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Good Letter In My Local Rag


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HOLA441

This letter appeared in the Rugby Observer this week.

Resist estate agents' house price hype

SO HERE comes spring and once again with tiring predictability estate agents are urging us to believe the great British property market is poised to continue its meteoric climb in values.

How gullible are we to believe their hype and is this stupidity in fact a previously undiagnosed national illness ?

The symptoms of the illness are pandemic, yet the process is alarmingly simple.

Mr and Mrs Seller pay a ludicrous price for a property. Avaricious neighbours readjust their own property value expectactions and thus everybody feels richer and comforted. Winners all round !

The winners, in this quest for the £1 million brick, are sadly not the property owners but the unregulated estate agents, the Treasury Departments, which thrive on rising income from Stamp Duty, Death Duty (Inheritance Tax) and of course the ever-popular Council Tax.

So when will this self-inflicted madness end ? The answer is so simple: when homeowners' commonsense prevails and a realistic sense of values returns.

If all potential house buyers offer at least 40 percent less than current asking prices and hold firm, most of the hyped lunacy of the current values would disappear in a fairly short time.

Average-wealth families would once again be freed from the theft which Inheritance Tax represents and first-time buyers - rather than get-rich-quick speculators - would again dominate and invigorate the lower-value end of the property market.

The choice is simple: do we want to live in this hypertaxed trap where we are conned to feel rich or are we strong enough to make realistic offers, forcing prices down ?

Step forward, D Thompson if you are one of the posters here ! I will write a letter to the local Observer to back you up.

Edited by Warwickshire Lad
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HOLA442
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HOLA443

This letter appeared in the Rugby Observer this week.

Step forward, D Thompson if you are one of the posters here ! I will write a letter to the local Observer to back you up.

That is an excellent letter.

How many will read it, shrug their shoulders, and say "my house has doubled in the last three years" though?

People really don't learn until it hits 'em square between the eyes. It usually costs them money for that to happen.

NDL

Edit: added "though"

Edited by New Darker Law
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HOLA446
Guest Winners and Losers

99.9% of people that own a property feel richer if the price goes up.

Der, no kidding!

So, what is your angle 'Spring In the EA , I mean Air'? Are you just bullish? I have not really noticed you contribute anything other than 'people who own houses always get rich, prices always rise, blah, blah, blah. What sound economic evidence to use to qualify your debate? Are you just another VI troll or do you really have a message, bullish or otherwise?

Edited by Winners and Losers
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HOLA447

99.9% of people that own a property feel richer if the price goes up.

How many people actually own their houses?

As apposed to the people whose banks allow them to live in a house provided they keep paying the protection money?

You dont own a house until every last red penny is paid off.

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HOLA448

I have just sent the editor my own letter.... let's see if they print it. Bet they don't !

Oh I do love a good rant !!

Dear Editor,

You probably won't print this letter because a lot of your advertising revenue comes from Estate Agents, but I felt I had to write anwyay.

As a potential first-time buyer living in Rugby, I am in full agreement with D Thompson's letter (6th April).

You only have to flick through the property pages in the Observer to realise that house prices in Rugby are detached from reality and have been for quite some time.

Even the new-buid properties appearing all over town have comedy pricing attached to them.

It is a disgrace - and be under no illusions that the current mess is the product of a period of rampant property speculation. Abnormally low Interest Rates since the September 11th 2001 attacks, and a belief by many ageing baby boomers that traditional stock market investments and pensions are no longer safe, have pushed prices to levels that are frankly embarrassing when you look at local wages.

Of course, not only has this property bubble been in the UK, like a disease it has spread to most other Anglo-Saxon countries simultaneously, the most recent victim being the United States. The result has been to cause anger and misery amongst young people who are forced to rent, and to widen the gap between the property owning and non-owning "classes".

It has been a massive transfer of wealth from young to old, an injustice which TV presenters like Kirsty Allsopp and Phil Spencer have made a living from.

And yet, far from complaining too much - there's a strange sense of quiet and complacency and "that's just the way it is because property only ever goes up". Tell that to people who lived through the last property crash and negative equity of the 1990s.

