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Again, along with the near miss (or hit, depending on your stance), another one of Gordie's genius ideas is blowing up the UK again. Paying out tax credits to EU nationals has drawn in 10% of East Europe workforce, paying them a huge salary to hand wash cars, etc etc. Forcing up costs for the low paid natives, putting them out of jobs etc etc. All down to that cretin Brown. Seriously, he's been out of power ~6 years and his 'great idea's' are still flying back to coup and dumping on the UK. There's a BBC article on Camerons attempt to winkle out of the benefit payments: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35118036 Its always interesting to read the highest rated comments on HYS articles -they tend to be a good indication of what the nation is thinking. A few years ago, 'UK out of EU' was a fringe opinion held by Colonels from Tunbridge Wells. Now it appears to be the UK mainstream opinion, both left + right. My opinion is they should scrap TCs ASAP. Introduce a contribution based welfare system like the rest of the EU.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why-brits-are-buying-holiday-homes-again-on-the-costa-del-sol-fvcrdwz9v anyone got a subscription to the full article?

I have been doing a lot of research about maintaining EU citizenship after Brexit and found Portugal to be perfect. - Getting a five year residency in Portugal is as easy as turning up to a local town hall with a passport and national insurance card called a NIR (easy to get also). - You do not have to stay in Portugal for five years. I am trying to find the exact requirements but I think you only have to be in the country for only 6 months out of every 30. - After 5 years you apply for permanent residency. - After on more year (year 6) you can apply for citizenship and become an EU cittizen again Notes... Portugal and UK has a double tax agreement and its possible to run a UK company, live in Portugal and only pay tax in the UK ( or just choose PT). You will get health cover either way. Portugal allows dual citizenship, Spain for instance doesn't. If you are going to make a move then the Brexit clock is ticking. Could be much harder after March 2019. I am about to start process so will report back. Please don't take the above as gospel, there is a lot of misinformation on the subject, do you own research etc!

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-applies-to-join-huge-pacific-free-trade-area-cptpp Press release UK applies to join huge Pacific free trade area CPTPP The UK is formally applying to join one of the world’s largest free-trade areas, deepening trade ties with some of the fastest-growing markets in the world International Trade Secretary Liz Truss will speak to ministers in Japan and New Zealand on Monday morning (1 February 2021) to request to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), with formal negotiations set to start this year. The announcement comes as the UK today celebrates one year since leaving the EU and becoming an independent trading nation. Joining the CPTPP would deepen the UK’s access to fast-growing markets and major economies, including Mexico, Malaysia and Vietnam, for the benefit of UK business. Joining the £9 trillion partnership will cut tariffs for UK industries including food and drink, and cars, while also creating new opportunities for modern industries like tech and services, ultimately supporting and creating high-value jobs across the UK. Unlike EU membership, joining does not require the UK to cede control over our laws, borders, or money. UK trade with the group was worth £111 billion in 2019, growing by 8% a year since 2016. Benefits that CPTPP membership will bring for businesses include: Modern digital trade rules that allow data to flow freely between members, remove unnecessary barriers for businesses, and protect commercial source code and encryption. Eliminating tariffs quicker on UK exports including whisky (down from 165% to 0% in Malaysia) and cars (reducing to 0% in Canada by 2022, two years earlier than through the UK-Canada trade deal). Rules of Origin that allow content from any country within CPTPP to count as ‘originating’. For example, this would mean that cars made in the UK could use more Japanese-originating car parts, such as batteries. Easier travel for businesspeople between CPTPP countries, such as the potential for faster and cheaper visas. The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson said “One year after our departure from the EU we are forging new partnerships that will bring enormous economic benefits for the people of Britain. “Applying to be the first new country to join the CPTPP demonstrates our ambition to do business on the best terms with our friends and partners all over the world and be an enthusiastic champion of global free trade.”

Hi I noticed that there seems to be a mini surge in asking prices in the last few months, despite the uncertainty of Brexit having he potential of sending Northern Ireland back to the stone ages in terms of economic prosperity. we also have reports from PWC saying 4% growth per year in house prices https://www.insidermedia.com/insider/ireland/northern-irish-house-prices-to-enjoy-strongest-growth-pwc with one breath, and with the other releasing news reports that lead the sane of us to question how there can be any reason why the housing market cannot be falling apart https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/northern-ireland-economy-to-have-worst-economic-growth-across-uk-in-2019-36721730.html I constantly hear references to 2007 prices and that we are approaching the pre bust level as if its a good thing, are people insane??? this has lead to almost a lost decade of people in their 30's renting or given up on family life and indeed northern Ireland and moved off to pastures new to fart about Australia etc . I have a feeling that we have been here before, estate agents filled with self importance despite not being able to tie their own shoe laces but feel they are fully qualified to hand out illegal advice such as 'prices can only go up' and 'you cannot loose money ' which I have been told several times yet this breaks about every FCA rule there is. Have we forgotten that ultimately the economy is still on life support with artificially low interest rates, there are no further tools the government can use to regulate inflation and the knock on effects from various sources may cause interest rates to rise and hard, its difficult to see where brexit can come back to bite but its guaranteed not to be as smooth sailing as we have had the last 11years????? anyways rant over, lol does anyone have an opinion on brexit and house prices?????????????????? I am old enough to have lived through the reality of 2007 economic disasters and feel the same thunder in the air around the economy as I did then, the fundamentals of NI wages vs mortgages do not stack up... be afraid ... what goes up must come down

