salamander

I agree. Fundamentally the market is massively overvalued and the bubble is about to burst. The stupid people are the ones who cannot see that.

I guessed the LA-looking buildings might be private which is why I added (ex?). For me though, the W4 postcode isn't enough to make up for all of the noise from trains and traffic, let alone the air pollution. In my opinion only a fool would spend well over a million pounds to "buy into the Chiswick dream" to end up in that particular spot. I think the fact that just over a year ago it was selling for under 400K makes it quite clear that it's not "real Chiswick". In actual fact when I was thinking about buying last year, the only part of Chiswick even remotely affordable for me was the part featured on the program and I didn't view any properties there, for the reasons I gave above. Still, if someone's mum likes it, it can't be all bad

Luck of the draw really. I always go to FindaProperty first because that's where my old flat (still not flipped nearly a year after being refurbed) is up for sale. Going back to "North Lodge" (how f*cking pretentious is that?), it has to be said that prices in Chiswick are still very strong so there is a chance they might get somewhere near the money they want. Having said that, the house is more Gunnersbury than Chiswick, surrounded by train tracks and very main roads (at eye level with the bedrooms) and within spitting distance of very (ex?)LA looking properties and a large car park. Doesn't sound very "Villagey" to me. Edit: typo

I would think that they've pretty much lost their window of opportunity now. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Quick! Before it goes! http://www.findaproperty.com/displayprop.a...p;agentid=03068

Now it's on stilts. Two walls hanging and cracks everywhere.

I didn't think it would be possible, but these two are even more muppety than last week's "we're not morning people hahaha!" lot. FFS where do they find these people ?

The change in the total amount of outstanding credit during October was: 1,639,207,000,000 - 1,647,044,000,000 = -7,837,000,000 i.e. The actual (not seasonally adjusted) amount of outstanding M4 money fell by 7.837 billion. This is a contraction of the amount of credit in the economy over the month of October.

Just a few comments to add to the above, in the interests of fairness, of course 1. Sometimes the converse is true when comparing like for like products from the same lender (I just checked one for which this is the case) 3. Are potentially substantially far more tax efficient than Cash ISAs because the only limit on the amount you can 'save' is the size of the mortgage They only really make sense for certain types of borrowers, which I guess is true of all mortgage products on the market. Right now I wouldn't take out any kind of mortgage as I won't be buying for a year or two, but I used to have an offset mortgage and it matched my needs pretty much perfectly.

A spokesman for Inside Crock commented: "Inside Crock welcomes this news as the resultant reduction in the supply of properties available for rent will support rental incomes for our members"

The way I viewed the offset mortgage I used to have before I sold up last year was as a very tax-efficient savings vehicle providing instant access to all of my savings. By the time I switched to it (5 years into my standard mortgage) I had built up some savings which up until that point were earning fairly rubbish interest that was taxed at 40%. Once everything was switched to the offset mortgage, every month I got a statement showing the interest saved by offsetting my savings against the outstanding amount. This earned interest was effectively paid at the mortgage rate (bank base rate + 0.75) and was untaxed. It could be argued that it was not 'earned' interest as it was reducing the mortgage capital, were it not for the the fact that as soon as I sold it was realised in full as a reduction on the sum repayable to the lender. For me then, what I got was interest earned at a rate of just under 8% (when the bank base rate was at 4%) and the full use of my money during the lifetime of the mortgage. While the statement that 'if you have debt in excess of any savings, you have no savings' is strictly true, in real-life there is a big difference between having some rainy day money and a bigger (mortgage) debt than the alternative of a smaller debt but no contingency. In the event of falling on hard times, the former have a much better chance of keeping the mortgage company at bay until they sort out their finance (e.g. by selling up and downsizing or renting) than the latter.

