ever going to afford places to live, but once again it seems kicked forwards. This time last year I was dead set on 20 percent drops, this year I'd bet flat. It might well be 20 percent real terms drops due to inflation, but it won't be the drops we've hoped for.