Jump to content
House Price Crash Forum


  • Posts

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Unmoderated

  1. Felt the same way. Graduated with an economics degree in 2007 and just knew Labour had blown the bubble so hard it was bound to unwind, plus I had a part time industry related job at that time too. Then the crash happened and I just sat there waiting. I'd been good money wise - I had £15K saved up (mostly my student loan that I'd put in an ISA, lived at home to save money and worked part time) and I just held off telling everyone else to do the same. My friends and ex GF that bought in 2009 hit the jackpot. I say jackpot because nobody knows really do they? They aren't financial geniuses or anything but just had enough money at the right time and a good enough salary to get a mortgage. I eventually bought somewhere 8 years later in the wake of the Brexit vote. I feel I lucked out in way. Although I'd been hold back and waiting for the result as I suspected the silent and vilified majority might clinch it and then what for the housing market. In 2016 is was roaring along but I managed to buy a bit of a wreck for what I feel was a great price. I couldn't afford to have bought it the year before and I would have to take on a much bigger mortgage now that I wouldn't bother. QE was a game changer. I'd never thought that would happen in my wildest dream.... cos inflation innit. Guess what though? It's not even been unwound 12 years later. Covid added to it. Maybe it'll revert: When the last bear capitulates When 'they' have to raise interest rates When the sun rises in the West In the entire time I've been on this site there's been a narrow 12 month window that represented a 'reasonable' time to enter (in the South East) but only in hindsight. Never been a cheap time since I've been an adult. Now I'm sitting here and the house I bought is 'worth' about £100K more than I paid four years ago. Money is even cheaper - so much so that I can take tens of thousands out of the house and still pay a couple of hundred less per month! When there is another dip (and there will be) the risk is you miss out again because nobody is lending, or at such a punitive rate it just isn't worth it.
  2. Laws are like webs in which only the little flies get caught.
  3. They are indeed. Until they aren't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_sport_utility_vehicles#:~:text=Figures from the US National,the front-wheel-drive (
  4. None of the above. I dislike the size, taking up more of the road by people who seem to be generally less space aware than your regular driver. The poor visibility afforded to all other road users, the inherent inefficiency of driving something that shape, size and weight when there's simply no need. I read somewhere that the X5 costs 24 tonnes of CO2 to manufacture. Ridiculous. That's before it's been driven to school and back for 5 years choking up the town!
  5. Playing devil's advocate here but you do also realise we wouldn't be in this mess if we didn't have the interconnectors in the first place since a fire in the come-ashore transformer wouldn't have been able to drop us 2GW of imports..... just saying. That said I'm all for it - pricey fossils makes renewables look cheap and certainly better to tax them out of existence and raise revenues than subsidise an industry that wont learn to stand on it's own two feet. I'm really looking forward to more expensive petrol. Maybe £3 a litre to keep the chav-scum and their dumb AF loud and pointless crap off the roads and ideally also to penalise all the SUV drivers. In the meantime I've ordered a tonne of coal for my stove. 350 quid! It'll easily last a winter.
  6. 'Free' holidays on all spare weekends plus a couple of weeks during peak. Renting it should ensure it washes its face and you'll get capital appreciation over the long run (really currency devalued). My issue is the ball ache of looking after a place miles away and also not sure I would like to be in the same place year after year. But if I ever get rich enough to warrant a pilots licence and a share in an aircraft then maybe Padstow or surrounds as can fly from local airport here down to Newquay.
  7. It seems like that's not what happened from the charts I've seen. Inflation, wage growth and house prices all remained very positive throughout the 70s. I don't like gold - imho it's a nonsense as bitcoin as an asset. I'd rather hold a useful metal (like really useful and actually rare). Each to their own.
  8. Not missing that at all and in fact it is something I flag as a risk. I merely pointing out that this access to cash isn't restricted to boring old me but to millions of other across the country. Maybe it seems like a gamble? But how so? The fix is five years, the cost is below 1% (insane!). I could literally take that cash and whack it in a structured product with a guaranteed return. The biggest risk for me is deflation rather than rising rates. another way of looking at it is the MEW added to my existing savings would pay the mortgage for five years so worst case scenario I have somewhere to live for that period......