<tinFoilHat> This assumes that there will actually be elections next year. In May this year Bush signed an executive order (NSPD-51/HSPD-20) which, like similar earlier executive orders, gives him the power to run the whole government by decree in the event of a national emergency. One key difference with earlier versions is that this one appears to give the president the sole right to determine when the conditions for a national emergency are met, and does not make it clear who should decide when they no longer apply. In other words, congress no longer get to decide when to hand all of their powers over to the president or when they should be returned - the president does. For what it's worth, national emergency can include a severe financial crisis, if that's what the president decides. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...0070509-12.html Wikipedia has further info about this executive order, and of a failed attempt by a member of congress to have the White House provide full details of its contents. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Secu...ntial_Directive </tinFoilHat>

I think it's being theorised that since the legal ownership documentation is not in order, it would be technically possible for the same mortgage to be counted more than once in a mortgage pool or perhaps counted in multiple mortgage pools, meaning that any affected pools would have insufficient collateral in the event of defaults. There is no suggestion that this has actually taken place, just that it is possible. If it turned out that this had actually happened, or even if it was believed that it might have happened it could completely destroy what little remaining value there is in mortgage-backed securities.

If you're having this many doubts, why not just pull out. It's coming across (to me at least) that you want to do this anyway but don't want to be the ones to make the final decision. You could tell the buyer that in light of recent events you're withdrawing from the housing market for now. It'll generate far less ill-feeling than messing about asking for reductions and will give the vendor the opportunity to find a more serious buyer. That isn't meant as a criticism by the way, it just seems like common sense to me. Edit: Fixed use of 'buyer' in place of 'vendor'

I wouldn't worry too much. I got rid of my old flat in West London for 230K last December. The guy who bought it (a builder) did it up and had a buyer for 280K lined up from around February up until a month or two ago. Apparently he was saying that even at that price he "wasn't making any money" (!) That sale fell through and since then it's been on the market at 300K, but no takers so far with more scary news about the housing market coming out on a daily basis. He really d*cked me around during my sale to him, including just having the money in place at completion so I have no sympathy for him whatsoever.

I tihnk I remember the art deco house. Wasn't it something like £2000 for deep purple hand-painted tiles in the downstairs loo ?

"Now that the mortgage repayments have increased by 50%, Jo has has decided to go on the game. In my opinion this is a great way to bring in extra money while keeping the days free to work on the property" Edit: Added missing words

I can just picture it: "We've had valuations from three agents at £190K, £200K, and £ 175K. If you sell at the top price your loss will only be £50K"

I have to say, the two in Streatham are the muppetest muppets I've ever seen on this programme. "We're not morning people, hahaha!" Tw*ts Edit: Mis-spelling of made-up adjective.

There are only ever two issues active at any time so if you want to make best use of these you have to fill your boots with the current issues (personal and any spousal trust allowances) and then wait for the next issues to be released. We are probably due new issues quite soon as the last two releases were April 2007 and October 2006. When this happens, the current issues will be closed at precisely the same time.

Hi there. If you have less than 30K and are happy to leave it alone for at least 12 months, NS&I have index-linked bonds that guarantee RPI+1.35%. They are currently running 2 bonds which can be held for a maximum of 3 and 5 years and you can put up to 15K in each (hence the 30K total). While they are not a perfect inflation hedge, they are pretty good in this respect as RPI is generally a better reflection of 'real' inflation than CPI because it has no target range so is less prone to fiddling. The bonds are directly backed by the treasury so should be safe in the event of a banking failure. The interest earned is also tax-free, which makes them particularly good if you are a higher rate tax payer. I've invested in both of the current bond issues and actually consider them to be the safest of all the investments I have, for the reasons given above. Hope this helps. Link below. http://www.nsandi.com/products/ilsc/index.jsp

Today it looks like a wiggly worm

I work in software development and this is just the sort of thing you might expect to see where the programmers, possibly working on completely separate parts of the system, have simply failed to consider a rare set of circumstances. All of the obvious ones will have been considered and properly tested, but in this case something slipped through. Sometimes obvious looking errors are the result of very specific and unusual interactions. Just because they happen doesn't mean that the software won't give accurate results most of the time.

I agree, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for an explanation.

To be honest, the result was so obviously wrong, I can't see why anyone would make it behave that way. It's very difficult (virtually impossible) to write complex software that you can guarantee will behave as expected under all possible circumstances. For mission critical software, all conceivable scenarios will be tested, but real-life has a habit of throwing up unexpected scenarios.