To all remoaners out there, if you truly want an HPC you have to agree a no deal Brexit is the best way to achieve this. Mark Carnage just had a big meeting with the press confriming that No deal = 33% discount

Will the house prices go down after marhc end(article 50). Thanks

Mark Carney has signalled the Bank of Englandwould be prepared to cut interest rates – or freeze plans to increase them – in order to support jobs and economic growth should Britain be plunged into a disorderly Brexit. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/may/24/bank-england-ready-act-uk-faces-disorderly-brexit-mark-carney-says

When the government has completed it's negotiations for leaving the European Union, do you want a referendum on the final deal.

All banks in the clear, seemingly very comfortable this time around, BTL not so much... "Today’s stress tests also found that buy-to-let mortgages would suffer the bulk of the losses if there was a financial crisis. Loans to owner-occupiers would be much more modest. In other words, families would keep paying off their mortgages even if the economy went into recession, but some buy-to-let lenders might struggle to meet their obligations." https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2017/nov/28/bank-of-england-stress-tests-financial-stability-released-live Carney's narrative is that the banks will survive a disorderly Brexit, and worst case house prices will fall 33% PROVIDING nothing else accelerates the downturn

Hello all I am new to this valuable and hope you can share your thoughts. My partner and I have managed to save up about £50k which should be enough to cover deposit and costs for the purchase of our first home. The question is whether to buy now or wait? We are renting at the moment in a nice but smallish 3 bed semi and would like to buy something along those lines. Prices for such properties are from around £350k - £400k which I feel is very high. Around £300k gets you a mid terrace. Our ideal property would currently have a repayment higher than our rent cost. I am prepared to wait if it makes sense to. I have read a lot on here about BTL changes, rising inflation and possible interest rate increases, Brexit etc...so much going on! So I am confused on what to do. I'd rather not rush and pay over the odds only for prices to drop. Wait or buy now? All thoughts are welcome Thanks

Interested to see what the consensus is on here

Are we all misjudging Theresa's political skills? Here is a scenario: Let's imagine that she is in favour of remain. She achieves leadership of the Tory party by pretending to have changed her spots, however, it is all a clever ruse. She then wins over lots of support by championing Brexit, but then pulls an amazing stunt by calling for an election. Instead of the ostensible reason for the election, i.e. having an increased majority, she actually intends to totally **** up the whole process, and end up in coalition? To this end, she writes the most unpopular manifesto, comes up with a way of taking the housing wealth from her core voters, aims to introduce grammar schools, and even steals food from school children. Not content with a manifesto that is designed to wind up her supporters, she then makes a total hash of public appearances, and then refuses, in a cowardly way, to debate with the other party leaders. This way she enters a Lib-Dem coalition, and Brexit is averted, and better still it isn't even her fault. It isn't as if there is any precedent for a Tory leader calling for a public vote and then finding they don't get the result they 'wanted'. How could she have known? Well played Mrs May. ---- Someone remind me about Occam's razor... is it that the simplest explanation, that fits all the available facts, is probably correct? Optobear

This article in Bloomberg today looks interesting as an option for retaining partial trade links to Europe after leaving the EU. What are the HPC views on this? Brexit Backers Urge May to Study Rejoining Europe Trade Body https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-07/brexit-backers-urge-may-to-examine-rejoining-european-trade-body

Oh dear, looks like the Guardian are having a few difficulties 'processing' reality. They seem perplexed that the economy didn't just collapse in a heap the moment Brexit won the referendum, as they and other 'liberal progressive' types had assured us (and each other) it would: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/05/why-uk-economy-defied-predictions-doom-brexit-vote The notion that maybe there were valid economic reasons in favour of Brexit has of course, completely escaped their politically correct, SJW collective heads. Nope, Brexit was a disaster and anyone who was in favour of it could only have been so for Racist/ Xenopobic/ Uneducated/ deluded reasons. So it's a real headscratcher why the sky hasn't fallen. Don't worry Guardian, there will be an economic crash sooner rather than later and you can blame it on Brexit whenever it happens.

