reddii

I had an haircut yesterday and my hairdresser was telling me how she's struggling to buy another BTL. Last week she wanted to purchase a 3 bed semi on the market origionally @ 170K marketed last week @ 195K despite her best efforts she failed, according to her there were around 20 viewings a day and it sold quickly. She has 5 others all bought within the last 5 years all on 10 year mortgages. She's very happy with them and desperate to get more before they go up in value. She owns the shop and also has 2 more BTL flats above it, I have know her years and have no reason to disbelieve her. I kid you not. Parallel Universe?

Should be the useless Meaden but isn't she reliant on UK holidays? Jones I'd say.

Duncan Bannatyne was advertising his local gym in my local property rag last week. The whole of December free if you joined......only 30 places available!!!

A friend of mine plays for a Premier Club and there's massive problems brewing with players and their agents/advisors in his case numerous "investments" in Apartments in Manchester, he's even told me of one player that "invested" in his "advisors" own main residence.

That's a spoof site no?

I worked for a large EA in the early 90's and this was very common practice. I recall one of the Financial Consultants, who looked after around 10 branches, giving negotiators £500 for each property he completed on.

Had a trim today and the hairdresser was going on about her electricity bill, how it had risen from £66 pm to £105 pm and how her and boyfriend [Fireman] are having to cut back. She then told me they paid 129K for their persimmon starter property 18 months ago, have 122K on mortgage and want to move to something slightly bigger. Estate Agent has valued it at 95K as persimmons are now marketing the identical remaining properties at 99K. It's people like this I feel sorry for, all they wanted was to buy a home to share, didn't overextend themselves and are now facing a loss of 40K or so......it'll take a hell of a long time for this couple to recover.

have a look at this about 2 mins in struggle fat lazy welsh guy too unfit to "work" claiming £150 a week of our tax money yet can afford 42" LCD TV and Sky..........the system is seriously WRONG.

Kirsty, Kirsty, Kirsty, Kirsty, Kirsty, Kirsty i'm not going to answer your question or give any explanation, so just stop asking you bloody ingrate.

look at this little pearl......plus a chunky backhander to the owner I've bookmarked her....could be fun as the crash gathers pace!

Ha well spotted moosetea, I think you should leave a little note in the comments section.

Click the link at the bottom or here.....................Evening Standard

A year ago this week, I began paying off the biggest debt I've ever had. I'd borrowed five and a half times my salary over 30 years to buy the small terrace house in North London I now share with my partner. Back then, a whole 12 months ago, I felt lucky. Our house had been on the market for only two hours when 10 couples bid for it. Somehow we scraped in ahead of them. And even though the price was astronomical - nearly £200,000 more than friends had paid for one round the corner 18 months earlier - I was grateful to my mortgage broker for bagging me the deal he did. What a difference a year makes. High-risk mortgage packages like mine are history and new loans are down 70 per cent. The London property market's slumped, too, by about 10 per cent according to the most realistic estimates and yesterday the warnings were of a further 17 per cent fall in the value of our homes. The outlook could hardly be bleaker. Yet here's the funny thing: I still feel lucky. And not just because I love the house that cost me my shirt (and trousers) to buy. There are concrete reasons for my optimism. For one thing, my home's value hasn't yet declined. Despite a year of ferociously negative hype, a lesser house in my street has just sold for more than we paid - even though they had to slash the asking price by £50,000 to tempt a buyer. The slump is real but we are still ahead. And thanks to the recession, I'm paying back £300 a month less to Alliance and Leicester. My tracker mortgage follows the interest rate - when it falls, so does my repayment. Now trackers-have all but vanished and mortgages are costing around a grand more to take out. I'd never be able to afford my own house now. Of course, they say the worst is yet to come. But I've done my sums. If the doomsayers are correct and I end up with a property worth £50,000 less than I paid for it, I still break even, because my only alternative was to continue renting. That would have meant forking out the same amount for a smaller house with a dank basement, gloomy garden and a dangerously wonky boiler. Ask any Londoner struggling to get a foot on the property ladder - that's money down the toilet. So, in the worst case, I'll have lost no more money and gained a lot more quality of life. The pessimists will call me crazy but as far as I'm concerned, my money's as safe as houses. ha ha ha

