HovelinHove

I walk up that street a lot, it's not too bad, but I'd never pay 3/4 of million for a semi there, maybe £525-£550. You can get a lot more for your money if you look around the area. Anyway, in the last crash Brighton and Hove fell by 40% so I wouldn't touch anything around here at all. There are very few well paid local jobs, and with city bonuses moving away from property, this town is going to get hit hard.

The key thing about this story that means BTL will bring down the whole makret very quickly is the fact that her own home will be repossessed. The crash will come from all directions and no sector of the market will be spared...from 'luxury' inner city slums to detached houses in the leafy suburbs.

This is the real story here. Dolcis had existed for nearly a century and a half, surviving countless recessions, a great depression etc, but since being taken over by Private equity, and saddled with humungous debts, they have gone to the wall before the economy has even begun to really hurt. I expect much bigger stories like this over the coming months and years. I was surprised when Boots announced huge profits last year, but I suspect there is something highly fishy in those figures, designed to ramp the share price...Boots are overpriced and I reckon things could get very nasty for them in a recession.

I don't buy the commodities bull argument. If we are entering a period of global recession, then prices will have to come down. Food prices can't go up if people can't pay...they will just starve if there's not enough to go round.

Barclays have problems I think. I got an egg-like letter from them yesterday slashing my credit limit from over k15 to £100 above my outstanding balance (I have 0% interest on purchases for 9 months...equal balance sitting in savings account ready to pay off Barclaycard the day before I start paying interest...interest free loan on k5, cheers Barclays!!). Anyway, they state that consultations with a credit reference agency had resulted in them reducing my limit (a la egg). Total bollo(ks, I have a near perfect credit score...bottom line is they don't have the money to lend out as asset prices are going down the sh1tter as their profits are evaporating.

National Homebuyers are a pretty evil institution. I wonder where they have come from, and where they are getting their £250 million to buy out stressed sellers. It is all part of the transference of wealth from a few to the many.

I think you're all sick. This guy isn't some BTL moron, but someone who went away on business for a year and rented his house out. There's nothing immoral about that, and he deserves genuine sympathy that our country's legal system is pathetic and stacked against normal decent people in favour of the kind of arsehole this guy has rented his home out to.

When I finished my Ph.D. in Chemistry I got offered two jobs on the same day. The first was with Nomura, to join a programme they had for post grad students that if you stuck with it would make you a millionaire (according to the head of international markets anyway). The other job I was offered was to join a research team setting up a new branch of chemistry at Pfizer's research lab in Sandwich (an amazing facility, totally world class). I took the latter, more noble cause...then jacked it all in 6 months later because research is fu(king boring. You have to be a ceratin type, and I do admire those who stick with it and produce drugs/inventions that better man's existance, just wasn't for me. I would love to be a teacher, and pass on my genuine passion for science, but apart from the crap pay, I really couldn't cope with the huge volumes of beuracracy, and the discipline issues that plague teachers lives now. Personally i would be quite happy to see all those (unts that work in the city herded into a field in dover and driven off the edge of a cliff...they, along with the politicians they own, have destroyed our nation...they have produced no wealth, nothing of value at all.

Read the giant rat story, I nearly fell off my chair. Fu(king brilliant.

Up and down, up and down. It's like a trapped animal looking this way and that. Traders really don't have a fu(king clue. I was expecting 5500 to be around the bottom of this slump, but the general feeling of building panic and realisation that the global economy is in the doodoo means that we are still in the early stages, I'm thinking more like 4500-4800 now, that may be the time to cherry pick...but who would have the balls, even then!

I think this spring could see the biggest monthly drops ever witnessed, possibly as much as 3-5% a month for a couple of months. There are 3 parts of the equation involved: 1. Volume due to BTL firesale, creating a massive oversupply in one segment of the market and therefore comptetive pricing will be the watchword. 2.The changes in CGT which will mean BTL sellers will be ready to take a hit on their dream price as what they lose by discounting they gain with the tax break. 3.Distorted volume at the bottom end of the market. Even if the prices of flats didn't fall, the fact they will make up, for arguments sake, 80% of the April and May's sales, instead of the normal 60%, would skew the average price down...add to this the massive discounting we will be seeing and we are talking very big falls in the headline average price. I believe April/May will see the figures go YOY on negative and a monthly fall that will be front page news on every paper killing off any spring bounce in other areas of the market.

I couldn't agree more. I think many religious people assume they have found all the answers and think there is nothing more to learn, I include a former version of myself here. They also forget to love, really love. That is the one thing about that bloke's research I linked to a few pages back, all these people who claim to have met God get this overwhelming sense of love. I've had a similar experience and there is nothing in my entire my life before or after that comes close to it. Love is everything.

