dpg50000

Absolutely, without a doubt, 100% wrong. In 1999 I was on 23K, and the 3 bed semi in a fairly nice area of Preston I bought (for my first home) was 55K. Fact. Just over 2 times my income after 10% deposit. Nowadays, I earn approx £30K, and the same houses are between 135 and 150K !!!!!

Preston, Lancashire. Near the M6 J31A (go northbound, come off there and turn right) - an estate with a large road named Teil Green. 10 houses for sales within a 400 yard radius! No sh1t. I will try to get a digital shot.

Good grief! I am absolutely convinced of the utter madness in the housing market now (along with the ex cupboard that sold for over £120k a month or two back!) Who the hell would spend £100000 on that??

Hi, is it £12,000 cashback now? It was £10,000 about 3 months back. Which is kinda interesting - I looked at these houses about a year ago, decided they were too small, too close together and generally a rip-off at from £123K for 2 bed. Anyone know what the asking price is now? There also the flats on Strand Rd - several for sale and to lets there. Plus the most recent development looks pretty empty / devoid of life everytime I drive past, no matter what time of day. Worryingly, a few houses recently have sold round here. However, there's been a definite increase in no's for sale (especially old crappy terraces around the Deepdale area - at mad prices like 90-130k!) and they seem to be on for much longer. I know of at least 6 that have been on for a year. Oh, forgot to mention. The Greenheys development was basically all plots sold when I looked at it (was APPROX 12 months ago) despite only about 4 of them being finished. Looks like they've overestimated demand since then....

HA HA HA HA HA! Not anywhere I know matey!

http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.j...7/ixperson.html Wonder how many extra mugs will go for this now? I take it the old figures quoted (eg rent of 125% of mortgage payments etc) are traditional ones? Why are they suddenly changing now?

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20658 Quote: The move is part of a drive by its parent company, France Telecom, to cut costs. Apparently the French think the British trade unions are a soft touch and it is easier to make people redundant across the channel than it is at home.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/10/ibm_jobs_india/ Another lots of jobs going abroad. Voters, remember which government actively helped to create this mess. Oh, and RightMove reckon it's a good time to buy: First half of 2005 could be a good time to buy as prices bottom out The first half of 2005 could be a good time to buy at the bottom of the market before it starts rising again Taken from their homepage. Bottom of the market? LOL! Surely, no-one can take these people seriously?

Does anyone believe this? http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-13277975,00.html

Sorry, you truly are a tit! "set up each of thier mates home computers" - how does an 85000 person, global, email and authentication system (under budget)sound? It was bloody difficult, and as others have alluded on here, I.T. is incredibly stressfull. I'm not blowing my own trumpet - I worked as part of a project team and we did a good job. Despite this, we still got 2% or less for payrises. Btw, when you talk about programme design, realise this. 99% of the time the customer (who's paying for the job) dictates what they want to see and how it is to work. We simply make their specifications work - believe me, quite often they haven't got a clue how feasible it is to make their "fantasy world ideal of what a system should do" meet reality. When you try to scale them back to what's realistically achievable they think you're trying to pull a fast one, even though they have absolutely no idea of what's involved. End of rant. Quick poll - some people on here are obviously in IT (Oracle, The Masked Tulip, Myself, Dave_The_Vinyl_Junkie). In addition I know several other friends in IT and none of us have got above about 2% in the last few years. How are other people finding it? My bet is that most are getting little or no wage rises.

Ok, everyone seems reasonably agreeable house prices are too high. People (including the "experts" )disagree as to whether there will be a crash, mild softening, stagnation or small increases in 2005 - personally I don't give a cr4p what any "expert" says as they've all been wrong in the last few years to varying degrees. Even those that are in the bull camp didn't forecast price rises like those we've had in the last 4-5 years. I was wondering if the real issues with house prices might not hit home until another couple of years down the line, for reasons such as: A) Outsourcing of jobs abroad. I work for a large worldwide IT company - linked here, http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_st...ontent_id=73217, is what the European Senior VP had to say recently about the GIS division (which is a large, fairly well paid, technically highly skilled, division of the company) being outsourced to India : "We expect that in the next 12-15 months, our GIS (Indian) division manpower will be increased to 3,000 as against 650 now,†he said. The GIS division would reach the 1,000-mark before March 2005, he added. Currently, there are over 2,300 employees working in the three groups of CSC - financial services group, global transformation services, and global infrastructure services. To exploit the Indian advantages, the company will outsource some of its UK operations to India. “We plan to shift major jobs of our Middle-East, Europe and Africa (MEA) operations to India,†Mr Whitehand said. He added: “Our strategy is to make India part of CSC’s worldwide operations.†Believe me, most other IT companies are doing the same thing. There are next to no new jobs coming through in IT, based in the UK, paying similar rates to existing jobs. Not even for supposedly hot skills..... This is only going to get worse. People may find new jobs, but at vastly reduced salaries, which will lead to reduced spending at best, and financial difficulties at worst. B-) Students suddenly realising the massive debts they have run up at University (since the abolition of grants, introduction of fees, incessant drive to get everyone a near worthless piece of paper etc) are leaving them with little to no free cash when they finally get a job and have to start paying back. C) Employment contracts just aren't as generous as they used to be. Just for example, take redundancy packages. I know some people at a previous company, who had been there between 20 and 30 years - when they were offered voluntary redunndacy, they snapped the employers hands off. Some of them got up to £200,000 - just people on reasonably average £25-30K jobs. In the main, all the 50+ year olds I know have been at the same company for years and are sitting on potentially huge redundancy packages if the company was to get rid of them. Their financial future is fairly assured. If someone was made redundant nowadays, on a modern contract, odds are they will get the statutory (1 week per year I think) and not much else. There is also the issue of guaranteed final salary pensions - far in excess of the money purchase schemes of nowadays. In short, nowadays you have to save much more now than in the past to keep yourselves on a level footing and plan for your future. Especially in the low inflation , low wage rise economy of today. D) Also speaking of pensions, the few people my age range (30) who are in final salary schemes are now being asked to contribute extra to make up shortfalls. A friend who works for a Defence contractor is paying twice as much per annum to fund the increased pension costs as he got for his annual pay award. He can barely afford this - older people with mortgages paid off can easily afford it. It is just going to get harder for the young, even if you are prudent, to make ends meet. E) I posted this a year ago, but its still relevant - no-one in my circle of friends has received in excess of a 2% pay rise in the last 4 years. In which time house prices up here in the North West of England (Preston) have more than doubled..... No-one I know can afford to FTB, and most of those with houses will not pay the massive difference to make the next step on the ladder. Any thoughts?

