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[Wires 74]

HAPPY !

Nearly spills Coffee over keyboard ...

[redgenieuk]

From Daily Mail

One woman's blow by blow account of what it's like trying to sell a house in the credit crunch :

Too big to post, Link : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-...dit-crunch.html

Nothing since the 2nd?

They probably shoudl break and check she still alive.

[Austin Allegro]

Yet another article with the very suspicious '0 comments'.

I am sure now that the Mail is being bombarded with negative comments which they are refusing to publish because they don't have time to sift the few sympathetic ones from the deluge of non-sympathetic ones; either out of consideration for the lady in the article or to avoid her trying to sue them to make a bit of cash.

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

Is it this Diana Appleyard: http://www.appleyardmedia.co.uk/diana.htm

Something stinks here.

There needs to be a 'vomit' smiley for people like her.

So here we have a media luvvie type for whom the nearest to productive work she's done is to write a few s**t lit novels and who expects to be able to live beyond her means, interviewing a like-minded individual who has dug herself into a hole through gross negligence in mismanaging her family finances. After her husband died the insurance left her well enough off to run a stable, if not lavish, household. But instead of exercising common sense she also lived way beyond her means, expecting HPI to subsidise her lavish lifestyle at the expense of priced out young professionals ad infinitum.

And as for the sympathy issue, I lost my fiancee in a road accident while I was a postgraduate student. But instead of a six-figure payout I was told that I'd lose my research funding (the £7k a year salary I was on, effectively, though that was tax-free) if I wanted to take any time off in the aftermath of that. So I just had to buck up, pull my life back together and get on with it. Nasty things happen to people and that is no excuse for gross negligence over a prolonged period of years.

[Solitaire]

I'm having trouble understanding this story. This lady bought the house for 405k, 100k less than the family home she sold and used the equity from the sale to keep the family going yet she spent 90k on doing the house up whilst earning only £1500 per month.

What am I missing?

[JustAnotherProle]

I'm having trouble understanding this story. This lady bought the house for 405k, 100k less than the family home she sold and used the equity from the sale to keep the family going yet she spent 90k on doing the house up whilst earning only £1500 per month.

What am I missing?

A champagne lifestyle on lemonade wages?

[Solitaire]

A champagne lifestyle on lemonade wages?

No doubt, but there's also a big chunk of money not being accounted for as far as I can tell. I'm sorry that she lost her husband and even more sorry that she didn't have the wit or wherewithal to consolidate her position to protect her family's future.

I understand only too well that grief can overshadow reason but there comes a point when survival instincts kick in.......maybe hers have just come too late.

Edited July 11, 2008 by Solitaire

[lets get it right]

What a bunch of noxious @rseholes there are on here.

Maybe you're all too young for anything sh!tty to have happened to you yet.

When you've watched your brother die of cancer and then watched the devastating effect it has on his wife (nervous breakdown) and two children (too painful to describe) - well maybe you wouldn't be such pious @rsewipes.

[Dubbya]

I couldn't find the house for sale on RM (although the article doesn't made it clear that it's in Stratford-on-Avon).

The whole thing just has a "scripted" feel

[ingermany]

great "news" story:

GREEDY PERSON MAKES LESS MONEY THAN EXPECTED FROM HOUSING INVESTMENT AND IS VERY DISAPPOINTED

Really I'm not sure if this is fiction or journalism. It's hard to tell.

[Tonkers]

What a bunch of noxious @rseholes there are on here.

Maybe you're all too young for anything sh!tty to have happened to you yet.

When you've watched your brother die of cancer and then watched the devastating effect it has on his wife (nervous breakdown) and two children (too painful to describe) - well maybe you wouldn't be such pious @rsewipes.

Get off! He died 8 YEARS AGO! I am sure most on here have lost loved ones in ocassionally tragic circumstances - however a sob story does not entitle you to private school, a flashy car and gym membership. This woman needs, and is getting a reality slap. Hope it might save her children from being as asinine.

[alexw]

What a bunch of noxious @rseholes there are on here.

Maybe you're all too young for anything sh!tty to have happened to you yet.

When you've watched your brother die of cancer and then watched the devastating effect it has on his wife (nervous breakdown) and two children (too painful to describe) - well maybe you wouldn't be such pious @rsewipes.

I have sympathy that she lost her husband, but that was 8 years ago.

Thus, her choices now and probably over the last few years are more to do with her yuppie expectations than anything else.

[Taylorrian]

Yet another article with the very suspicious '0 comments'.

I am sure now that the Mail is being bombarded with negative comments which they are refusing to publish because they don't have time to sift the few sympathetic ones from the deluge of non-sympathetic ones; either out of consideration for the lady in the article or to avoid her trying to sue them to make a bit of cash.

I agree daily mail is very difficult to get comments listed. Especially anything against McCann family, or Liz Jones (DM self-indulgent, desperate-for-a-man-but-feels-she-is-a-supermodel, columnist)

[wickywackywoo]

Well said.

This lady has obviously made some mistakes and perhaps she has been naive also? Perhaps she had no one to turn to for help or perhaps those she did turn to did not offer sensible advice?

Grief is terrible. You cannot begin to imagine the emotions that she went through.

Women who find themselves in this position often discover that their female friends are not really friends after all. A widow is looked upon as another single woman who might steal their man - often, such women who think this are simply showing their own virtues up rather than the other persons.

Quite often, in such circumstances the last person a woman shoud turn to for help in such a situation is her female friends!

The private schools, the bmw, the gym membership(?) all should have gone by now.

