brassfarthing
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Posts posted by brassfarthing
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House prices are falling around my neck of the woods, and those that don't fall are sticking. House sales have all but ground to a halt where I live - mine has been up for sale for a long while now AND I am selling at a much lower price than houses in this area sold for last year.
I don't mind selling for lower prices, as long as I am not the only one dropping the price. I am downsizing but actually moving into a more expensive type of property, as bungalows always seem to cost more than houses.As I said on another thread, they all need slashing by 50%.
Give it a rest, Pioneer, I'm starting to feel embarrassed for you.
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Hi,
I've got £175K ( Cash ) to play with ....
Do I buy a small house and get an income of £500-600 for life (Seems attractive as constant income...
or is there somewhere better to put it?
Where can I get a better return?
Cheers
Paul
If you come to the HPC forum for advice on how to invest 175K, you're totally mad.
Why not spend it on psychiatric help?
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for the record, think the last time we played you was in the 1995 Coca-Cola Cup after we had knocked out Man Utd. We took the lead at your place but Trevor Sinclair was great that night and you won 3-1. Shame both clubs fortunes have dipped since then. Good luck...
I remember York beating Man Utd. Wasn't it 3-0? At Old Trafford?
After that, I thought: "It's true. Anything in life is possible".
Cool, good luck with the house, if your username is anything to go by, we are the same age, and I wish nothing but good fortune to those who can afford to buy and do so now with a view to living there for the long term
I'm renting a place I would've bought if it wasn't so much bloody cheaper to rent
, but I plan to buy a place before I'm 35This was probably Trevors finest moment....
I was one of the lucky few at that QPR match. Against Barnsley I think, FA Cup. Used to go to Loftus Rd quite a lot but that was the best goal ever.
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Time shall tell...
Some sort of correction/dip/crash is, in my view, inevitable because historically, prices do go down as well as up.
The big questions are when, by how much, and for how long.
The bears say soon, 30-50%, 5 years+.
I say perhaps 2008, nothing like 50% (perhaps 10-20%), and no idea to the last one. Depends what else is happening in the world.
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For all my Boomer Bashing Rants I am quite alarmed at the lack of attention / planning for their upcoming retirement. Real Estate loaded with debt isn't going to save them. I can't think of anything worse (financially) than nearing retirement age with huge debt's hanging over my head. I'm not sure where the qoute came from but it is very apt "value is subjective, debt is real" (or something like that
)Granted Boomers didn't have a smooth ride. Indeed many boomers are still to "make it". Recently in Australia there was a release of statistics about the level of Superannuation Boomers have. The consensus is that a person reaching retirement age requires $400,000 AUS. I'm not sure of the assumptions made in that figure but I hazard a guess that the assumptions include being debt free and owning your own home - but that is a guess.
Now we have the benchmark of $400k. How much do you suppose the average Australian Boomer has? When I read this I was shocked to the core. I knew it was bad but certainly not this bad. The Average male Boomer has $80k, over half male boomers have $30k, Lady Boomers have an average $20k, most have $8k
x 1000 (these figures are from memory so give or take a couple of thousand).Imagine retireing, with the oft repeated "you can't depend on the gov't to provide a livable pension" in the back of your mind. You look at your Super and it's got $80k, you look at your mortgage in alarm because you withdrew equity to "invest" in BTL, you then look at your BTL and they are running at a loss (after all you could claim that as a tax deduction only now you earn no income so there's nothing to claim). So you have bugger all in the bank, you are not getting the pension until that small sum is gone, you don't own your own home, you are losing money on your "investments" and to top it all off the real estate market is starting to get crowded with properties for sale and the buyers can't afford them.
Damn it's going to get real nasty.
People have to plan their finances. If someone takes out a 25 year mortgage aged 50, or MEWs just a few years before pension age, they have only themselves to blame.
Every major financial decision I've made ensures that I have no financial commitment beyond the age of 60 at the very latest. This is more than plain common sense, it's inconceivable to do otherwise. I can hardly feel sympathy for people who are budgeting to be repaying large loans while in retirement.
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With respected and successful traders forecasting a 30-40%+ correction, then your assertion that it is 'ridiculous' is plainly ridiculous and a further indication of your denial.
I've not seen that said by anyone I'd describe like that.
However, what was it that GBS said? "If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion".
You can find a "commentator", respected and otherwise, to say anything you want if you spend a while digging around. I've no doubt at all that you could find "respected and successful traders" forecasting a 30-40%+ rise in HPI over the next few years. Or there again, a price plateau. Or anything else. We tend to pick up on, and remember, and quote, those whose prejudices align with our own.