  9. Agree. Money is super cheap. I'm re-mortgaging right now and the rates are such that I can add £30K (MEW if you like - but need it for home improvements not holidays, cars and phosphorous teeth) and fix for five instead of two years and my repayments FALL by £200/month. I don't plan on ever doing this but with the extra cash plus my savings I could easily incorporate a holiday let company, get a loan and buy a little cottage by the sea and I'd wager I'm not the only fella in this position. I'm a one man band too - my partner and I are not in a financial partnership... if we were we probably would be looking at a holiday home after finishing this place.
  10. I agree in that scenario and I agree in 1970s we didn't have detachment. but it also seems the detachment is relatively recent: https://www.economicvoice.com/uk-wage-growth-lagging-inflation/
  11. How can we explain what happened in the 1970s? Very high inflation and very high house price growth. Besides, I'm not too fussed about the price. The reason for borrowing all you can and using it to buy assets is that the real value of that debt is being devalued. Give me a decade of 3% inflation and tat debt pile has fallen in real value by over a third. at 4% nearly half! If you wouldn't hold cash due to inflation then just take it further and short chase - hold debt.
  12. Yes - there's a common theme around fund managers that have a lucky streak.... Neil Woodford for example. Then we are agreed .
  13. I agree with this - my thinking is they've set us up on a treadmill so we're the little units of tax income tax paying drones they need us to be to cover the costs for all the other crap they want to throw money at. They start now with the hapless 18 year old by strapping them with £50K+ just to get a fairly mediocre degree (for the most part) then it's rent or live at home for 15 years to save up enough money for a deposit on a slave box with a 40 year mortgage that you'll finish paying off on your 75th birthday.
  14. I was thinking about this today too funnily enough. I have a good friend with close to £100K saved up and lives in accommodation provided at nominal cost by his employer. The only thing stopping him from buying is fear that the worst would happen - although his job is as safe as it could possibly be and he'd be able to rent the house out (he probably would do this anyway). We have another friend in an identical position but he bought a flat back in the late noughties. He's considered a little slow on the update but he's 'won' that particular property race. Discussing this in general with another group of friends (all former colleagues and chartered accountants) we've come to the conclusion that the most 'successful' people are either those too dumb to realise the risk or those with rich enough parents that they'll be fine regardless. I'm not suggesting we do ride the emotional roller coaster, I'm merely pointing out that one month of falls on the back of ridiculous rises doesn't mean a crash is coming no matter how much we'd all appreciate one.
  15. Because money is dirt cheap. It's actually free in real terms and there's no shortage of people operating to make that self fulfilling prophecy come true. One could try and time the market but how has that worked out for most people? Full repayment mortgages for 70% LTV are below 1% for a five year fixed!!! If you believe we're in for a dose of inflation it's madness not to buy something, live in it for five years and pay the mortgage and you'll be laughing in five years versus renting. One swallow does not a spring make and one month of declining prices (especially against a backdrop of improving employment figures, rising inflation and the cheapest money ever) does not a crash make.
  16. Yes agreed though annual rises will also be showing the monthly falls too. Interesting there are fairly small falls in the South East and much larger in places further afield where people maybe ran from London to the South West or West Midlands.
  17. Would vote Tory but the tax rise is a joke and all to pay for people who imho can afford to take the hit and are still getting a 2.5% pay rise this year for doing FA other than surviving another year. I'll be increasing my pension contributions now to ensure my total tax contribution doesn't increase from this year's levels ever and I'll be moving to accelerate my end game of gaining enough capital from extending my existing home that I could buy my next home outright with the tax free gain. Play the game right back at them. So it's Greens for me unless something very drastic changes.
  18. I think this was an issue that came and went? I'm getting planning on my place for 4/5 beds and architect is telling me I']#m lucky because I have enough parking (4 cars out front and additional parking via service road at rear). Apparently that's an issue for planning these days.