It sounds to me as if this lady needs some help - counselling - and also at least one good friend who would have sat her down and, pulling no punches, bluntly told the way things were going to be after her husband passed on.

Doesn't say much for women does it? It does have a certain ring of truth to it though.

[snowflux]

Get off! He died 8 YEARS AGO! I am sure most on here have lost loved ones in ocassionally tragic circumstances - however a sob story does not entitle you to private school, a flashy car and gym membership. This woman needs, and is getting a reality slap. Hope it might save her children from being as asinine.

I doubt that there are many here who are trying to earn a living while single-handedly caring for their dead spouse's children.

[Nationalist]

I've posted a very sympathetic comment - we'll see if it gets published.

The lady is still in a reasonable situation. She could sell the current house for the offered £475K and move to rented. Investing the proceeds plus her salary should give her a £70K annual income; sufficient for an adequate lifestyle; then she could either turf one or two of the kids out of private education, ditch the gym, swap the X3 for an old estate car and spend the next 5 years gloating as house prices fall. After the kids have flown the nest she could use the STR fund to buy a smaller more suitable house for the next phase of her life and/or put some of the STR fund into a pension for her old age.

[Longinthetooth]

There are some issues I don't understand here:

1. She's whining that somebody has knocked £90,000 off the price of her house but doesn't complain about the £65,000 she's knocked off the one she's buying.

2. Just had a look at Rightmove in the Stratford area. £400 grand can buy you a lot of house there, I'm not sure I would even think of viewing the one pictured.

3. How do you justify spending £90,000 on doing up a modern house like this?

[dirge]

She's waxed her way through half a million in 8 years!

Christ I've got my shovel I'm off to attach some magnets to her hobbies casket and wrap copper wire around it, solve the ******ing energy crisis!

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

I doubt that there are many here who are trying to earn a living while single-handedly caring for their dead spouse's children.

As many here have pointed out, if she'd used the insurance money sensibly she probably wouldn't be having to.

[Avon]

Just read this. The three things that hit me were that the school fees seem quite cheap at 2K a term (we're not talking Eton, here); the house to which she wants to downsize is way too extravagant, it should be 300k or less to make the whole transaction financially and psychologically worthwhile; and she doesn't come across as a total scum-sucking maximiser, rather one who is (along with the vast majority of the population) deluded by the comfort of the past and a lack of a basic education in economics. The thing that the anti-schadenfreuder's, above, should remember is that even now she is sitting on 400k's worth of equity almost entirely created by property speculation and thus not the product of her own talent. Most of us poor sod FTBs would take 60 odd years to save that amount while forgoing the luxury of a gym, X5 and private school tuition (which is immoral anyway) for the sake of the kids (that we cannot afford to have..).

[Jim B.]

I don't know this woman so can't really comment, and everyone's situation is different, but I do think some of you are being a bit cruel.

Her partner's died and the kids have lost their father, so I think the private school thing is ok as she doesn't want them to lose their friends as well, plus she's not in denial as she's pretty quickly reduced the price when asked. This is the sort of seller we want who will drive down selling prices. It's not like she's some scum BTL'er trying to make a quick profit.

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

Point taken about her not being a BTLer, which is certainly a factor in her favour.

I suppose what wound me up was the combination of a spoilt moron cow journalist wallowing in self-pity with a like-minded interviewee. I dare say that there are many single widowed parents out there for whom private education and a BMW were never an option. Writing an article about one of them would have been a far more sensible thing for the Wail to have done.

[pablopatito]

Its a bit like the article last week about a couple trying to downsize. Basically, it seems the Mail are trying to make a story about the credit crunch that isn't really about the credit crunch at all. Its a story about a woman who is trying to sell her house and the deal fell through. That's not really a story. That happens all the time, even during a housing boom. I'm finding this a common theme in the media at the moment - find a fairly boring, common story and create a tenuous link to the housing crisis or the economy. There was another one recently about a bloke that committed suicide, suposedly because of mortgage arrears, in reality because he was just another disturbed person who got into debt and turned to suicide as a solution - something that also happens during a boom.

I'm starting to get really annoyed with it, but I expect it to be a common theme in the next few months..

[bomberbrown]

I don't know this woman so can't really comment, and everyone's situation is different, but I do think some of you are being a bit cruel.

Her partner's died and the kids have lost their father, so I think the private school thing is ok as she doesn't want them to lose their friends as well, plus she's not in denial as she's pretty quickly reduced the price when asked. This is the sort of seller we want who will drive down selling prices. It's not like she's some scum BTL'er trying to make a quick profit.

We wouldn't even be discussing the loss of her husband if it wasn't disclosed in the original article. You have to only wonder why it was mentioned. I don't write articles or post starting, "Hi, I'm Bomber. I lost my dad 4 years ago and it's bloody awful with all the HPI of the past number of years."

[noddage]

"I have started looking at other properties at around £400,000 near the children's school in Evesham, Worcestershire."

I immediately smelled a rat with this article - there are no private schools in or near Evesham. There was an independent prep (junior) school, but that closed, forever, last week.

"I took the children to look at a new house last weekend and we all agree it is perfect. It is a four bedroom, five-year-old town house in Evesham, priced at £475,000, but the agent suggests they may accept less. They will have to accept a lot less!"

Can't for the life of me think where this would be - wherever, it would be one of the most expensive houses in town.

If she were serious about downsizing so she could buy clothes and holidays for her children, she could find a perfectly nice Victorian place with three-bedrooms in Evesham for £160,000. But then she will be forced to live near working clarse people, and they do tend to smell.