I am inclined to believe that the madness of spending money is going to be the debt-laden doom of us all. If we're so impetuous to purchase homes, what happens to us when we cannot afford to reside within the country we were born in? https://www.ft.com/content/c061e51a-c8f5-11e6-9043-7e34c07b46ef - Consumer spending rises but savings fall to low levels.

It was September last year, on a US visit and watching Trump speaking as a candidate for the first time, that it became a certainty to me that he (or at least that thing on his head) would win the race for US President 2016. Trump will win for one single reason alone: A BREXIT-like "stick it to the establishment"-attitude of the disenchanted. For those of you, who have doubts, read the following, which was written by no one less than Michael Moore: 5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/ What will Trump's election do for house prices? I think the impact could be negative and massive. Trump has recently uttered statements ranging from a conditionality of the NATO treaty (depending on financial contributions) to the questioning of the US's membership with and adherence to the WTO. Other statements included threats of additional trade tariffs for countries from Mexico to China. Election of Trump will be unexpected (like BREXIT) and add great economic uncertainty to what is a pretty uncertain state of the world already. I cannot see how Britain or Europe will benefit from Trump's isolationist policies if/when he will start putting them into practice. This uncertainty and the economic fallout for export orientied industries with a focus on the US could be massive, and - no doubt - will not be a positive for house prices. As for the US, most citizens are so used to cheap tat from China - be it iPhones or the $1 shelves at Target and Walmart - that they will experience a huge wake-up call if trading with China should get rocky. Indeed, this will be an inflationary shock and not pretty, but it will be the kind of inflation that will not help asset prices.

Received an invitation from a local EA inviting me to join a roundtable discussion entitled 'Lets talk property and Brexit'. Blurb..... In the wake of Britain’s decision to leave the EU, many of us are left wondering, “What will Brexit mean for me and my property or, indeed, properties?” While no one can answer this question with absolute certainty, we can take our concerns to the experts. Join the audience of our round table, with experts from the world of estate agency, lettings, finance and tax, and commercial property. We’ll explore the impact and opportunity for property – and what you should be considering – when Teresa May triggers Article 50 before the end of March 2017. Anyone here have any suggestions for questions for the panel?

Merits its own thread IMO BBC front page news - so is this supposed to be more negative news about Brexit?

Back onto house prices instead of politics or racism! List what you have seen and see if we can start a snowball rolling.....

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9d29a55c-44f1-11e6-b22f-79eb4891c97d.html#axzz4DqLB5br6 Good to know that Goldman Sachs people not only head the ECB, but the tentacles reach all the way into the heart of the commission.

Brexit Blowback - The Panic Will Start With Property http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-05/brexit-blowback-panic-will-start-property

According to the mainstream media half the country have woken up regretting how they voted - it this true?

The People have spoken and there is no doubt that the Banks have eaten us and themselves. Are we looking at the catastrophic falls in house prices as predicted, or is this merely a threat by Project Fear. The Pound is taking a hammering, markets are plunging worldwide and Gold shoots up by 4%. Talk of BOE cutting interest rates to save the pound.

