Beautiful Ft Article Today

[rjw8652]

Marina,

"The BBC used to be mildly left wing - not any longer"

HA HA!! Hilarious.

Are you kidding? What drugs are you on?

For the past 25 years or more, the BBC has been far away and over the hills on the extreme left wing! There is no debate or doubt about this. The BBC stopped being an impartial purveyor of news a long long time ago.

John

[IPOD]

The people I know who are still adding BTL's to their 'portfolio' reckon that because they are 'in it for the long haul' then any immediate softening of prices will be reversed over the next 10 years, when they then expect to be financially independant as a result of their gain.

Q. What's the definition of a long-term investment?

A. A short-term investment gone wrong.

If they are all thinking this way, then maybe this will prevent the crash.

How does a load of BTLers holding onto negative-cashflow investments prevent a crash exactly? Surely it does exactly the opposite?

HA HA!! Hilarious.

Are you kidding? What drugs are you on?

For the past 25 years or more, the BBC has been far away and over the hills on the extreme left wing!

You need to get out more. If you think the BBC are left wing, check out these guys:

http://www.rcpbml.org.uk/4thcon.htm

The political spectrum is far broader than you seem to realise.

[foxytrader]

The people I know who are still adding BTL's to their 'portfolio' reckon that because they are 'in it for the long haul' then any immediate softening of prices will be reversed over the next 10 years, when they then expect to be financially independant as a result of their gain.

If they are all thinking this way, then maybe this will prevent the crash.

Based on tis thinking, the only catalyst I can think of to cause panic selling of BTL's is either increase in interest rates, or reduction in rental yeilds. Having said that, it still only accounts for 6% of the market.

(Although what percentage of the housing stock does first time buyer property represent?)

This does make a modicum of sense except that presumably they are MEWing to purchase the new BTLs. In which case they are borrowing the whole price. If yields (according to ARLA) are below 5% on average throughout the UK then a "softening of prices" (nice! did they call it that?) could mean that the yield is actually in excess of the debt servicing costs. At the moment it would be like undertaking to buy oil at $80 (the highest historical price) for the next few years when the market is currently at below $60. They MIGHT be right but their upside is dreadfully limited. In order to offset the risk I would be expecting an upside of at least 100% after costs. Why not just trade CFDs on margin if you like that sort of risk?

Why would you hold on to a BTL that you bought off-plan for £180k, is now worth 150k and has no tenants? Assuming you have borrowed £150k then it is costing you £7.5k in mortgage per annum. If you anticipate a "softening of prices" (still love that) to say £130k (13.33% fall - soft enough?) over the next 2 years then the investor will lose £15k in addition to a further £20k capital cost which may or may not be regained over the subsequent 8 years. In order for the whole exercise to be profitable the price of that BTL will then need to recover not just to £180k but to £195k or 50% increase!!! Just to break even.

Think those BTLs will be being sold off as if they had the plague.

[Johnny]

Heres a link to the full article

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/e3955194-6a5f-11d...00779e2340.html

Its on the news blog now .......

Edited December 12, 2005 by Johnny

[Guest]

None of them are going to make it through this crash because this is going to be the biggest and best ever.

Can I get front row seats?

The market drivers - the nutcases that are still buying new build 2 bed flats to rent at a loss - well I guess you would need bearish articles in the Mail and Express to catch them.

Hey that's my Dad you're talking about again, Marina!!!! And how did you know he reads the Mail???

Because the BBC is based in London (did some of them move to Manchester recently?

Not until 2010, I believe. However they'd better get a bridging loan to move up here right now -- wouldn't want to miss the boat now, would we, BBC People?

For the past 25 years or more, the BBC has been far away and over the hills on the extreme left wing! There is no debate or doubt about this. The BBC stopped being an impartial purveyor of news a long long time ago.

John

The Tories would privatise the BBC and so would I. *

Their impartiality claims are a joke for the simple reason that you don't bit the hand that feeds you. Who feeds the BBC? (The home-owning public) And (Not the Tories).

The most amusing Newsnight I recall was a few years ago, when JP was interviewing a guy from Microsoft UK, at a time when Microsoft got into controversy because they (allegedly) wanted to cut some deals with PC suppliers so that Windows went onto every PC sold. Obviously, Paxman was forwarding the "Isn't this rather anti-competitive?" line. IMO the chap from Microsoft did very well to refrain from pointing out the absolutely bleeding obvious.