Whichever side of the argument you're on.
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He's a Tory fanboy like LadyJon who believes their beloved party with sort out the housing market in their favour.
Pioneer31 has a very sentimental idea of the past, so much so that he had to invent a character, Aunt Jess, to turn his imagination into something more real. It's enough to move you to tears, to read about her hard upbringing and her poor parents, and how everything she strove for has now been ruined by 'the immigrants'.
Tears of laughter, of course.
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Like most rational people over the age of 40, I've moved a bit beyond believing that a political party will deliver what it promises. It just doesn't happen.
What does happen is that we forget how bad things used to be because we're so consumed by how bad things are now. So to speak.
The lionisation of the Conservatives on this site is generally from people too young to remember the early 80s, and what Thatcher did. They also fail to appreciate that much of the things complained about on here - high debt, rampant HPI, have their roots in the Tories' financial deregulalation policies, and the selling off of council houses.
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I hope you will not be joining the trolls and the bulls on here who are similarly mortgaged up to the hilt, who hang around this site daily praying that the inevitable significant correction does not happen, poor sods.
To be honest CD, I think the really desperate behaviour is displayed by STRs like RealistBear and PropertyGuru, both of whom are very touchy, to put it mildly. That said, I don't for one moment believe PG's signature. Anyone who makes that sort of sum and then spends his days and nights having tantrums on a website that prays for a HPC, has lost the plot. At best, it's hardly a good advert for the peace of mind that we assume material wealth will bring. RB gets hysterical because he STR-ed 3 years too early.
On the wider point, the only people who have to worry about a crash are the people who buy just before one happens. And only then, it's becomes a major problem only if you were planning on selling soon. The BTL-ers in that position are exposed, no doubt. But most people who are digging for the longer term will be OK, especially if they have a fixed rate mortgage. It seems madness to me NOT to have a fixed rate if you still have a sizeable mortgage. Yes, it's true that people who buy just before a correction will kick themselves for not waiting a few months and paying less, but that's life.
My company bought a 486 computer in 1988 for £4500. You can buy a machine hundreds of times better today for £300. i appreciate that it's a totally different sort of investment but should they have waited? The fact is that the work that the PC enabled them to do probably made the investment worthwhile back then. Similarly, buying a house isn't just about money. I like having my own place. Bears always go one about the imagined stress of having to make the mortgage payments but you have to balance that with the pleasure you get from creating your own living environment. Sorry if that sounds airy-fairy but anyone who buys will understand the great reduction in stress that gives to most people. Far from a house being a great worry, it's like being released from one.
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There is lot of "doing-down Britain" on this board as if it is this horrible run down sh1thole with people queing up to leave. The fact is quite the opposite.
I am in Africa right now with work and every time I come back home I appreciate it more and more. When I speak to South African colleagues they are amazed at how developed our infrastruture is, how cheap we can buy food, cars, clothing and consumer goods. They cannot believe that if there is anything wrong with me, I walk 5 minutes round the corner where I can consult a doctor for free and be prescribed medication. If I am involved in a road accident, I will not be left to die unless I have a credit card on me.
We have the most impartial news coverage in the world and decent television with adverts kept to a minimal, the best football league in the world and - in London - one of the most cosmopolitan and desirable places on earth to live. We have some stunning countryside and countless genuinely historical attractions.
If you want to leave, thats your call, but someone will gladly take your place. I think some people need to look beyond chavs, binge-drinking and council tax on this board and appreciate the things that make Britain a great place to live.
I agree with much of that, though NOT the bit about the media. Apart from the BBC, (which is rightly the envy of the world) most of our media, particularly the press, is biased towards one constituency or other.
Funnily enough, although I dislike most American TV I've seen, I have to say that the standard of print journalism in the USA is very high, and certainly much better than ours. Have a read through the big American newspaper websites and see the difference.
On the wider UK question, I guess it depends a lot on where you live. Where I am, Buckinghamshire, smallish village, life is generally pretty good. It's the classic arrangement, residential, 2 pubs, church, PO, a few shops, and pretty peaceful. I sometimes travel to NW London with my job - Willesden, Harlesden area, and I have to say I wouldn't want to live there. People seem unhappy and life is a struggle.
I could see myself living in France or Italy quite happily, if retired, but otherwise, I agree that for many of us, if you have a reasonably well-paid job and live somewhere nice, the UK is as good as it gets. If you're a one-parent family on the breadline in somewhere like Shepherds Bush, things would be different.
