silver surfer
-
Posts
3,530 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by silver surfer
-
-
The pension change that would concern me most is if the rules were changed to allow property to be held within a pension. If that happened, and it's not impossible, then a pensioner could hold a BTL property within their personal pension, so there would be no need to remove cash from the pension wrapper and hence no tax liability.
-
Any news about more homes being built is good and welcome news.
If I genuinely believed it would be implemented in full then I'd vote Conservative on the grounds that it's not trivial and it would make houses (a bit) more affordable.
Two concerns though,
-will he renege on the promise?
-will he drive the initiative through obstructionist NIMBY councils?
-
A £2m pension fund would exceed the lifetime limit, and get hit for a serious tax bill (in addition to regular tax on your income from it).
I guess it's possible someone out there has a way round that problem. 'Grandfather' rights from an era before such limits? Sorry, I don't know the relevant history to say whether and for whom that might work.
Yes, you could protect pension rights that exceeded the limit, it was a simple one page declaration called the "Certificate For Fixed Protection" and it eliminated liability to any charge from the £1.8m lifetime allowance. As far as I know the same principle held true for each subsequent reduction in the lifetime allowance (£1.5m, £1.25m, and now proposed to be reduced further to £1m). So if you've exceeded a cap before the new limits are enacted you can grandfather your pension pot.
-
I wouldn't even have to agree with his politics, he'd get my vote because of the message it would send to any official thinking about taking a bribe.
-
Haha, yes that is a fair point. A little bit of an emotional out burst on my part!
Hardly! You strike me as one of the most open minded, least emotional people on this forum.
-
Seems like a complete joke! But then everything the office of national statistics does seems to be a bit of a joke now days!
I'm not so sure, I think the ONS does a pretty good job, certainly when compared with genuinely clownish national statistics like those from Argentina.
We've got to remember that every individual has their own personal rate of inflation depending on how they spend their money, so it's probably wrong to expect that any national measure will accord perfectly with our own individual experiences. Also "core" inflation is probably a misnomer, it doesn't mean the "core" of anyone's expenditure, it's more of a technical measure to track the real drivers of self fuelling inflation or deflation.
It wasn't long ago when many of this forum were up in arms claiming the ONS were systemically and deliberately under recording inflation, the B of E was being pilloried for saying core inflation suggested that inflation would come down...but that's exactly what we've seen happen.
-
I note that repo's have hit record low's.
Not really, the 2014 repossession rate was 0.19% of all properties, the lowest since 2006, but still well above where it's been in the past. In 1973 for example repossessions were just 0.03% of all properties and as recently as 2003 and 2004 repossessions were running at 0.07%.
But I agree with your point that repossessions are a critical component of any property crash, in fact I'd argue that it's repossessed properties, with their fire sale prices, that actually are the property crash. In the 1989/95 crash interest rates spiked, which meant many owner occupiers could no longer afford to pay their new, higher mortgages, and repossessions rocketed, peaking at 0.77% in 1991. Without a flood of repossessed properties overwhelming buyers and setting much lower prices at the margin, there wouldn't have been a crash.
So how likely is it to happen again in the foreseeable future? Not likely at all in my opinion.
Interest rates will probably stay ultra low for years to come, and consequently repossessions will remain subdued. The one ray of sunshine is potentially buy to let, where forbearance isn't an issue and repossessions could happen faster. But I STR'd in 2005 precisely on the assumption that BTL landlords would rush for the exit at the first sign of even moderating house price inflation. That didn't work out very well for me, and the lesson I learnt is that BTL landlords are more tenacious than I'd reckoned. Going forward when landlords say they're in it for the long haul, I'm going to take their words at face value!
-
Most of the dole scroungers are dysfunctional people in some way who came from dysfunctional backgrounds- unlike those in the city who for the most part had every advantage in life and still ended up as parasites- albeit better dressed and better educated ones.
The majority are only dysfunctional in the context of a process driven, post-industrial society. Drop us all into a subsistence farming landscape and there'd be precious little difference between dole scroungers and pillar of the community middle managers.
-
Before we married my wife owned a house that backed onto a London overground line. She'd been there a few years and was completely oblivious to the noise, at first I found it a bit intrusive but after a few weeks I also just tuned it out. My guess is that after a short while of living there you'll barely notice the trains.
However, if there's any chance that you might want to sell in the near future, I'd be very wary about buying a property that backs onto a train line.
I'm not expecting a property crash, but if one does occur then any property that is blighted to the slightest extent becomes virtually unsaleable. This is what I saw during the 1989/95 crash. In a boom we're all just grateful to have our offer accepted, but when the market turns sour we all become incredibly picky, and unless the market's booming no one will touch a house next to a railway line. If the market stumbles then the idyllic Edwardian rectory with the south facing garden will still find ready buyers at a relatively high price, but you'll be stuck with the kind of unsaleable white elephant that will carry the majority of any house price correction.
-
This is November 2014 data, does it incorporate the full impact of MMR or will these house sales relate to "pre-agreed" mortgages?
-
People who are used to London don't want to live in places like Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool etc.
I was brought up in Manchester. In my early 20's I moved to London and hardly ever went back north...until a few months ago. I took one of my kids to visit the university and Manchester looked re-born, it was absolutely fantastic; great restaurants, great architecture, vibrant bars, lots happening. I lived in London for thirty years and don't regret a day of it, but from what I saw Manchester gives the capital a real run for its money.
