Here's How It Works.

[PropertyGuru]

Seeing as all the bulls have once again f8cked off to a dark corner to wet their pants and cry into their designer lagers, I thought I'd offer up another thread as 'devils advocate'.

People often bang on about 'all we do is sell houses to each other - we don't MAKE anything anymore, the UK economy is FOOKED'.

Maybe well and good, but consider:-

* 90% (ish) of the UK currently ISN'T habitable dwelling space.

* arable land goes for a fe k per acre.

* with houses on it, it goes for a few MILLION per acre.

What we now do in the UK is turn worthless arable land into VERY expensive accomodation, and sell it to foreigners.

It's a real business, in the same way as farming trees and turning them into tables an d then exporting them is 'a real business'.

To all intents and purposes, there is enough worthless land left to convert that no one left alive would live to see the end of it, even if the market didn't crash. 100 years? 150? Plenty of 'raw resource' to sell to dumb russian ganster and idiot lucky US bankers.

Bulls, I've done you a REAL favour. This one's unassailable!

[Without_a_Paddle]

Selling property at high cost to foreigners is already being done in the posh bits of London.

However, I'm not so sure they will want to buy an acre of bogland in the back end of nowhere.

But hey, you are the millionaire businessman so why not set yourself up as an international bog salesman.

It beats French barn conversions or niche websites or slaving as an IT contractor...

Edited July 1, 2007 by Without_a_Paddle

[Guest vicmac64]

Seeing as all the bulls have once again f8cked off to a dark corner to wet their pants and cry into their designer lagers, I thought I'd offer up another thread as 'devils advocate'.

People often bang on about 'all we do is sell houses to each other - we don't MAKE anything anymore, the UK economy is FOOKED'.

Maybe well and good, but consider:-

* 90% (ish) of the UK currently ISN'T habitable dwelling space.

* arable land goes for a fe k per acre.

* with houses on it, it goes for a few MILLION per acre.

What we now do in the UK is turn worthless arable land into VERY expensive accomodation, and sell it to foreigners.

It's a real business, in the same way as farming trees and turning them into tables an d then exporting them is 'a real business'.

To all intents and purposes, there is enough worthless land left to convert that no one left alive would live to see the end of it, even if the market didn't crash. 100 years? 150? Plenty of 'raw resource' to sell to dumb russian ganster and idiot lucky US bankers.

Bulls, I've done you a REAL favour. This one's unassailable!

AHHH but its a GLOBAL slowdown - so unless they're coming from another part of the universe I'd file that idea away!!!

[OnlyMe]

Wait till they want to cash in their chips.

Then the process is entirely negative as they move onto the next big thing. Buying into Baghdad on Thames won't look so attractive then.

[Harry Sacks]

Seeing as all the bulls have once again f8cked off to a dark corner to wet their pants and cry into their designer lagers, I thought I'd offer up another thread as 'devils advocate'.

People often bang on about 'all we do is sell houses to each other - we don't MAKE anything anymore, the UK economy is FOOKED'.

Maybe well and good, but consider:-

* 90% (ish) of the UK currently ISN'T habitable dwelling space.

* arable land goes for a fe k per acre.

* with houses on it, it goes for a few MILLION per acre.

What we now do in the UK is turn worthless arable land into VERY expensive accomodation, and sell it to foreigners.

It's a real business, in the same way as farming trees and turning them into tables an d then exporting them is 'a real business'.

To all intents and purposes, there is enough worthless land left to convert that no one left alive would live to see the end of it, even if the market didn't crash. 100 years? 150? Plenty of 'raw resource' to sell to dumb russian ganster and idiot lucky US bankers.

Bulls, I've done you a REAL favour. This one's unassailable!

You're assuming the "foreigners" will continue to invest here. You can buy a farm in North Ontario for £40K, know what I mean?

[Wad]

What we now do in the UK is turn worthless arable land into VERY expensive accomodation, and sell it to foreigners.

It's a real business, in the same way as farming trees and turning them into tables an d then exporting them is 'a real business'.

To all intents and purposes, there is enough worthless land left to convert that no one left alive would live to see the end of it, even if the market didn't crash. 100 years? 150? Plenty of 'raw resource' to sell to dumb russian ganster and idiot lucky US bankers.

Bulls, I've done you a REAL favour. This one's unassailable!

The farmland is converted to land that can be built upon via the planning process. Only some land is sold to foreigners. The process of apparent wealth creation is the planning process which is a government run monopoly and adds no intrinsic value to the land itself.

The problem with the planning process in the UK is that more and more of the investment made by UK citizens (that could be used to say build businesses that sell products and services) is sucked in to unproductive land/house purchases. The process of investment decision making is more and more skewed to unproductibve investment and is a symptom of national decline that is common to all former empires. Eventually, land prices collapse when there is little or no wealth generating activity left in the economy and the foreigners decide to leave. Usually this happens when the country is invaded (see Ancient Rome for details).

[PropertyGuru]

AHHH but its a GLOBAL slowdown - so unless they're coming from another part of the universe I'd file that idea away!!!

demand for oak tables fluctuates too. It's still a business.

And anyway, the suckers who have already bought are the ones who will suffer - its THEIR asset that wastes away. We, as a country, already have their cash!