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and thats a "classic response" from you bf
Yep, always trying to challenge the "victim complex" and the paranoia and the conspiracy theories you get on here.
Seriously, I think people must start differentiating between the sort of stuff you get on the front pages of the Daily Express and Daily Mail (which I genuinely DO regard as irresponsible journalism which does have a ramping effect, whether intentionally or not), and the sort of article pointed to in the Sunday Times. It seems that as long as a journo isn't predicting blood on the streets and an immediate HPC, they're accused of ramping, or in the pay of the Bull VIs, or of course, in cahoots with the government.
It's all bo11ocks, frankly.
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£445K for a place that cost £302K a year ago.
That has to be a record of stupidity.
It's a sure sign that money has become far to easy to get hold of.
No hang on.
Your facts are wrong. This is a constant problem on HPC. Someone comes out with a couple of unverified points that then take on a life of their own.
A different house sold a year ago for 302K.
If we're talking about someone paying >£400K for a house in Sheffield (a place I know well) then we're not talking a bog-standard street of carbon-copy terraced houses.
Let's have a look at the house details. Is there a link anywhere?
Until we can see what they're getting for their money, and how it compares with the other house that sold for less, we really can't make a judgement.
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It's not online yet but in today's column, not-so-subtly entitled Smith rather desperately IMO attempts to ramp house prices using largely supply-side arguments.
How about this small extract as an example of nonsensical thinking, as one of his "reasons" why HPI will continue:
There's more hype in the main body of the paper where they use last weeks fluff from the Halifax about prices trebling in a decade.
From a newspaper which gains a great deal of revenue from property advertising it all smacks of desperation to me.
A classic HPC response.
The article (which I read) has nothing to do with "ramping" or "desperation".
It's a pretty boring, but also pretty uncontroversial piece of journalism describing the current situation. Just because it doesn't shout "The crash is coming! Don't panic! Don't panic!" then it seems it has to be shameless ramping.
It's this hyperbolic and over-sensitive response to anything written about the property market that devalues your position.
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"The Most Unbelievable Spin Ever"
Sigh.
I wonder if "RealistBear" (
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But no, according spinmeister extraordinaire (or "liar" in common parlance), RB, this story is "The Most Unbelievable Spin Ever".
What an utter ****.
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Remember that this is a website largely populated by property bears. They're absolutely entitled to their views, but understand that you're not in the right place if you want encouragement to buy. If you posted the same message at somewhere like www.moneysavingexpert.com, you'd get the opposite.
For what it's worth, I would say that you sound like you really want to buy, and for the best of all reasons -- to offer your kids security, and to give you some sense of stability. These commodities are almost beyond financial value, and personally, I think they transcend the sniping we all do on this site, whether bull or bear.
You have some finance, and you've looked at a place that can give you want you want. If it's a home rather than just an investment, I can't think of a good reason not to go for it.
I would definitely throw in some caveats though......
- Get a fixed rate mortgage. It gives you fantastic peace of mind to know that you'll be paying the same rate for the next 5 or 7 or 10 years, regardless of what happens to IRs.
- Obviously, it has to be a repayment mortgage and not an Interest Only.
Mortgages always seem daunting before they start. For most people, as soon as you start paying, they become part of your budget and away you go.
I totally agree with you about paying rent to a landlord. Even if your rent doesn't cover all their mortgage, the fact is, you are subsidising your landlord's investment. Some people can justify that to themselves (or have to because they can't afford to buy). Fair enough. But it always made me feel uncomfortable.
If it was me, I would go for it. If you do go for it, I wish you and your family the best of luck. There is a risk involved, but there is a risk involved whatever you do. Even if there really is a HPC, it's likely that IRs will be so high that your mortgage payments on a cheaper property would be no lower than they would be at present.
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So you think the bint was entirely animated or something? A wierd British spend-o-holic version of S1mone or the Stepford Wives?
I think it was a career move, and one that will do her no harm. I wonder how many other forums on the internet are suddenly discussing her?
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I saw the end of this programme, and have to say that it seemed very obvioulsy fabricated to me. They were surely actors, no? Despite what people have said, she is an absolute doll. He looked like some overfed computer science student. They were surely put together so that people would cackle at the unlikeliness of the relationship. Surely the scene where they go fishing in the canal (in their designer gear) to catch fish for their supper was everyone just having a laugh? The pug puppy?
That's how I saw it, anyway. Once I got the joke, I quite enjoyed the bit I saw.
Indeed you can see rather too much of her if you google "kerri glamour model Norwich".
There's no denying she's good at her job.
LOL!