shortage of stock

John Redwood gets it right.......esp. the "An honest Chancellor would write back" bit /www.johnredwoodsdiary.com The Governor may soon have to write a letter to the Chancellor apologising for the high rate of inflation and saying what if anything he needs to do about it. In a way it should be the Chancellor writing to the Governor, as the Treasury has been at the bottom of the economic mistakes that have led us to higher inflation, and the Treasury has had more power than the Bank in many of the important matters that guide our economy. The Governor, in an honest letter would say: “Dear Chancellor, I am writing to report that inflation is now above 3%. This has come about because we held interest rates too low in the period 2004-6, allowing a credit bubble to emerge. The government’s decision to switch target from RPI to CPI made our task more difficult, as the CPI at the time was lower than the RPI, and has since proved to be a very poor indicator of the overall inflation people are experiencing in their daily budgets. Indeed the gap between RPI and CPI has got larger, meaning our failure on inflation as measured by the old target is worse. We felt we had to respknd to lower easier target once set. The government’s love of PFI/PPP off balance sheet liabilities and its rapid expansion of public spending and borrowing made conditions far looser in credit markets than was desirable, but we did not feel we could take full action to offset the government’s own wish to expand borrowing so rapidly. We felt the Treasury clearly had good policy reasons for wanting to increase public sector costs and the size of the public sector as much as it did and it was not for us to try to throttle the economy with very high interest rates to offset this huge public sector expansion. I accept that this was wrong in retrospect. We were also wrong to keep the markets so illiquid in August and September last year leading to the run on Northern Rock. Our options have now been narrowed by the decision to nationalise Northern Rock. That has proved expensive to the taxpayer, boosting public spending still more, and has meant thanks to EU competition law that we are having to run down a leading mortgage bank at a time of mortgage famine and credit squeeze. What should we now do? The Bank’s options are very limited. If we chase the historic inflation with higher interest rates we will make the credit crunch worse, and cause a sharper slowdown or a recession which seems a bad idea. If we take no action commentators may well say we are neglecting the high and persistent inflationary problem. This is mainly the result now of excess liquidity elsewhere in the world creating strong upward pressure on commodity prices. There is little sign of this spilling over into wage increases at home which would give another twist to the inflationary spiral. In due course it is quite possible the speculative froth in commodities will be corrected and ease the inflationary impact. However, it is unfair that all the pressure of adjustment to harder times is currently falling on the private sector, with housing and property at the eye of the storm. I am very conscious of the governments ambitions and high targets for new housebuilding, which are currently unrealistic. If the government wishes to rebalance the economy and ease some of the unreasonable pressure on property and finance it needs to reduce its own claims on the economy. I suggest the government redoubles its efforts, begun with the Gershon Report, to eliminate waste and less desirable spending from the large public sector, to help the adjustment . I would be happy to assist with this process, and can see many easy targets. Yours etc” An honest Chancellor would write back: “Dear Governor, Thank you for your letter. I agree we have made mistakes together, and we need to reform our system for inflation control. I wish to discuss with you strengthening the role of the Bank in managing the money markets by restoring powers to you to monitor the clearing banks day by day and to run the government debt. Like you, I now realise the Northern Rock decisions were not well made, and we need to be careful how quickly we run the business off. The government is concerned about the state of the housing market. We see now that getting prices down to make housing more affordable does not allow more people to buy houses if the mortgage market has dried up. Nor does it help if people generally decide to sit tight rather than change their houses, as it limits choice and increases the number of families living in less suitable accommodation. It will not be easy with colleagues, but I do see the force of your argument that too much of the adjustment is being taken by the private sector in general, and by the property and mortgage sector in particular. I think there is scope to reduce public spending without in anyway damaging services. You are right in hinting that public sector efficiency and productivity can and should be raised. I will take your letter to Cabinet along with spending suggestions the Chief Secretary has been preparing on a contingent basis and see what we can achieve. I agree with you that putting up interest rates now would be an inappropriate knee jerk response. I just hope you are right and commodity prices start to subside. It will be uncomfortable to live through much more of this commodity boom, but I see no alternative that is less damaging to UK jobs and output. Yours etc”