OT : House buying

Err, can't remember ours for certain - I think it was 20 but it may
have been 25. Thinking harder, yes, it's 20 years, but I think we
_could_ have done 25, although it wasn't considered normal.

Now Switzerland has an entirely different approach. House prices there
are so high (think central London - a half-decent 3-bed semi would be
about a million francs - 400k sterling) that a mortgage is taken out
over two or three generations, so that a child's inheritence may
actually include another fifty years of mortgage payments to be made
:=}

 

The 2-bed flat below me has just gone on the market for £215k.
Whether it will sell for that is a different matter.

 

Yeah, but what the are prices of the houses like?

I had a look in an estate agent window on the French Trip in April/May last
year and I was amazed at how cheap stuff was.
Okay so you were probably buying a house built on an old trench and a few
bombs, but they were cheap.

 

Ok, I'm out of touch then.

You are implying that my house cannot be worth that much. Sorry, but
you haven't seen my house. 3 receps, 4-5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms early
Victorian town house on 4 floors in good nick with all mod cons and
all historic features. OK, no garage, but it has side access (via
tunnel and gate) to a brick workshop. True, it would be a specialist
rental, but when I wanted to sell, several landlords were interested.

My mileage varies. whenever I have rented, it has always been more
than a mortgage would have cost. Only my temporary problems prevented
me from buying. I do realise I am well out of date - I haven't rented
in a long time now. And with my house almost paid off, I hope I never
have to do so again.

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sure.

House prices are nuts.

I've just done a quick calculation based on what I paid for mine in
October 2001 and the amount I had it valued for in about October
2003[1], and in that period, the amount the house was "worth" was
rising about 120 quid per day...

Having said that, where I live it's *flat* prices that have gone
mental, presumably because even small houses have already priced
themselves out of the first-time buyer market.

[1] I was just curious.

 

Ooh.

£88.09 a day, from 19/2/99 to today.[2]

Not many. The 1 bed flats round here are going for the price of our 4
bed and a garage terraced house when they were built.

[2]There was one over the road in the local rag recently.
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Can you get a 3 bed semi in Central London for 400 grand?

Three hits for 3-bed house, within 10 miles of SW1:

http://www.teamprop.co.uk/prop_sear...||52914|17930|5|T|SE|3|201|103|LONDON|||1|SW1

Brixton, Herne Hill and West Norwood.

**** that.

 

Ace wrote:bored us all completely to death with wittery prose along the
lines of:

That's what I've heard, (about 25 years not being normal). However, I
think that prices are starting to rise that much that they *may* become
the norm.

****, that's rough, passing on your debts to your sprogs and their
sprogs. No chance of a 99 year lease then?

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I don't bloody know - I was only trying to make a comparison, FFS. And
I was talking about the minimum, rather than average. Although that's
difficult to say, as there's only a couple of hundred properties on
the market at any given time within a populated area of about a
million people.

SW1's not central, that's south of the river, shirley?

 

The Houses of Parliament are in SW1. That's a reasonable shout at
"central", isn't it?

 

the big thing around our way is 2-bed purpose-built flats with secure
underground parking. This:

http://www.findaproperty.com/area0149.html

is where I live. 2 bed flats are on average *more* expensive than 2
bed houses...

Mine is a 4 bed house, but I didn't pay anything *like* the figure
quoted on that page as the average. For the record in this
meta-discussion, my mortgage is less than the value quoted there for
/3/ bed rental...

 

OK, so it's not south of the river then. It was meant as a question,
hence the question mark at the end.

 

*one* bed rental in our case. ;-p

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dwb wrote:bored us all completely to death with wittery prose along the
lines of:

Paris and the suburbs are considerably cheaper than London and the
outskirts. No doubt about it.

A 47m2 flat in a dodgy area of Paris, on the 5th floor of a block, no
lift, with running prostitutes outside, would have set us back
?100,000. Then it would have had have been decorated, etc, etc. But it
was in Paris.

My house in the suburbs of Paris is the same distance to the centre of
Paris, as Brixton is to Westminster. Brixton prices (over 7 years ago
for me) where already in the ?250,000 bracket on average, IIRC. I've
not paid anywhere near that.

Friends of my in-laws bought a studio (read 15m2 cupboard) for ?45,000
(in a posh area of Paris though)

If you want, you can buy a place in Paris reasonably cheap, but you
have to take on the OAP that lives there. Called 'viager' IIRC. I think
it's open to discussion as to whether you can live there or not. It's a
bit of a trap, as old folk live longer nowadays.

Our place dahn sarf-west (not in one of the big cities) is probably
equivalent (pricewise) to a place up norf in the UK. We paid in the
region of ?65000 for a 5 bed place, two garages and 1100m2 garden.

The thing to look at, is that with France being three times larger than
the UK, there's more space, hence cheaper prices (in general)

(Renting in places like Kennington (a mates flat) was setting him back
over ?600 pm for a two bed flat. Rent prices in Paris are not far
behind.)

But overall, you're right. Why do you think loads of Brits are buying
over here? It's actually causing a problem in certain areas of France
(read SW and in Brittany/Normandy), as Brit ex-pats are paying over the
odds and raising prices.

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Jesus, I haven't seen anything bigger than a studio for 600pcm inside
zone 2 since 1999 at the latest. That year I was paying 650pcm for a
one bed flat in Kilburn and that was a bargain at the time.

 

Brilliant They have no entry for Harlow

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ogden wrote:bored us all completely to death with wittery prose along
the lines of:

It's been a while since I saw my mate (about four years

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Ace wrote

And it is not central.

If you take the City (The Bank) as central then SW1 is literally kin
miles away. If you take Charring Cross as central (and many folks do)
then it varies from a few hundred yards to kin miles away depending on
which bit of SW1 you are talking about.

It is "up west" if you want it properly defined. Bearing in mind that
"The West End" starts at Charring Cross/Tottenham Court Rd and continues
west for approximately one and a quarter miles and then becomes Posh.

 

Picky picky.. but then you wait till fags are twenty quid a pack..

What are you? Some sort of wimp?

Phil

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lets face it - who's *want* to live in Harlow...?