A young couple I know locally have just been given a 40-year mortgage on a £108K house - mortgage lenders have been consistently relaxing their criteria to carry on attracting the last gullible buyers to the dying market.

Others are probably lying about their income or applying for their mortgages "creatively", just for the sake of getting on a "ladder" which doesn't actually exist anymore due to low inflation. Stretch yourself to buy now and expect to be in your starter home for the next 25 years, because your debt simply won't disappear as fast as it did for your parents.

I believe that the housing market has been nothing more than the largest ever pyramid scheme - helped in no small part by Estate Agents (and yes there are far too many of them in Rugby) who as ever are up to their old tricks.

Maybe people are also keeping quiet because they've borrowed way too much equity against their houses which would wipe them out in a property crash.

Are you a homeowner in Rugby, need to sell and are complaining of a slow market ? Estate Agents not getting results ?

If you've owned for more than 4 years - ask yourself could you afford your OWN house at today's prices ? I'm willing to bet that an awful lot wouldn't. Just drop the price, for heaven's sake. It's got little to do with anything else. House prices are going nowhere upwards and probably for many years, and at the moment it's a terrible investment.

I speak as someone who is in his early 30s, has no debts, a considerable deposit, earns a good wage for this area, and the most I could afford on a traditional mortgage multiple is pretty small beer. You know, I have a problem with paying 300% more than my next door neighbour who happened to buy a mere 5 years ago. It even makes you question whether you even want to live here for much longer, whilst I'm sure most homeowners are just patting themselves on the back for having bought in 1999. Whatever.

Personally, I am not touching the housing market with a bargepole until there is a correction and I would advise other first-time buyers to make a stand and do the same.

I believe that at some point in the not-too-distant future, the economy will be paying dearly for this tsunami of house price greed, and when that happens many people will actually have the audacity to be surprised.

Regards

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99.9% of people that own a property feel richer if the price goes up.

and then they borrow more against it.. get in massive debt and try and convince me that they are a lot richer..

they are in debt..

and their madness.. that they think they are richer..

Drives me into a rage.. I hide it well

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HOLA4414

99.9% of people that own a property feel richer if the price goes up.

99.9% of people that own a property feel richer if the price goes up until they go to buy their next step on the "ladder" and realise that their is a gaping chasm between their hopes and aspirations and their borrowing capacity.l

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So when will this self-inflicted madness end ? The answer is so simple: when homeowners' commonsense prevails and a realistic sense of values returns.

If all potential house buyers offer at least 40 percent less than current asking prices and hold firm, most of the hyped lunacy of the current values would disappear in a fairly short time.

Average-wealth families would once again be freed from the theft which Inheritance Tax represents and first-time buyers - rather than get-rich-quick speculators - would again dominate and invigorate the lower-value end of the property market.

The choice is simple: do we want to live in this hypertaxed trap where we are conned to feel rich or are we strong enough to make realistic offers, forcing prices down ?"[/i]

Step forward, D Thompson if you are one of the posters here ! I will write a letter to the local Observer to back you up.

"Resist estate agents' house price hype

SO HERE comes spring and once again with tiring predictability estate agents are urging us to believe the great British property market is poised to continue its meteoric climb in values.

How gullible are we to believe their hype and is this stupidity in fact a previously undiagnosed national illness ?

The symptoms of the illness are pandemic, yet the process is alarmingly simple.

Mr and Mrs Seller pay a ludicrous price for a property. Avaricious neighbours readjust their own property value expectactions and thus everybody feels richer and comforted. Winners all round !

The winners, in this quest for the £1 million brick, are sadly not the property owners but the unregulated estate agents, the Treasury Departments, which thrive on rising income from Stamp Duty, Death Duty (Inheritance Tax) and of course the ever-popular Council Tax.

So when will this self-inflicted madness end ? The answer is so simple: when homeowners' commonsense prevails and a realistic sense of values returns.

If all potential house buyers offer at least 40 percent less than current asking prices and hold firm, most of the hyped lunacy of the current values would disappear in a fairly short time.