I'm in Preston, Lancashire. Round here, average 3 bed semis in reasonable areas (like mine) have shot up since 2001. Bought in Oct 2001 for £63200 - now "worth" approx £145k! Nothing much seems to be selling though. Several houses in the surrounding streets on at ridiculous prices (£142k for a 2 bedder!) but vendors don't seem to be dropping them.

I believe you. I posted about this back on 26th Sep (I think) - it is Farrell Heyworth doing it in Preston. I had a look in their window yesterday - they are claiming it is a limited time offer (LOL!). A house on an estate I looked at 3 years (at the time it was £104k, couldn't sell and was open to offers) was down from 245 to 235k. Still ludicrous compared to three years ago though!

I posted the below text on the 26/9, but in the main forum (a mispost I know - apologies): I live in North West England - Preston, Lancashire. Here the house prices have increased by approx 250% (2.5 times) since 2001. Up until approx 4 months ago, everything was selling instantly at hugely inflated prices. I went past the windows of the town centre branch of one Estate Agent, Farrell Heyworth, and they had even stopped putting local property in the window - they were using the space to advertise Spanish homes (presumably they did this because local properties were selling so quickly they barely had to even print up a spec sheet). Now the situation is quite different. The aforementioned Estate Agent this weekend had both windows full of reduced price property (some down by around 10%), with ridiculous slogans such "Reduced prices for a limited period only." None of the houses on the window seemed to have any link (ie they weren't all flats being offloaded, they weren't all starter homes, they weren't all expensive top of the range homes etc) - they only thing they had in common was the fact they were reduced. Inside the shop, it was totally dead. No punters at all. (As a side note, town was heaving with people, all spending money....) If anyone wants to see proof of the discounts simply go into Preston town centre today and have a look. Things have deifinitely changed - there are about 6 houses for sale in my road and the next, that have been on the market for 3 months+ and not even been under offer, according to the estate agents websites. Also Friday's Property Post (which comes with the Lancashire Evening Post) had on the front cover an advert from one builder, I forget which one (may have been Redrow), offering to pay stamp duty, legal fees and throw in carpets on newly built 3 bed semis, although they were still a daft price. Things are hotting up. First time buyers hold on a little longer..... I'm not a first time buyer but I would like to move, so I'm keeping an eye out too.

I live in North West England - Preston, Lancashire. Here the house prices have increased by approx 250% (2.5 times) since 2001. Up until approx 4 months ago, everything was selling instantly at hugely inflated prices. I went past the windows of the town centre branch of one Estate Agent, Farrell Heyworth, and they had even stopped putting local property in the window - they were using the space to advertise Spanish homes (presumably they did this because local properties were selling so quickly they barely had to even print up a spec sheet). Now the situation is quite different. The aforementioned Estate Agent this weekend had both windows full of reduced price property (some down by around 10%), with ridiculous slogans such "Reduced prices for a limited period only." None of the houses on the window seemed to have any link (ie they weren't all flats being offloaded, they weren't all starter homes, they weren't all expensive top of the range homes etc) - they only thing they had in common was the fact they were reduced. Inside the shop, it was totally dead. No punters at all. (As a side note, town was heaving with people, all spending money....) If anyone wants to see proof of the discounts simply go into Preston town centre today and have a look. Things have deifinitely changed - there are about 6 houses for sale in my road and the next, that have been on the market for 3 months+ and not even been under offer, according to the estate agents websites. Also Friday's Property Post (which comes with the Lancashire Evening Post) had on the front cover an advert from one builder, I forget which one (may have been Redrow), offering to pay stamp duty, legal fees and throw in carpets on newly built 3 bed semis, although they were still a daft price. Things are hotting up. First time buyers hold on a little longer..... I'm not a first time buyer but I would like to move, so I'm keeping an eye out too.