Is It Time To Admit We Are Just Plain Wrong.

[Hullabaloo82]

I completely concur it will require versatility. However, leveraging up, borrowing loads and generally consigning yourself to being worried about paying it back in an era of highly crappy employment opportunities is surely going the wrong way about that?

To tell you the truth I'm fairly upbeat about my own personal job prospects but then I have a great degree, speak two foreign languages and have a highly prized professional qualification which I'm already looking to augment.

But yes, if you're at the unskilled end of the spectrum then times are getting harder. Trick is not to be at that end of the spectrum.

[Rigged]

To tell you the truth I'm fairly upbeat about my own personal job prospects but then I have a great degree, speak two foreign languages and have a highly prized professional qualification which I'm already looking to augment.

But yes, if you're at the unskilled end of the spectrum then times are getting harder. Trick is not to be at that end of the spectrum.

So why you on here with us bunch of losers?

Seems as if you've come on here to gloat that you've got a mortgage.

[Neverwhere]

So why you on here with us bunch of losers?...

For reassurance.

[Bland Unsight]

But yes, if you're at the unskilled end of the spectrum then times are getting harder. Trick is not to be at that end of the spectrum.

Great news that you're alright. Every man is an island, eh?

[Frugal Git]

To tell you the truth I'm fairly upbeat about my own personal job prospects but then I have a great degree, speak two foreign languages and have a highly prized professional qualification which I'm already looking to augment.

But yes, if you're at the unskilled end of the spectrum then times are getting harder. Trick is not to be at that end of the spectrum.

Well done. I also speak 10 foreign languages, have a 'top degree' (that imho is nothing more than a stupid piece of paper), a ludicrously pointless variety of skills and funnily enough none of those things makes me feel like borrowing a shit load of money.

[Frugal Git]

.

All those skills and i still duplicate posts. Sorry!

Edited June 7, 2016 by Frugal Git

[Bruce Banner]

To tell you the truth I'm fairly upbeat about my own personal job prospects but then I have a great degree, speak two foreign languages and have a highly prized professional qualification which I'm already looking to augment.

But yes, if you're at the unskilled end of the spectrum then times are getting harder. Trick is not to be at that end of the spectrum.

MRICS?

[Frugal Git]

MRICS?

Haha! Superb.

[Bland Unsight]

MRICS?

He can say "Innit" in three languages.

[Frugal Git]

He can say "Innit" in three languages.

I'm also wondering what sort of 'augmentation' is planned for this highly prized professional qualification.

'Polyglot porn star requires p*nis extension'?

Pen1s censored? Really??

Edited June 7, 2016 by Frugal Git

[Kiwi Toast]

Many people worry that the government will extend it's extreme measures to keep prices high. This is of course a worry, but over the last few years there has definitely been a growing realisation that high and rising house prices are bad. I think enough people now realise this to reverse the old assumption that HPI was a vote winner and HPC would be political death. The stumbling block is the lack of shared understanding of how to tackle high prices. I reckon there are millions of people who think help to buy really helps buyers, for instance. It is this which prevents a serious and sensible political response. If everyone who is priced out, or stuck in a small house and want more space for children, or owns but has children who can't afford to buy or leave home or will be priced out in future, or who is doing well financially but worries that the country is doomed... (a clear majority of the electorate surely?) knew the causes of the bubble and could organise then politicians would be forced to hurry a crash in order to save their careers. For a long term solution to housing issues in this country the truth needs to be spread to counter the HPI policy propaganda.

[Frugal Git]

Many people worry that the government will extend it's extreme measures to keep prices high. This is of course a worry, but over the last few years there has definitely been a growing realisation that high and rising house prices are bad. I think enough people now realise this to reverse the old assumption that HPI was a vote winner and HPC would be political death. The stumbling block is the lack of shared understanding of how to tackle high prices. I reckon there are millions of people who think help to buy really helps buyers, for instance. It is this which prevents a serious and sensible political response. If everyone who is priced out, or stuck in a small house and want more space for children, or owns but has children who can't afford to buy or leave home or will be priced out in future, or who is doing well financially but worries that the country is doomed... (a clear majority of the electorate surely?) knew the causes of the bubble and could organise then politicians would be forced to hurry a crash in order to save their careers. For a long term solution to housing issues in this country the truth needs to be spread to counter the HPI policy propaganda.

Exactly. As Lloyd Blankfein would say, we're doing god's work.

And to think, all that's required is a coordinated refusal on the part of every first time buyer to borrow money, and perhaps a threatened rent strike just for shits and giggles to ward off the borrow to letters from further housing hoovering.

Market crashes by the beginning of september.