Average-wealth families would once again be freed from the theft which Inheritance Tax represents and first-time buyers - rather than get-rich-quick speculators - would again dominate and invigorate the lower-value end of the property market.

"The choice is simple: do we want to live in this hypertaxed trap where we are conned to feel rich or are we strong enough to make realistic offers, forcing prices down ?" -- My point exactly. - http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/ind...80entry339180

Edited by eric pebble
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HOLA4418
Personally, I am not touching the housing market with a bargepole until there is a correction and I would advise other first-time buyers to make a stand and do the same.

I'm right with you.

:ph34r::ph34r::ph34r:

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HOLA4420

I'm right with you.

There is an extra reason why I don't buy, and that is simply that on a personal level I feel uncertain about whether I even want to be in the country 10 years from now.

Just look at the way things are going in general, and Britain is not an enticing prospect.

Not a good plan therefore to tie myself into a mortgage at this stage in my life. I feel that in the next few years or so I have a choice to make about whether to stay or to go.

For me, it's a wider question than just simply house prices, and there's more to it than meets the eye in a sense.

Perhaps I'll never buy. It's going to be just a lifestyle choice that suits me.

I don't even have children to leave a property to.

What's the point ?

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HOLA4422

i think if your deneid something you want so badly for so long, you naturally start to break down the desire for the thing you cant have to ease the pain. within time you lean to live better without it and can turn the situation opposite.

its like if you get dumped or turned down by a girl and you go off seething saying 'i didnt like her anyway' and in time you realise it wasnt a good idea and you end up with a better one. then you drive by your ex's flat wheelspinning in a used focus rs shouting "see bitch....see ?".

sadly, after you drop the ugly one off you go quietly park outside your ex's flat for a good stalking session, only to be crushed by the appearance of a new much bigger boyfriend applying a much needed booty call at her door at 1am.

bah. now its time to really show her by wheelspinning off and thinking about ending it all at a rail line.

as you drive there footloose comes on the radio. you pull off into a layby and hear the song out. the worlds get to you and before long your heading back to have it out with this new john whos nicked your bird.

you beat on the door. he comes down. you challenge him to a race to old man johnsons farm, with the winner taking the girl.

he beats you to the ground with a fanny wet 10" rubber dong before closing the door and going back up stairs to finish the job off..you then go back to the ugly girl and knock her up with stories of how you did him over and then told her you didnt want her anyway, before coming back to you. she gets a steak for you eye and her pair of thigh high boots. thats life !!

pop -stch.

sound of a stella opening.

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HOLA4423

i think if your deneid something you want so badly for so long, you naturally start to break down the desire for the thing you cant have to ease the pain. within time you lean to live better without it and can turn the situation opposite.

its like if you get dumped or turned down by a girl and you go off seething saying 'i didnt like her anyway' and in time you realise it wasnt a good idea and you end up with a better one. then you drive by your ex's flat wheelspinning in a used focus rs shouting "see bitch....see ?".

sadly, after you drop the ugly one off you go quietly park outside your ex's flat for a good stalking session, only to be crushed by the appearance of a new much bigger boyfriend applying a much needed booty call at her door at 1am.

bah. now its time to really show her by wheelspinning off and thinking about ending it all at a rail line.

as you drive there footloose comes on the radio. you pull off into a layby and hear the song out. the worlds get to you and before long your heading back to have it out with this new john whos nicked your bird.

you beat on the door. he comes down. you challenge him to a race to old man johnsons farm, with the winner taking the girl.

he beats you to the ground with a fanny wet 10" rubber dong before closing the door and going back up stairs to finish the job off..you then go back to the ugly girl and knock her up with stories of how you did him over and then told her you didnt want her anyway, before coming back to you. she gets a steak for you eye and her pair of thigh high boots. thats life !!

pop -stch.

sound of a stella opening.

thanks Fred. I love your ramblings.

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Guest X-QUORK

You really are a very amusing chap Fred, your little rants keep this place from becoming a bit too stale.

You should consider comedy writing. :D

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