Does being wealthy and having everything go perfectly to plan lead to enlightenment? If we are spiritual beings and our eternal destiny is to break free from our material world, then suffering could in fact be seen a blessing...as long as it doesn't happen to me. In truth it is the poor (and I'm not talking about UK chavs with their Sky TV and endless hadnouts), and those that suffer most who are often forced to seek some other meaning, whether they find it or just some Marxist opiate is the ultimate question.

Can you believe the BBC? Changed from "house prices rise 1.3% in December" to "House prices slowest since Dec 05" in the space of half an hour. they're caught between ramping the market and nudging the MPC...the wording gives it away...UK homeowners struggling under rising interest rates. I hate these fu(kers.

There's a similar thing in the scientific community wrt origins of life. It is a taboo subject in the higher academic echelons as modern science is based on the premise that there is always a natural explanation for everything..and to be honest, I'd prefer it to stay that way, otherwise we might stop finding out stuff. With regard to the question if there's a God who created him, answer this one first, what exists beyond space, then what exists beyond that etc? There are some questions related to infinity and time that we as humans are completely incapable of grasping...God probably existed forever, as hopefully do our eternal souls...makes a house price crash seem rather trivial really (perhaps that's why the mods aren't fond of this topic, they're worried we might float off and stop caring about the value of property). I think the reason we, or some of us anyway, are so easily sidetracked on this forum onto this subject is that we are generally thinking people and don't just accept the mush fed to us.

Just googled him, and for any interested in an overview of his findings, check this out: http://near-death.com/experiences/experts04.html Fascinating stuff, and very challenging for someone who believes only their way is the right way.

Cheers, I will order it now.

I so want to read about that. I know two people who have had near death experiences, put his name in here so I can google every now and then so i can buy it when it comes out. I will say this only once, and not be dragged into any arguments, but as a scientist with a Ph.D. which involved studying nucleic acids and amino acids, the building blocks of life, and having studied all the primary literature on the subject of the origins of life (including about RNA world etc) as well as reading several decent books by atheists and believers who know enough about the subject to speak with authority (and I'm not talking Dawkins or Bryson here), I find it intellectually untenable to believe that life came into being in this universe by purely natural means. The rest, IMHO, is open to debate, although my personal preference is for JC, his words are pretty spot on.

I'm guessing because religion was mentioned...that has happened in the past and caused massive debates, perhaps not relevant to the site, but fun. Oh well, suppose there are plenty of God sites to argue that one on. Or maybe it's because it started getting insulting...who knows, but the mods are like refs, they have the final say, and unless you want a red card, it's best not wind them up too much

This is typical of the kind of response that underlines the topic of this thread. If your views are not mainstream, or in line with the way we are currently supposed to think, as decreed by the BBC, then you are either a racist, a bigot or a moron. What was seen as truth for nearly 2000 years, is now rejected by an ignorant majority as stupidity when no one actually knows the true answer for certain, and if you study the facts you realise it is very much a subject still open to debate. It is the kind of bullying mentality that our goverment uses and is a form of censorship that is as despicable as that used by the Nazis, communists and other totalitarian authorities around the world. Give it up!

Could the fact that this property be about to be repossessed in any way affect your friend's ability to get credit in the future, after all Experion go on addresses. It may cause complications, which in a credit crunch environment is not what he would want.

I hear GSK are looking to double their Prozak sales force, he'd fit right in.

A lot more people rent in Europe, especially Germany and france, so interest rate moves are not quite so politically sensitive. Both the Uk and US are homeowner obsessed economies, this is why the UK joining the Euro is absolutely nutty, look at Ireland and Spain to see why.

The one thing that I can guarentee going into the CPI basket soon is house prices. Keeping them out, and not having them represent the proportion of average living cost over the past decade is the main reason why our inflation figures are useless, and why interest rates have been too low. Imagine what real inflation would have looked like the double digit rises in HPs had been included. Of course, now that prices are sliding, they can put them in and justify their rate cuts. It won't make any difference, but it will still wind us all up.

Add to that the planned CGT changes coming into effect in April. I reckon the chancellor will be forced to scrap that, but even if he does, landlords/speculators who were waiting for then to sell, will just dump their property on the market when the announcement of a cancellation is made. At some point this year the rug is going to be pulled from the bottom of the market and not just new builds, as once the price of these falls through the floor, period conversions will become much less attractive, and they will have to follow, as will the semi-detached houses that the couples selling the two bed flats want to buy, as will the detached houses that the growing family in the semi want to move into, add to this the homes that get repossessed because greedy boomers overstretched themselves in the buy to let market, and the whole thing will implode very quickly. Also the internet will help make this faster and deeper than before. More people will come to this site and take it seriously, and be less likely to believe the bs that the media feed them in a desperate attempt to drag them back into the market. Buy to let is our sub-prime (of course we have our own sub-prime as well) and as the economy shrinks and the mobile labour force either goes back to Eastern Europe or moves back in with Mum and Dad, there will tens of thousands of amateur landlords going bust.