Edited June 7, 2016 by Frugal Git

[Bland Unsight]

By the way, I'm still waiting for you to demonstrate causality between credit and prices:

My take on things is that when one is battering obvious trolls an adversarial style is sometimes effective against some kinds of trolls. However, I presently believe that observation has no relevance here except to explain why I am not going to bite on the context you are offering wherein I have made a claim on my own initiative about a causal link between credit and prices, and you have demanded that I give you chapter and verse and that therefore I must give you chapter and verse or allow that I have been bested.

My approach to posting is, I hope, inspired by the best of the forum at its best. It's a conversation about the world as we discover it. We aren't making the world. We aren't the guys and girls at the LIGO experiment pushing back the boundary of human knowledge. We are just people with a shared interest in UK property.

My present central interest is in why rates of owner-occupation are so markedly lower in younger cohorts. The survey evidence does not support the idea that it is a desire to rent rather than own and my anecdotal experience corroborates the survey evidence. Hence favouring a slavish devotion to empiricism broadly captured by the falsificationism to which you've alluded, I look for other explanations.

Fortunately for me certain no-marks like Raghuram G. Rajan and Michael Burry have had a looked at this problem before I knew it existed and have concluded that if it ain't earnings, it's credit.

Personally favouring the inference to best explanation model, I am at that point cool with things till a better model comes along.

When you come along and tell me that maybe it's not credit, and I ask you "OK, what it is?" and you say, "I don't know, but let's use our imaginations and postulate that it might be something else, even if we have no idea what it is" then I consider the question of when best to get off the bus, press the little red button and smile as the Bus Stopping sign lights up.

You didn't read what I wrote. I believe that credit leads the dance, but when I made a claim as to what was "indisputable" I said that the link between real estate prices and credit was indisputable.

I bloody love this forum. I love having the chance to shoot the shit with smart knowledgeable people about this mess, and mess it is. I don't claim to know what caused it with certainty, I have my perspective and I argue it with a grim, unforgivable monotony. However, security of tenure is shit for UK renters, housing costs are mental and getting higher. I post here because I think all these things matter, to me and to the people to whom I am connected.

I sincerely hope you can wind my clock, because then I will have learned something. I come here not just to talk, but also to listen and learn.

Edited June 7, 2016 by Ghost Bird

[SpectrumFX]

Seeing as we seem to be going off on a bit of a philosophical, literary tangent, can I suggest that some of you might like to pick up a copy of Leon festinger's 'When Prophecy Fails'? The reaction of some hpcers to the cognitive dissonance of soaring Hpi is quite a good illustration of some of his ideas.

Those of you of a less high brow bent might like to consider Clay Davies' 'rainmaker' in 'The Wire'. Lots of rainmakers here on hpc, only difference is most of them don't know they are one.

If there's one book that underpins the HPC philosophy it's Charles Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Wordsworth-Reference/dp/1853263494

It used to get talked about quite a lot on the forum, but i haven't seen it referenced for a while.

On the wider point, sometimes being right isn't really helpful as you end up with an insight into macro stuff that's ******ing you over, over which you have no control which just leaves you frustrated.

Newton spotted the south sea bubble for what it was, and got out early, but it went on for so long and so many of his friends and associates were making so much from the bubble that he bought back in right at the top. It's our very failings that get us suckered into these bubbles, that are the main cause of them.

This market will fall and the bubble will pop when the last bear turns bull. I expect a complete collapse about 3 months after this site gets closer down from lack of interest because everybody's given up

It's probably time to bump the K Winter thread again.

Edited June 8, 2016 by SpectrumFX

[stuckmojo]

In answer to the OP: I did all three things:

- Left the UK

- Bought a house (in the UK)

- lot of debt.

my logic was that only by leaving could I earn enough for the monies needed for a basic 3 bed terrace house in the North East of England without committing seppoku with debt.

2 years in Singapore and 1 year in Dubai later I can say it worked out, but the strain on my family and marriage has been tough.

Now I look at coming back to the UK within a year and frankly don't give a flying ****** about how much my house will lose in perceive value when the crash comes. I am still hoping for/expecting a massive crash. There's nothing else to prop up the bubble.

Stay strong. Be inventive.

[TheCountOfNowhere]

Only thing we were right on is it is morally repugnant what's happened.

that's 100% certain

[TheCountOfNowhere]

Don't agree. HpC is in general absolutely spot on. What could not (reasonably) have been foreseen was the disgusting and unprecedented intervention by governments worldwide.

The end of the road is coming. The ultimate HpC idea remains correct.

Some people say it...the VI bulls mainly

They were sadly right.

[TheCountOfNowhere]

What happened in the hour between you saying a crash will definitely happen and making this thread?

Well...A crash will definitely happen, that is for sure.

But the long term bulls were wrong not piling in in 2009, myself included. However, when the collapse happened and the LR was at 2004 prices it was impossible to find anyone to sell a decent home to you at the price.

Even when the correction comes it wont go back to 2000 prices now.

[SpectrumFX]

Well...A crash will definitely happen, that is for sure.