Other than that, Jezzer is usually great, and cuts New Labour no slack whatsoever. JP vs Hazel-won't-answer-the-question-Blears is a classic clip.

* EDIT - I am not implying that privatisation would make the BBC impartial. It wouldn't. But at least we wouldn't be paying a yearly tax, and consumers would have choice.

Edited December 12, 2005 by megaflop

[London Landlady]

See page 23 of today's FT (= top of page 3 of the Companies section) - sorry I can't post the article, I'm not a subscriber, maybe someone else can help?

It's the most bearish comment on property I've read in the FT to date.

____________________________________________________________________________

ASTRONOMIC HOUSE PRICE RISES WILL FALL WITH A BUMP (Jim Pickard - Property)

"The sun is shining once again upon the UK residential property market. That is, if you believe the headlines of recent weeks.........

Casual observers could be forgiven for feeling confused by the monthly release of data that are often contradictory and volatile. But property values are about the same in real terms as they were a year ago.......

Why, then, the optimistic headlines? Partly it is to do with cherry-picking. The great thing about numbers is that you can use the ones you like and ignore the others.

So, when Savills hosted a recent press breakfast to put forward its forecasts, it predicted UK prices would fall in real terms over the next two years.

What made the headlines the next day? It was the line that Savills expected 5% growth in London next year.

BLISSFUL IGNORANCE

It is a curious fact that people are often unaware they are in a market slump until they are up to their necks in it. Remember the optimists who continued to buy dotcom stocks after they had halved in value en route to steeper falls?

If you go back through the press coverage of the last big slump it is hugely instructive in understanding the psychology of the time......"

Jim Pickard ..... are you on this forum?

I haven't seen the article - but are Savills really predicting 5% rise in London next year? That is very encouraging - I did not expect to see London rises until 2007.

[BuyingBear]

Err - don't you remember the Hutton incident when the Gov got rid of BBC staff and replaced them with Alistair's Yes-Men?

The BBC have been infiltrated. A coup has occurred and they are now the voice of NUlab: the cabinet that lied through their back teeth to get us into the war.

The placemen were put in office way before Hutton, in fact that was a fine peice of internecine warfare, the toadies wouldn't play ball when it came to Iraq, Gavin Davies resigned but was always a Nu Labour lackey, and still is, his wife still works for Gordon. Dyke donated copious amounts to Nu Labour to buy this job, though I admit it's quite funny when they fell out. To your average Beeb employee his departure is right up there with the exile of the Dalai Lama.

There is a revolving door between the Beeb and this government, Martin Sixsmith is an excellent example and his godawful book perfectly surmises the level of intelect of your average press secretary, special adviser or BBC reporter. Thank god for ex-Beeb boss Lord Birt now working for Blair on "blue skies thinking", without him we would have dark smoke sullen skies.

Just the other day there was an interview with a head of a local health authority, he was an ex-Beeb reporter too, it's reporters interviewing reporters, or ex-reporters in this case. But of course, reporters have a top class of "experts" to call upon, Sky's "disasters expert" was on yesterday and he described the predicament - "the problem is that petrol is highly combustible, this is the critical element of the fire", I demand we have uncombustible fuel right now, anything else is just not safe, think of the children!

This is the depth of reasoning we're dealing with people, the press cannot understand anything that isn't spoon fed to them on a press release in large type, don't even expect a basic grap of economics, as soon as numbers are mentioned their eyes glaze over.

To your average journalist they believe a 5% increase in your average wage is good because it's a bigger number than a 2% increase in house prices, not realising that 2% of £180k is x3 greater than the 5% on £25k, hence stupid headlines like "increased affordability as wages outpace house price growth", "FTB'ers urged to take advantage of increase affordability instead of trying to be clever"

Investigative reporting is dead, they should just rename 'journalism' as 'entertainment' and be done with it.

Edited December 12, 2005 by BuyingBear

[Mushroom]

Investigative reporting is dead, they should just rename 'journalism' as 'entertainment' and be done with it.

No, propaganda. Of course there is the fact that most folks select their information sources to reinforce their own beliefs and attitudes. A criticism sometimes levelled at HPCers!

I've mentioned it here before and although written from a very left perspective it's worth looking at.

"One Dimensional Man" by Herbet Marcuse.

[Freelance Mycophagist]

Anyone want to post the full article? (please)

[The Masked Tulip]

Yes, the full article would be nice.