That's it then. Some deft work by her agent. Good luck to her. Wonder who he really is? Some jobbing actor? Interestingly, the publicity seems full of stuff about her, but nothing about him.
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Ah now come on, you don't think this was a government decision for the survey to be instituted? :-)
To be honest, no, I've no reason to think it was a "government decision", whatever that means!
The LR is publicly funded but pretty autonomous. I don't know where the initiative came from, but I've no reason to think that it's part of some conspiracy. Dodgy governments usually try to conceal information, not make it available.
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The sad thing is if anyone could roll back the clock 5+ years (with the knowledge we have) we would all be probably buying up every house/flat/garage we could lay our hands on. Still doesn't make it right but lets face facts.
An important, and honest, admission. I agree with you. I'm one of the luckier ones. I bought in 2001/2, annoyed that I hadn't bought years earlier, and was convinced that I'd "missed the boat". Now it seems I was lucky after all, though not as lucky as people I grew up with, some of whom have now paid off their mortgage on good sized London houses that we were thought they were mad to buy back in the 80s and 90s.
I guess I am bang in the middle of the 'baby boomer' generation but I know plenty of people my age (40s) who don't own a property at all, or who have horribly large mortgages. I find all the invective against people who do have a house, or who just happened to have been born in the 50s or 60s, pretty unreasonable. I suspect that almost anyone who has ever bought a house over the past 35 years or so has thought that other people were luckier than them to have bought at a different time.
As you imply, a lot of the moral rage to be found on here is actually pretty phoney. There's a lot of envy about others, masquerading as egalitarian outrage.
That's how it looks to me, anyway.
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So it wasnt the case that the downtrodden were so p1ssed living in poverty conditions under the soviets that they finally rose up and toppled them?.
You're confusing negativity with dissatisfaction. Negativity, as you find on this website, makes people sit around and whinge to each other, but do nothing. To get yourself out of a hole, you need to take a positive approach. This isn't the same as being happy-clappy and complacent.
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There are many circumstances in life where a healthy dose of negativity is good for the soul.
Imagine a world where everyone was so positive about everything, and completely overlooked the bad parts.
If we didnt have a negative outlook today, we would all be condoning the destruction of the Civlilain population in Iraq, we would not be holding anyone to account as we would be just so positive.
With regard to housing, if we were not negative at any stage, prices would continue to rise, the Band of England would continue to stoke the embers of inflation.
Negativity when applied correctly is what has stopped the rise of the Nazi's in Germany, it has created the fall of the wall of seperation between East and West, and it has opened the worlds eyes to the simple fact that the actions of our elected leaders are causing the deaths through starvation of many millions of children across the world.
I love being Negative, its being so Negative that makes me realise the just maybe there is a God, and just maybe that God may bring to task those who carry out Evil in his name.
And for those who justify their actions by claiming they will be judged at the end of their lives, let me assure them it is my belief that they will indeed be judged and no amount of begging will secure their fate.
I've long suspected you're crackers. Thanks for confirming it.
Negativity is a deeply corrosive and destructive force, and is utterly useless as a basis for aspiration, or indeed any worthwhile action.
Negativity is nothing to do with questioning the actions of the government, or being suspicious of military decisions. These are rational and worthy intellectual impulses in any healthy democracy.
To attribute the fall of the Berlin Wall to negativity is just bizarre. If anything, it was a tribute to the irrepressible spirit to be found in human society, even (or perhaps especially) under a politically corrupt regime like the Soviet Bloc.
And as for your last two paragraphs, I refer you back to my opening one.
Mad as a hatter.
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Well I'm not a huge VI conspiracist subscriber but I do have reservations that the majority of home buyers base their pricing expectations on indices compiled by commericial entities with a clear incentive to avoid bad news.
A more salient question though is why do the government feel the need for an independent survey...
1. Do they think the commercial ones are inaccurate on some fashion
2. Do they want to excercise influence over the results
3. Do they just like chucking money for no reason
The ODPM is pretty much gone replaced by the DCLG.
I suspect this move is to try and brand the indice as Independent which a DCLG produced indice would never seem to be.
It's not "the government" that are producing the survey. The LR is a public body but it's not "the government". With all the different surveys produced every month, I think it has to be a good thing that we are going to get a more authoritative one.
I don't believe the stats used in these various surveys are fabricated, but the stats may well not be useful (e.g. asking prices rather than selling prices, or mortgage offers rather than mortgage take-up). Also, it's the spin that's put on the results that's at fault, not the stats. VIs, whether bears or bulls, can edit the truth as much as they need to fuel their own delusion.
