EdiLass

agreed, at my age (49, when I bought) the total cost of buying with a 17 year mortgage was equal to the total cost of renting until 81, (arbitrarily chosen life expectancy) assuming no rent inflation (unlikely).So overall I spend less buying and I have something to leave my kids

The way I did my calculations was to pick a life expectancy (I chose 81 years), and calculate how much I would spend in total if I rented a flat on my street, and how much I would spend if I bought a flat on my street. I was 49 at the time and didn't plan on moving. It turned out to be about the same either way. I didn't factor in inflation, which was okay for buying since I had a 10 year fix lined up. I then calculated a "break even" price for each year. It turns out in my case that even with rents being less than mortage payments, the house price could fall year on year by ever increasing amounts before it would cost me less to rent and then buy. What swayed me my disability, I wanted to buy so I could adapt flat and stay in it. Of course I could have got the life expectancy wrong, but it seemed a simpler way to do it

I live in Leith, not the bit you are interested in. I like it, very quiet street, great neighbours, near shops, bank, park, GP, etc. House prices and sales have stagnated since 2007. See no reason Leith will be any different from rest of Edinburgh. My own hunch is that new build flats will loose value quicker than anything else

"errors as simple as failing to give buyers a legal description of the property or to register the building with the Department of Housing and Urban Development," sounds more like stupid mistakes to me

agreed, I did a check on ourprice and couldn't find what they paid for it

I think the article is a bit misleading, the £1M + £1M conversion is a sort of generic figure, but the house/barn featured was bought already converted, not sure it cost £2mill

I live in a Victorian flat in Leith, not city centre, but it is good for making comparisons because in my street there are only 3 or 4 floor plans, so it is possilbe to compare several sales of more or less identical properties. There are several streets like mine in Leith where you can more or less tell the size of the flat from the outside. . I use www.ourproperty.co.uk to keep track of prices on my street, mostly because I'm a nosey neighbour with too much time on my hands, and although therre has been variability in prices, I'd say broadly they have stagnated

that's what I'm thinking. I've not tried any DMDs mainly because a) I have some very severe and atypical drug reactions I saw the local MS drug specialist and she advised against it

good question. I've been diagnosed with relapsing remitting, but although I have relapses, they last for months, and the remissions don't consitute full recoveries. So my normal level of functioning even when I'm not relasping is pretty low

I see two problems but no solution to either. First, how do we determine who is too ill or disabled to work? There are obviously some clear cut cases, but it is not a simple case of giving everyone a medical. Take my own situation as an example. I have MS, as confirmed by my neurologist. I worked full-time for 3 years after I first got ill. Then I went part-time but my health continued to deteriorate, and I am now no longer capable of doing any kind if work. So I know from my own experience that someone witth MS is capable of working full-time, part-time or not at all. However, the problem is that I am the only one who can really tell how my MS affects me.So the only way for me to be assessed is for me to be asked. I could easily give answers that reflect what I want. A huge problem for me is fatigue and cognitive issues. I find it hard to stay awake, concentrate and focus. However, this isn't usually immediately obvious, even to a medical professional. Second, even if we are able to assess what people can and can't do in a 30 minute interview, how do we tell what people can do in a sustained manner. I can do a lot of tasks, but I can do no single task repeatedly, nor can I do enough tasks in a single day, to make me employable. I get far too fatigued. Neurological fatigue isn't like ordinary fatigue. It's not just that I get extra tired and so need to go to bed early. For me it's more like being jet-lagged all the time

waiting seems like a sensible strategy to me Suppose I was happy living in my house, suppose I would be happy continuing to live here both in terms of lifestyle and finances suppose further that I had a dream of a different house and a different lifestyle. If I sold my house for XX I could realise this dream, but if I sold it for less than XX I could not. Given that houses seem to be about to fall/falling then this may be my last chance to go for the dream, so I put my house up for sale. If I get XX for the house I sell and go and live the dream. If I don't get XX, then I take the house of the market, quite content.

I voted "don't know". I still don't think we have enough of the details of the changes that they intend to make, nor do we know what changes they will actually make

that could change

If tax were cut, lots of things could happen other than people spending more. Employers might cut workers hours so there were less redundancies but no one much saw an increase in their pay packet Even if people saw more money coming in they might use it to over-pay their mortgage People might start saving again or paying into pensions

right then I'm off to Ikea

Over the years I have built up a very large amount of available credit on credit cards, when I hit 80, I intend to spend, spend, spend

here is my take on "offers around" price. It is the price that they would have liked to get on the house before things went oh so quite and slow. They would have put it on fixed price, but don't want to in case that looks too desparate and they would still like to hold out the possibility that some one will offer more than that, but they do accept that they might get less than that. It is basically a: "if only we had sold three years ago like I said we should dear" price

IN the bad old days the upper class, or landed gentry kept the peasants around by giving them land to till, so they would have people when they needed them for canon fodder and big manual labour projects. Then came the industrial revolution and we were kept around to toil in the dark satanic mills and down the pits Fast forward to taday, today's capatalists don't need us any more. They don't need working class or middle class in large numbers in order to keep making money. I say the best solution is to give us back what they took from us to begin with: the land. We talk about the UK being over crowded but there are vast tracts of land sitting idle and vacant. Give each able bodied adult a plot of land and enough tools and materials to build a house and let the plebs opt out of the moneyed economy

Johny if you are right what effect will this have on house prices? If the cuts are watered down, then so are the job losses, then so are the forced sales, then so if HPC. or is this what you are saying?

The major study, from insurance giant Aviva, found one in five people over the age of 55 still had a mortgage. The average size of their home loan is £60,440, which will wipe out a large chunk of their monthly income. Is this really surprising or bad. Many people take out mortgages that end when they plan to retire at 65, so you would expect that people over 55 would still have mortgages. I'm surprised that so many people over 55 don't have mortgages

I thought this was to do with the commercial TV and radio stations having to lower their prices because no one wants to advertise with them any more so its become more affordable for yougov etc to run ads

what amazes me is how long it went on before someone noticed

where do you find the results of property auctions in Scotland

I'm wondering why you say 7.5% on the loan?

Well it seems like a logical suggestions to me. The bankers have been making money from people's need for housing through mortgage lending. They did this in a totally irresponsible manner and caused the bubble that just bust, and got themselves into a hole. As a result no one is buying, so no more money to be made from mortgages, but people still need to live somewhere, so surely there must be a way for the bankers to exploit that. If they are lucky they won't need to buy up the houses people are trying to sell, they can just wait for people to default on their mortgages and become slumlords that way