But the long term bulls were wrong not piling in in 2009, myself included. However, when the collapse happened and the LR was at 2004 prices it was impossible to find anyone to sell a decent home to you at the price.

Even when the correction comes it wont go back to 2000 prices now.

It is clearly a new paradigm

[TheCountOfNowhere]

Jesus, no need to give up now when the crash is on in London and there's a bear market stretching out years ahead!

I've not given up...I just think the last bears were wrong not to buy in 2009, so man y of the bears that did fully expected the falls to continue...they were wrong too

The craziness has gone on longer than anyone could have imagined.

We should all of course have sold 6 months ago and rented again though :lol;

Edited June 8, 2016 by TheCountOfNowhere

[Guest]

All bubbles burst eventually. We need a major event to occur to limit lending.

China

Brexit

EU Crisis

Black Swan Event

I don't really care what it is but I hope it happens soon. Too many people are taking out massive mortgages over ridiculous time scales and only looking at the affordability of the initial repayment.

Or could just be dropping values caused by lack of demand from BTL. Small drops quickly become big drops.

[Fully Detached]

MRICS?

[nome]

I think we clearly have to accept that we are an anachronism in this brave new world..., living within your means and being a net saver has no place in modern society, it's now all about borrowing and spending as much as possible.

I grew up in a time when it was considered shameful and embarrassing if anyone bought anything 'on tick'... these people were regarded as being feckless, financially incompetent and living beyond their means.

Now you're considered to be the local oddball if you aren't mortgaged up to the hilt, driving a brand new car on a pcp deal, having exotic holidays paid for with loans and paying everyday bills on credit cards.

[Bunfight]

I think we clearly have to accept that we are an anachronism in this brave new world..., living within your means and being a net saver has no place in modern society, it's now all about borrowing and spending as much as possible.

I grew up in a time when it was considered shameful and embarrassing if anyone bought anything 'on tick'... these people were regarded as being feckless, financially incompetent and living beyond their means.

Now you're considered to be the local oddball if you aren't mortgaged up to the hilt, driving a brand new car on a pcp deal, having exotic holidays paid for with loans and paying everyday bills on credit cards.

I was explaining this to someone of 25 the other day and they looked at me like a dog being shown a card trick. How times have changed!

In my corner of the North East prices are coming down and there are loads of kite flyers. North Sea / Tata and public sector slashing is all like an anchor that will slowly sink the house price ship.

I was looking at the council house next door to where I grew up on right move - 50k. The world has gone bat shit crazy, it cannot continue.

[Barnsey]

Must admit my HPC faith has been well and truly tested in the past 3 months or so. I really thought last August was a turning point with the China shockwaves but things have been propped up since. However, articles show up quite regularly on Bloomberg which reveal the ridiculous situation there, and I really do believe that will be our 2008 event. After all, we're coming up to our 10 year cycle soon, this surely is the calm before the sh** storm.

Remember, much of the rapid recovery in PCL since the market bottomed out in 2009/10 was from intense emerging market investment, which is now on it's knees. Who'll prop it up and invest this time round, the USA?

Mix this in with prices now peaking (with some residual increases on the outskirts due to the delayed "looking for affordability" ripple effect and heavy distortions due to chronic lack of supply), the BTL tax changes being phased in, possiblity of Brexit (unlikely?), Greece Summer riots to resume, Italy/Spain banking crisis, financial jobs being cut all round, rates with nowhere to go, U.S -> auto sub prime crisis looming/Trump/distorted jobs figures/the poor middle/renewed tensions with China, Oil price volatility, Brazil/Venezuela, a bit of basil and a sprinkle of salt and Voilà! A lovely warm recessionary quiche to force down the mouths of the global poor.

The point is, there's very VERY little positive sentiment in the World right now, much of the good news is from "consumer spending" driven by loose lending (again) and HPI also driven by lending "loosening", "not as bad as previously thought" financial revisions followed by "worse than predicted" results, everything not so good. Sound familiar? Do we really have such short memories? We have zero tools to use when it hits this time round, and history tells us it always hits.

I have faith in normality, and remind myself that my rent after 5 years in prime zone 3 London has gone up by just £50 a month whereas HPI doubled, much of the flats around me being bought by "emerging market" participants and BTL.

I'm learning to relax a bit, not save so hard, enjoy life a little more whilst I'm able. Friend of my better half saved hard for 10 years, skipping life's pleasures and travelling, to then sadly pass away just a year after moving into their "overpriced but market average" home. Not their dream home might I add due to insanely unfair market forces.

Yes I want a cheap(er) house, but If we have to wait a little longer then so be it, only ones buying I know right now are inheritance or BOMAD, everyone else has pretty much given up. Similar stories now daily in MSM, it's happening, we've peaked, have patience, life can go on when renting. Committing yourself now when there's such a dark shadow over the World might be a little unwise.

You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt. – Daniel Hannan

Edited June 8, 2016 by Barnsey