CharlieChuck

Not much we already didn't know. He did say that the UK housing bubble was larger than the US one. It was on about 8.35-8.45, you can probably find it on the bbc listen again thing

The only advantage I can see would be if shares were issued at less than the current trading price, but even then you'd still owen the same % of the company. It seems to just move it from Retained profits to Shareholders equity on the balance sheet, I don't know if Basle limits treat these differently or not.

Looking at this again http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/busi...icle3934475.ece This could explain the falls today. I've never heard of dividends being paid in shares before and not cash, it's really not looking good is it.

I think the price adjusts when they are ex-rights, a specific date is given and all owners of shares on that day have the option to buy or sell their rights, I think this is just general downgrading. I could be wrong though.

So for every 25 they own, they can buy another 16 at 82p. What's the betting the price of their shares will fall below the 82p in the next few weeks? I've been expecting A&L to be hoovered up by a larger bank, Bear Stearns style, for the last few weeks, but who's going to want Bradford & Bingley with their BTL dominance? In my opinion they're going the same way as Northern Rock, wether it's next week or next year though is the question.

What this could mean is they can limp through to 2010, subsidising it themselves through all manner of means, before throwing the towel in (or being forced to throw the towel in). This would appear to further force down prices over the next few years when they are sold a auction, so just when you think the crash is over, they fall another 5-10%. The people with 2 or 3 btl who have tried to make a pension out of them will probably try to hold on the longest as no doubt they have sunk every penny of their savings in, and their main house will be mortgaged against it to. I'm trying hard not to smile here.

Interestingly, I read this yesterday http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/poli...icle3953922.ece. Claims that 100bn a year is wasted by quango's. I'm not totally convinced of the figure, the times tends to overstate these things, and I'm sure some of it is essential, but the scale of public expenditure (£1,662 for every taxpayer) is mind boggling. This surely has to be the first area to be cut in any downturn, it should never have got to this stage in the 'good times', but that's a seperate arguement. Unfortunately, if some of these are quango's are closed, I'm sure the redundancy pay offs would be huge. Billions of pounds have been and are still being wasted in the NHS, by a whole raft of non-essential middle men, it's a huge waste of money that should be being used elsewhere. What my general point is that in a slowing economy with lower tax revenues, given the money wasted by the governmetn in recent years, it should be possible for essential public workers to receive inflation linked pay rises and to generally cut goverment expenditure to offset the lower tax revenues it receives.

Thank you

I guess I could have worded the question better. What I meant to say was, if you have a stocks and shares ISA, and don't want to lose the tax free status, but you currently are nervous of the climate and don't want to lose any previous gains. Is there any fund that almost certainly guarantees not to lose capital value, that isn't the short term cash holding. The only other way I can think is to put it in a FTSE tracker, and hedge that using a spreadbetting short.

I agree It is possible but is it long term affordable. If everyone tried to do this, how many would get in trouble and end up losing their home. If 2 out of every 10 lose their home, how does the bank recover it's losses. I bought in 2001 with a loan that was about 3.8 x salary (it was about the maximum you could get back then), It was difficult but I managed. If I had lost my job and been unable to find another on similar pay I would have lost everything. If I had got ill and been unable to work for a few months I wouldn't have been able to pay the mortgage. The other big point is children. I guess you haven't got any. Money wise - It's like having a big whole you chuck money into, they are lovely though. Imagine having a 4x joint salary and trying to feed 3 people with the figures above, along with 2 cars/transport to work, prams, clothes etc. 1,000 payments on a 200k loan suggest an interest rate of under 4% (3.4%?) or an interest only mortgage of 6%. http://www.bbc.co.uk/homes/property/mortgagecalculator.shtml

Or, perhaps they will start telling us that computers will stop working on 31st December 2009. They could call it the "decade bug" or something? We've fallen for the house price boom at least twice ...

It's a gamble, in every sense of the word. As I said, I'm nervous about trying to ride this one. The sunday papers' money sections are full of stories about how commodities are rising and people are pouring money into them, if that's not a shoeshine-boy signal then I don't know what is. At least I'm not leveraged and it's only my pension I'm risking.

Is there anything in any ISA that is safe, and allowable in the long term? by safe I mean the capital will not fall in value.

What I do is transfer from one fund to another within the ISA, using the same provider. This keeps it still in the ISA wrapper, you're not usually charged for this either. I used to transfer between a Gilts ISA and FTSE tracker, whenever I thought the FTSE had peaked transfer it into the gilts, wait for the ftse to drop then pile back in, but currently (I think)Gilts are overpriced. Your ISA provider will have a number of other funds, however none are really guaranteed to keep your gains safe, but some are less risky than others (with a lower return as well).