  19. Why the heck not? Rates don't really tick up until you get to 65% LTV and even up to 75% LTV are pretty much free money in real terms! I used to think like you but being prudent and doing the 'right' thing only gets you screwed over. Personally I think you have to be a loon to not borrow as much as you can at a 1% fixed for 5 years and use that money for other things that will make you more than 1%.
  20. Thanks for the responses. If I were to simplify it I'd simply say that education makes society better off so it seems fair that society foots the bill. People pay progressive tax rates according to their earnings so if they go to uni, become a doctor and earn £250K/year as a top surgeon then great, the country, the patient and the surgeon wins. It does seem rather unfair though to make that surgeon pay £10k a year for five years in order to train to save lives wouldn't you say? Sure, some degrees are beyond worthless but I would favour an apprenticeship scheme which I think may be gaining popularity - there is the apprentice levy added to ERS NI now at 0.5% which can be reclaimed for spending on trainees. Back to the then and now though - there has been little change in tertiary education as a % of people across the past several decades so it might well be the case that fewer went to uni but those that didn't seemed to have gained some other qualification. However, the value of a degree has been inflated away. But..... to become a chartered accountant (as I am) you must embark on a training scheme. You can take a none university route of course but overwhelmingly the prestigious courses with paid time for accounting college require minimum education of X numbers of UCAS points gained at A-Level and a 2:1 or higher at degree. While it does seem like a great big con how else would you get a career in todays market? Even if it's been devalued it just means more people have it so you need to work even harder to stand out. What stood out for me was that my professional qualifications were significantly more difficult than uni. Used to be a degree opened things up but a CA/ACA/ACCA/CIMA is gold plated.... it's just getting there. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/education/2019/08/great-university-con-how-british-degree-lost-its-value
  21. She had an excellent job right out of uni with big 4 accounting firm and had done a placement year there too (well paid). She also worked through uni (as did I). I actually graduated with £10k in an ISA . As for bubbly market.... it doubled in price lol.
  22. Hi Count, I agree. I'm maxing out my mortgage (much against the ethos of us here - but if you can't beat em) just to extend the house and/or buy a classic car, or something that I think will appreciate in value. I even would consider putting the max into my pension and subsidising my living expenses with the borrowed money and take the PCLS to clear the mortgage in 20 years. I was spreading the good word back in 2007 and 2008 and thinking how lucky I was being a new graduate at that point in time. I even tried to talk my GF at the time out of buying a flat in London for £200K thinking she was onto a loser. Turns out I was the loser. The flat double in price in about 5 years and she ended up renting it out, plus her now husbands flat too while they bought a lovely new house together. Sold the flats to cover the renovation costs and sitting pretty. Been burned once, hard and long by this so as soon as I could buy something I was remotely happy with I jumped. The tax rises made me suddenly feel that anger and frustration I used to feel, the same feeling that led me to find this site all those years ago. The sheer unfairness, the way the game is tilted so unfairly against those without property and those born at the wrong time, or those simply unwilling to take on so much debt. Although building and materials costs are crazy right now I still intend to max out as much as I can borrow. If prices comes back down next year I'll look to make significant changes to the house. If not I might just tart it all up and sell it, downsize and do what I can to max out my pension and pay less tax and get more free time. If the system ever does collapse I'll not be a target with a modest little home somewhere and hopefully I'll be semi self sustainable.
  23. Ah good point well made. I concur. Provided there's appropriate safeguards there then people should have that right. I think Terry Pratchet ended up with a one way plane ticket to Switzerland in the end.
  24. Do people not already have this right? How can someone stop you doing the deed?
  25. I know a former CFO of a very large FTSE 100 company (a friend's father). When he took early retirement he offered his services free of charge to his local NHS Trust. They were not interested. NHS is actually a pretty efficient beast for its size and nature but there's always improvements to be made. I was in hospital a month or so ago (A&E with the GF) and honestly came away thinking they need more funding. The building was a state and fairly grim. I wouldn't think I'd recover well in such a depressing environment.
  • Create New...

Important Information
