Dopamine

Yes, it's noticeably quieter. Fewer interesting threads. Since the engineered bounce, it has been getting quieter but the 'upgrade' has sent things into a nosedive. Sad - it all feels a bit 'fin de siecle' (offline as well as online).

And by then everyone will have spent another £45K on rent. I agree with you - they will fall more, but the incentive wasn't enough for me to stick to my STR strategy. I've bought. I'd rather be £20K down over 5 years than in limbo. Damn the VIs!

This is frustrating, I agree, and the dependency culture is a real problem, but assuming that people on low incomes are only in this situation because they didn't try hard enough at school is too easy. It was attitudes like this - the general 'look out for yourself' viewpoint that the tories promoted, that led to thousands of mentally ill and otherwise vulnerable people sleeping rough in the streets in the 1980s and early 1990s. I don't want to go back to that, and a lot of rightwing rhetoric seems designed to give society permission to neglect the genuinely needy on the basis that it's all their fault, really. The coming tory government is scary for this reason - they don't really care about looking after people who can't look out for themselves. Labour's failures don't mean we should accept the tory agenda lock stock and barrel.

Idiot. What about those with low intelligence or disabilities that mean that they can realistically only do low paid unskilled work? You know, the stuff like caring for old people, cleaning offices - that kind of unimportant thing that society can well do without. I worked hard to get where I am as well, which is why I think it's right for me to help out those who work and who are on low incomes. Same old callous selfish tory crap.

thick as pigs****

Ah, the preamble. Prepare to take the pain where it hurts!

Mandelson is an evil man. He wouldn't know loyalty if it came and took him from behind.

Thanks for the congratulations (you haven't seen the size of my mortgage ) It's just outside Radyr, Reggie. I now have a happy wife and an unhappy savings account! I feel the fear whenever she sits down with a catalogue and as for John Lewis......

I've just bought one. Fed up with waiting. I reckon that finding a 'bargain' in CF15 might take years and you'd have to be in the right place at the right time. The turnover here is just too small, and seems entirely dependent on deaths and divorces, with the odd 'trade up' here and there. Not a gamble I feel I can make, especially given the fact that most of the property here would be out of my price range even if the economy was so bad that everyone became unemployed, overnight. I got it for 2003 price, although it needs quite a bit of work. I suspect that in some period in the next few years it may be worth 2001 price, but my stress levels can't take this ongoing uncertainty and insecurity. Hope you get what you want at as low a price as possible. I'll continue to hang around here because I'm a masochist at heart!

Tell that to all the ex-miners who sweated their lives away before being royally 5hat upon by the tories. They took the pain and reaped f uck all. The tories benefited a very small proportion of the working class - the rest they shafted.

Crazy but I can't see a trigger for a fall. CF15 is as expensive as some london suburbs (and certainly on a par with most of the south east). Radyr in particular is ridiculously expensive - as people have said a lot of stuff is estate disposal and often needs a lot of work - but by god they won't negotiate.

Tracker, no question. At 50K, with the differential between fixed and trackers being so high, rates would have to go up massively before you benefit from a fixed rate over the term. A 5 year fixed is double the interest rate of a good tracker at the moment - not good value. If you're anxious get one with no redemption penalty so you can move to a fixed quickly if rates look like they're about to soar. Fixed rates are rubbish at the moment when there are good redemption free trackers around.

You could make that argument for price changes in anything, surely - which is why cash is not a 'store of value' without interest, as its purchasing power is eroded through inflation. e.g. Mars bars barely change in value, it's the currency they are traded in that does.

If this does turn into a crack up boom (and certainly signals from housing and commodities are suggesting it's possible), then I'm well positioned but absolutely terrified. Worse than a deflationary bust in terms of risks of civil chaos. You can pull back from a decline but you can't pull back after you've gone so far that you're flying. Like an acid freak who sends himself psychotic and never comes down again, mind absolutely fried beyond repair.

Yep - I did STR though, so there was a 2 year gap between selling and buying, with all the costs incurred through renting. However, I sold in a rubbish town, where properties of the kind I sold are ten a penny and am now buying in a very desirable area which never has many properties up for sale - so there are factors other than headline hpi to account for. I wish I'd made more of a 'profit' on my STR strategy (because I'm greedy), as I was wanting to be able to pay off a mortgage in 10 years. Now I'll have to settle for 15. Both are better than continuing to live in a chav infested town and allow my kids to socialise on the weekends with heroin addicted pondlife. If I had been a bull I'd have had to get a mortgage for £50K more to buy the same house in 2007. My savings are therefore this minus my rent costs, plus the cost of interest on £50K over 20 years, plus 2% stamp duty, minus additional capital repayments on my previous mortgage (if I'd stayed). Christ knows what that comes to.

A small amount of money - the property I am buying has devalued by the same percentage that the one I sold has (in 2007). This means that the cost to trade up would've fallen for me anyway.

lahfl gfig rgrghr grg gqbrj nuhbubuvnuvr Get it?

Yes, I think they are short sighted enough to think that they can 'play' with high inflation without nuking the economy. The risks of a 'terminal deflation' resulting in complete seizing up of growth are too high in their minds, I think, so they minimise the risk of currency collapse caused by high / hyper inflation. They will keep interest rates lower than they should be in order to do this - and the fact that inflation figures can be manipulated means that it will 'look' OK. The behaviour of the stock market over the next year should tell us which way it is going. House prices will follow - either static or higher (inflation) or lower (deflation). I don't discount a further leg down in house prices before the end game play out though - although I don't really have a clue which way it will go - it's just what I think is most probable. Scary times for people holding any asset paid with debt or currency. Those with mortgage free property and liquid assets that they can move between cash and PMs are best placed IMO (and I'm not one of those!)

In similar boat to you - but am basically preparing to buy when a suitable place comes up. For following reasons: The govt have shown that they will do almost anything to prevent house prices from falling any more than they already have. This includes debasing the currency and triggering high inflation. The state of the bank balance sheets means the consequences of severe asset deflation are too terrifying to contemplate. They will just keep on printing to prop everything up. 10-15% off house prices maximum from here on in (and i'd be surprised at more than 10%) Everyone, including the government, is up to their neck in debt. The majority nearly always comes out on top. When the bond markets collapse and the S hit really hits the fan, I want to be an owner of property, not a renter. In nicer areas, prices have only fallen a little and the nature of these places means that if you see something suitable, and you don't buy it, you may be waiting a long time (unless your area contains a large number of quality properties with high turnover of stock - unlikely) until something else comes up that's suitable for your family. I'm sick of waiting for more falls and my children need a sense of long term stability after 2 years renting. I already own precious metals. I can buy with a 3x salary mortgage and would be able to afford repayments with rates at 12%. I'm not a natural investor/gambler and am sick of a lot of my time being spent thinking about house prices - i don't like what it's 'turned me into'.

If this article is any evidence, he seems to think that either side of a balance sheet is irrelevant as long as people are spending on crap and 'feeling good about themselves'. I'd feel a lot better if he stuck to his gyms and left the economics to the experts like.......erm.

Link http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/du...le-economy.html Conclusive proof that this man's fortune is certainly not based on a thorough knowledge of economic theory. What a load of banal, simplistic toss.

This is also interesting - link from that page http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/the_economy/527620.stm One for the alternative historians.

Not seen anything remotely resembling this in South Wales, sorry to say. Quite the opposite.

And so the plutocracy advances

Good to see you back TMT I'm actually leveraging up my STR fund as we speak to put a 1000 a point bet on the FTSE 100. No stop loss as the market can only go up from here on in.