So there's been a massive market crash. Total disaster. Economic carnage. We'll be lucky if the general population makes it through the night in one piece. Is this actually accurate? Hypothesis 1: the British stock market has crashed This is the FTSE index of the top British companies (not that the share price of the top British companies helps me or 99% of the public in any way! But let's just ignore that argument): You can see the quite dramatic losses, which were genuinely dramatic although entirely predictable, because markets are completely irrational casinos and bear no resemblance to anything rational or objective. All those losses have nearly been recouped already. But it goes further than that. This is the FTSE over the last month: I've put a black line in this image just before 17th June. That's the point where it looked likely that remain would happen, and the market went up massively. That's because traders hate uncertainty, because they are essentially betting! All that happened when the FTSE went down is that the increase in the market was eliminated. Even at its lowest point, the FTSE was still higher than on 16th June; now it is significantly higher. I'll come back to the FTSE later. Hypothesis 2: the pound has crashed Let's look at the pound. Sterling did take quite a significant hit. Again, it's arguable how much difference this makes to the average person until they go abroad. However, the extent of this decline was greatly exaggerated, and the media (as usual) failed to put it in any meaningful context. Here is the performance of sterling against the dollar over the last roughly 9 years: You can see that when the global financial markets nearly collapsed in 2008 (of course, nothing has improved since then, in fact the situation is worse now) the pound was absolutely hammered down to the level that it's at now, and even below that. And although this happened over a longer time period, it was a far bigger fall, from about $2.05 to just over $1.30. Since then: Sterling has traded somewhere between $1.35 and $1.70, but for the majority of that time closer to the bottom of that range than the top. This has been quite consistent over a 7-year period. I know about this because I get paid in dollars from some of my clients, so I follow this market very closely. The exchange rate has been around $1.40-1.45 for several months now. Again, the pound only started to go up when it looked likely that remain would happen, reaching around $1.50; still historically much lower than it had been in the past. I think it is true that Brexit led to the biggest single-day fall in the history of sterling, but a lot of that is just wiping out false gains from the previous week, which were based on duff information. Hypothesis 3: global stock markets have crashed I'm going to make this one as simple as possible. Here is the NASDAQ over the last four years: It has doubled in price in just four years. Here is the Japanese Nikkei Index: Same story. Here is the German DAX stock index: Not quite such a strong pattern with the FTSE over the same period, although it has gone up, but here is the performance of the FTSE since the City of London was deregulated around 30 years ago: All of these stock markets are in massive bubbles, caused by unnaturally low interest rates for the best part of a decade. It's taught in mainstream economics that interest rates and the bond market have an inverse relationship; if one goes up, the other goes down. The situation with stocks is more complicated, but the following is generally acknowledged: If interest rates go up, all else being equal, stock prices will go down — because some investors will choose to move their money from stocks to bonds, given that bond yields have become more attractive than they used to be. (And this reduced demand for stocks will cause stock prices to decline.) And conversely, if interest rates go down, all else being equal, stock prices will go up — because some investors will choose to sell their (now lower-yielding) bonds in order to move to stocks. So this is what has been happening for several years now, and that's why we've seen major stock indexes all going upwards almost without exception. All of these markets are in a massive, unsustainable bubble anyway, and sooner or later there will have to be a correction. Sooner or later, interests rates will have to go up, this is being desperately delayed as massive amounts of unchecked credit is the only thing keeping the system going, but when they do go up, God knows when that will be, the stock market will go down. That is guaranteed, as far as I can see. And just to briefly touch on this...low interest rates only benefit speculators and borrowers. Such an environment creates an extremely unhealthy two-tier culture. The fact is that the stock market going down makes virtually no difference to the average person. Some investors will lose money, such is the risk of investing in stocks and shares. Hypothesis 4: the housing market will crash Good! Bring it on! Arguably people with mortgages benefit from a low interest rate environment, but on a deeper level it just encourages people to invest unwisely in housing to 'get on the housing ladder', and leaves the British housing stock extremely vulnerable to foreign investors. This is particularly true of London, where it is almost impossible for anyone under the age of 35 to buy a house if they don't already own one, unless they are given money by their parents. There was actually a story recently which pointed out that if the so-called 'Bank of Mum and Dad' were a mortgage lender, it would be in the top ten in the UK. That is what we have become reliant on. And it's no surprise, particularly in London. (BTW that image only goes up to 2015, house prices have increased further still this year). Wouldn't you say that house prices are due some form of correction? Don't you think it would be a healthier situation if we didn't view houses as investments, but instead as places for people to live? Regardless of whether you agree with this or not, the fact is that house prices cannot go much higher without dropping a little again, as it's becoming impossible for people to get on the bottom rung of the so-called ladder. The only thing keeping the market going now is foreign investment. For example, I live in a flat owned by someone who lives in South Africa, who has never been to the UK! That is perfectly normal now. For the average Briton, a fall in house prices would undoubtedly be a good thing. Investors I have no sympathy for, those relying on equity release to fund their extortionate lifestyles, tough luck, those in negative equity I do feel sorry for, but inevitably housing will rise in value again, as it did after the last crash. So just to summarise: Hypothesis 1: the British stock market has crashed Reality: The British stock market has been in a massive bubble. It's still in a massive bubble, and has almost returned to its peak level. Hypothesis 2: the pound has crashed Reality: The pound has fallen significantly, but has fallen far more in the recent past. The level it is trading at now is only very slightly less than it was trading at just a couple of weeks ago, and all that has been wiped out are gains made when investors thought Britain would vote to remain in the EU. Hypothesis 3: global stock markets have crashed Reality: Global stock markets have been in a massive bubble, largely caused by unnaturally low interest rates, which has helped create a climate of speculation. Global stock markets have fallen somewhat. They are still in a massive bubble. The average person in the street is completely unaffected by this, unless there is a total collapse, which will not be caused by Britain leaving the EU, but by much deeper and more profound systemic problems and corruption. Hypothesis 4: the housing market will crash Reality: Housing is already in a massive bubble, overpriced, and will fall in price in due course regardless of the EU. Although there will be some losers among the general public if this happens, overwhelmingly it will be a positive thing for the society in general, and particularly for the younger generation. Don't hold your breath waiting for the media to tell you any of these things. I'm not an expert on economics, I just did a bit of research to see whether the climate of fear being created by the media is justified. In conclusion...I don't think that it is.