It has to be a good thing to have a comprehensive LR survey based on actual price changes on the same properties. I don't know what it will show, but if it's a true picture, whether good or bad news, let's have it. What is predictable however, is that people on either side of the argument will still try to spin it!
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Relax man, it aint too bad
- housing
yeh we all get annoyed they are'nt building enough housing but this country is a very small place unfortunatly
- immigration
Annoys me when i see the tv headlines, but then I go out drinking with some irish friends and get my heating installed by a very good polish plumber and realise its not as bad as the papers would make you believe. For every illegal/criminal/scrounger there are 100 working their backsides off and paying taxes.
- tv licence
We have some of the best tv stations in the world, and more importantly the bbc is indepedent. Have you checked out BBCHD? its awesome. I would gladly pay twice as much.
- government waste and spend
Always happened, no different with this governemnt, just something to moan about but it will never change.
- the selling off of our culture without asking us
Dont see much of this to be honest.
I broadly agree.
Life in the UK is pretty good compared with most places I've been to. I envy the fresh air and wide open spaces of Canada and Scandinavia but what about all those other things like proper pubs and football and the BBC and the richness of the arts in this country? It's really not bad at all.
You can always find something to moan about but the answer lies within you rather than with some other political party. I don't know how old you are Homeless, but there were housing booms (and crashes) in the 70s and 80s too, when the same frustrations were expressed. Immigration has been argued about every day since at least the 1950s. Public spending? For at least the last 200 years.
Just a personal view, but I've found that the periods of my life when I've been most unhappy with "the state of the country" coincide with periods when I've been unhappiest with my own life e.g. job, finances, love life. If you're in a good relationship and satisfied with your job, life generally tends to seem pretty good. I sometimes wonder when I read these forums, and see all the anger and resentment and playground abuse directed at the government, just how much sex some of these people are getting. Or not getting.
OK, so I'm being flippant, but it might be worth thinking about.
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"Only dad worked.
Earned below average wage
At 26 bought a 5-bed family home"
Watch out or the bulls will be here telling you that can't possibly have happened...
I don't doubt that it can have happened, but there are key facts missing, like which part of the country, how much the father earned, deposit, what sort of 5-bedroomed house etc.
Certainly in London or the SE, it hasn't been possible for a 26 year old on sub-average wages to buy a 5 bed house for a very long time. I also first bought when I was about that age, in the mid 80s, but in London. For 4 times my then income + partner's, we were able to buy a 1 bed flat.
What's really different these days is that the rest of the country seems to have almost caught up. When we visited friends in Manchester and Leeds we used to notice that we could have bought a massive townhouse, or a sizeable farmhouse with land in Yorkshire, for what we paid for the flat in London. For years it was like that. As recently as the late 90s you could pick up terraced houses in Leeds for 20-odd grand.
One of the big changes is people's desire to own property. When I was a kid, people who bought a house were seen as boring and conventional. It was like an admission that they'd joined the rat race. I used to feel sorry for people who bought a house while they were still in their mid-20s. When I got to that age myself, it was only the realisation that renting in London was costing almost as much as a mortgage that finally changed my mind. It was a practical choice. We paid the same but had security of tenure. Nothing really to do with investment potential, which is all relatively new. I still think it's a bit sad that people in their 20s drool over the property supplements. I understand why that is, but still....
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We seem to have reached the debt ceiling and its downhill from now on.
Make your mind up. Your usual complaint is that people are spending their way into oblivion. We now have a situation where credit card debt has decreased for 4 or 5 months in succession as people are paying off their bills. (It was in all the papers last week though I didn't see it mentioned on here, not surprisingly).
If people are reducing their debts, they are clearly spending less, which in turn equals lower sales on the high street.
But of course, the deliciously misnamed "realistbear" has elected himself into a position where every item of news is evidence that he has been right all along. Anything to sugar the pill of STR-ing 4 years too early.
Hight St spending up? Evidence of mew-ing gone mad. Hight St spending down? Evidence that people have run out of money and civil unrest is just around the corner.
It's called having your cake and eating it, which is all that the singing pigs on this site like you are interested in. It's all an exercise in self-delusion.
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PS You may want to be reminded of this thread from just a week or so ago: http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/ind...showtopic=36697
entitled "High St spending up 8% YOY", in which people were reporting that high streets were packed solid.
Abbey: 1 In 8 Can No Longer Afford A Home
in House prices and the economy
Posted
Seven out of eight can afford a home?
Things are obviously much much better than I thought.
Bit of an own goal there, RB.