Yep. You could even argue it's a self perpetuating circle, as commodity prices rise, less are eventually demanded and the price has to come down. The hardest part is picking when or at what level or what event is large enough to start the fall. I put a chunk of my ISA back into the FTSE a few weeks ago, but I'm very nervous about it being there.

I've given up trying to fathom out how the prices work. It seems to defy all logic. The commodities boom explains some part of it, however any sort of economic downturn does not appear to have been priced in, so at some point they have to drop off a cliff.

In quite a lot of retail parks you find both a PC world and a Curry's, sometime even next door to each other. A lot of the Curry's floor space is given over to computers and other things in PC world. In some ways I've always thought it's extremely bad planning for one part of a group to sell similar things to the shop next door that's owned by the same group, but on the other hand to a shopper who doesn't know they're connected, they think they're comparing prices by visiting 2 stores when in fact they're not. Rationalisng and combining the stores seems sensible, but they should have done it years ago. High street retail of white goods is going to continue it's decline because of the internet, it's an unstoppable trend, like travel agent's. P.s. I also remember Rumbelow's.

It's the term "Average" salary form the GMB I don't like. Because of the minimum wage, the lowest full time wage is about 11,500 the highest is unlimited. If average means mean then it's not surprising it's so high. A few people earning 100,000 a year skews it upwards. As you say I think it's a union way of trying to push wage levels up. The other problem of using average wages is that it's an average of all ages wages. The older you are the more experienced and the higher wage you'll earn (up to a point then you're on the scrapheap). The important thing to look at is first time buyer salary's. These would be in there mid 20's and not earning anything near the average or mode salary. I doubt there's many first time buyers in yorkshire earning 31,000 a year. To get back to the thread title. A sensible price for an average house would not (In my opinion) be 4 x joint income. There's no fallback against redundancy, pregnancy, illness etc. You would expect about 2 out of every 10 households with a 4 x joint mortgage to suffer payment problems at some point, this isn't sustainable. If banks and building societies are still lending at these levels, then they're in for much bigger losses over the next few years.

Bradford and Bingley. Can't get any of the others though. Do I still get my £10?

Nothing to do with speculation, liar loans, bank profiteering, poor financial controls and the saturation of the market with cheap credit then.

2 or 3 bedroomed houses can be bought for just less than £ 100,000 in some northern towns. This is true. What is completely wrong is using a NATIONAL average wage to express it's affordability. The average wage for these areas for someone looking to buy their first house is only just over minimum wage in a lot of cases. Even if you work on a figure of £25,000 for joint income, it only just becomes affordable. How are they supposed to save a deposit? What happens when they have children and the income drops to say at the most £15,000. From the net income of about £1000 a month they will have to spend about £600 on their mortgage payment. How is that affordable? Living in a house worth 185k doesn't not mean the mortgage is 160k, most would have bought years ago. In southern Oxfordshire towns, 2 bedroom houses are valued at this amount at the momemt. For 2 people to get a mortgage they would need 18.5k deposit, plus about 5k in legal fees. The payments on a 166,500 mortgage would be about £1,100 a month. The joint income would have to be over £40,000 to even qualify for a mortgage. £20,000 a year jobs in that area are common, but that's about £30,000 net income, or £ 2500 a month. The mortgage is 40% of income, is this affordable? How are they supposed to have saved the deposit. What happens when they have children? A maximum affordable level for a house bought by 2 people is about 2.5 times joint income plus deposit. Anything above this puts too much pressure on both parents to work all the time and makes the mortgage too large a liability if one of them is unable to work. this would make the house up north about £68,000 and down south £ 111,000.

Unfortunately, this story is repeated in many towns and estates throughout the country. I imagine things will get worse over the coming years when unemployment picks up. We seem to be creating a generation of hooligan's. I've said it before, but the real problem we face with these is in about 10-15 years time, when the offspring of the current chav's are teenagers. Unfortunately nothing appears to have been said in the draft queen's speech about dealing with this problem, and in fact the housing measures announced will only make the problem worse by bringing it out of no-go estates and onto everyone's doorstep.

In a few years the current owners of new builds will be moaning that a Housing association have bought the house next door and filled it full of chavs. We'll also get the situation that one house is rented at 250 per month off a housing association whereas next door has a 900 per month mortgage. Hopefully it'll return to bite them before the next general election.

I've corrected it know. Thanks. Do you think they'll target buying houses due to be repossessed. Like a government sponsored BMV company?

See link here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7400424.stm 3 rd point down. It's a £200mn fund to buy up unsold houses for allocation as social housing. That's about 2,000 houses @ 100,000 ea. B*ll*cks. It's a set back, but crash is not off. edit: can't add up. second edit: it's only 2,000.