-
Net long-term migration to the UK was estimated to be 298,000 in the year ending September 2014.
Immigration is a little above the ten year range. Emigration is at the bottom of the ten year range.
So net migration is almost as much about the lack of emigration as it is about the scale of immigration.
I wonder why emigration is running at such a low level? Surprising when a frequent comment by posters on this forum is that they're just about to pack their bags and go.
-
32% Own Outright
33% Have Mortgages
15% Rent Socially
19% Rent Privately
I wonder what percentage of each of those four groups can be reliably predicted to turn out and vote?
I don't know the answer, but I'd guess if you aimed off for actually voting (in other words looked at it through the eyes of a politician), then it might look something like this,
38% Of Voters, Own Outright
38% Of Voters, Have Mortgages
10% Of Voters, Rent Socially
14% Of Voters, Rent Privately
-
Loads do, esp those who can't afford to buy a flat. It makes them feel cosmopolitan innit.
In China I was surprised at how many Chinese people walked around with a Starbucks cup. A local guy I worked with explained many of those people picked them out of waste bins and filled them with water, they thought it made them look more important to carry one. I saw people in Shenzen and Guangzhou go into a Carrefour or Walmart and just buy a pencil, again it was explained to me that they only really wanted the carrier bag, so that their friends and neighbours would think they regularly shopped in western stores.
Funny old world.
-
You cannot be serious.
-
But surely diminishing returns kick in at some point? I am sure that a £10 bottle of wine is 2x "better" than a £5 one; but would a £100 bottle really be worth the extra over a £50 one (bragging rights aside)?
The same applies for all sorts of things. Are the city boys on flash bikes in Richmond Park really getting 5x more pleasure out of their ride than me on my relatively humble cyclecross?
I think you might be mixing up individual possessions with total income. There are no diminishing returns to total income, even though there may well be diminishing returns to incremental purchases.
John McEnroe, the tennis player, is an avid art collector. But he can "only" afford to pay up to $500k for any one individual item. Listening to him express his frustrations about this financial restriction to his passion, it's clear that if his wealth doubled he'd be every bit as delighted as I would if my wealth doubled. As I said before, there are no natural boundaries to avarice.
-
Hardly a fair comparison FTSE 100 to instant access.
I disagree. You can liquidate equities with one keystroke, they are as liquid as an instant access account and therefore that's the most appropriate comparator.
-
The reason for this, not pointed out in the article is homeownership is in decline. I would think the overall number of mortgaged properties including BTL landlords is steadily on the increase.
Spot on.
Currently 63% owner occupancy according to those figures, not that long ago it was over 70% in this country. It's a racing certainty it'll keep falling at least down to the 50-60% range that's common in continental Europe...only without the renter friendly legislation that Europeans enjoy.
-
So it seems anything beyond 42k pa is not worth chasing, according to the chart.
The chart's childishly simplistic, it shows how much happiness an incremental £1 brings. It's blinking obvious that an incremental £1 means less and less the wealthier the person.
If the chart was redrawn on a log scale, so it measured how much happiness an incremental 10% of wealth brings, then you'd see a straight line extending out to infinity.
It's a sobering conclusion, but if a billionaire becomes 50% richer they will be happier by precisely the same amount as a pauper who becomes 50% richer. Sadly there are no natural limits to avarice.
-
I still dont believe it though. I'd imagine his security wouldn't let you get within 10 feet of him.
I believe it, and well done the OP for raising his concerns with a politician.
-
Its a bump of thread from 12 months ago SS, in light of BDEV results and price developments since.
Sorry if original headline appears misleading.
Thanks for the clarification. I'm astonished that twelve months ago any broker would consider house builders fully valued, they were a screaming buy then and are still pretty attractive now.
-
BTL is the process of dividing existing homes into multiple dwellings.
You make an important point. I'm in the minority on this forum in that I do believe restrictive planning regulations have played a major part in driving up house prices, particularly in areas of relatively strong employment. But I have to concede that the splitting up of family homes into flats makes it harder to come to clear conclusions. I used to live in Richmond, which I believe had the highest percentage of flats of any London borough, it was pretty obvious living there that not many of them had actually been built as flats.
-
Bully for Credit Suisse, personally I'll be hanging on to Persimmon for a year or two yet.
-
The usual stuff we've all seen before,
http://www.michaelpage.co.uk/minisite/salary-vs-happiness/
Implies that happiness levels start to flatten out above a certain income, giving rise to the meme that "money can't buy happiness, but lack of money can make you unhappy".
I'm not convinced, obviously an extra £1,000 a year means a lot more to someone on £10,000 a year than it would to someone on £100,000 a year. Therefore the graph should be plotted on a log scale to take that into account, and when you do so it seems happiness and money are indeed related, in fact happiness rises pretty much in a straight line each time you get an additional fixed percentage of income.
It's a depressing conclusion, but none the less I'm convinced it's correct. The solutions seem to be,
-have a lot of money and keep getting more.
-share the money equally and all be tepidly content together, taking additional satisfaction that you're not chronically unhappy and are unlikely to become so.
-train yourself to break the money/happiness link, which despite all the platitudes is probably extremely difficult and certainly doesn't come naturally.
Buy-To-Let Landlords And Retirees Risk Squeezing Out First-Time Buyers
in House prices and the economy
Posted
Spyguy/Porca Miseria, the change I'm thinking of is one that would allow an individual BTL property to be held within a self-invested personal pension. There are a few pundits speculating that the forthcoming budget might allow that.