dpg50000

Getting their excuses in for record breaking premium hikes, I see.

Requires full refurbishment and modernisation. No internal viewing possible. Yeah, a real bargain. Not.

Absolute ********. I bought my first house, a 3-bed semi detached in 1999 for 2 * my wage in Lancashire, with a 5% deposit I had saved. The last ~18 years are the anomaly.

Saw a news article today that Emoov might be filing for a pre-pack administration as soon as tomorrow. They only did a 3 way merger 5 months ago, which "valued" them at (cough) £100 million. Channel 4 apparently have a stake in it. So, no conflict of interest there then...... https://news.sky.com/story/online-estate-agent-emoov-faces-repossession-11566731

Surely, it's not just lifestyle choices per se, but also stress? I'm not poor, but nor am I rich and work is bloody stressful (still haven't managed to "downsize" my job and pay to an acceptable level) - I bet that impacts on my health more than say some rich person who inherited what they have and merely works on tickover.

Interesting, of course if they ever change their policies he would have problems. That's the thing though - there's literally thousands of City Centre high rise flats in Manchester, and they aren't all BTL. Even allowing for off-plan foreign investors that are allegedly common, there still must be a shedload of ordinary (mostly young) people with mortgages on these places. Assuming these are spread out amongst lots of different banks and building societies, presumably it's commonplace to lend against these properties nowadays?

Pretty sure that's changed - a friend bought a 200K flat, sorry luxury apartment 😂, several floors up in a central Manchester development, with a mortgage. Not a specialist lender either. This was about 4 years ago.

Fair point. Will be interesting to see if they change their tune re: HTB (without introducing other props).

Are you having a laugh? The same Labour who had it in their election manifesto to continue HTB until 2027?

Agreed. I think in 2003 HPI was something batshit like 30%, but at the slightest sign of a wobble in 2004 the BoE cut interest rates and things went even more mental until the GFC. Like you, I think there's a conscious effort to stop people looking back too far, probably so TPTB can claim it's a "recent thing" and they have "policies to help".

Shocked. Shocked, I tells ya.

Yep. I work in I.T. infrastructure design. We spend a lot of time writing high level designs etc., all of which can be done from home via Secure VPN on whole disk encrypted laptops. However, management frown upon it. Their reasoning? They want to encourage an "innovative culture of collaboration", which of course requires us all to be co-located. Obviously, this is a crock, just to cover up their micro management tendencies. If I'm writing a detailed design document, the last thing I want is people rocking up at my desk wanting be "innovative". As a result, people are leaving and we are finding hard to recruit and retain staff.

Rather disturbingly, I can't work out yet if there's anything in this budget that specifically f**ks me over as a mid-40's family man on a fairly decent salary, especially WRT pension and tax. Which probably means there is......... As SpyGuy said, probably best to monitor the news / analysis over the next few days as the full details leak out and the picture becomes clearer.

Your post is one I could have written, almost to a tee. Wonder how many other people feel the same way, and if debt free and have savings, how long / how much more they can take before quitting? I'm still a way off retirement (nominally 24 years to state pension), but I'm f***ed and need more time to myself for the sake of my mental health.

£50K for that is still overpriced. Shows what madness occurred between 2001 and 2006 - I paid a few K less than the 2006 sale price in 2001 for a 3-bed semi. It wasn't in Chester, but in sunny (!) Preston. Even so, it was a thousand times better than that claustrophobic s**thole.