Typical

**** 'em.

 

This is one of the reasons why I stopped working for .gov and started
working for .com

 

AlQaeda.com ?

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(>|_|_|<) TPPFATUICG#7 DIAABTCOD#9 YTC#4 PM#5
|__|_|__| BOTAFOT #70 BOTAFOF #09 two#11 WG*
\ |^| / IbW#0 & KotIbW# BotTOS#6 GP#4
\|^|/ ANORAK#17
'^'

 

Don't be silly, they're bound to be a .org

 

Given their history, .gov, or .mil would be appropriate.

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(>|_|_|<) TPPFATUICG#7 DIAABTCOD#9 YTC#4 PM#5
|__|_|__| BOTAFOT #70 BOTAFOF #09 two#11 WG*
\ |^| / IbW#0 & KotIbW# BotTOS#6 GP#4
\|^|/ ANORAK#17
'^'

 

Go back to Scotland.

A mate of mine lives in Kircaldy. He's just bought a
4-bedroom, detached house with a fair sized garden for
ukp60,000.

I paid more than that for my 2-bedroom flat nearly 9 years
ago. /

 

Ginge wrote

While I have taken the next evolutionary step and am being paid for by
..org.

 

Which is why prices are so fucking stupid. I look forward to a huge crash in
the market. Houses are overvalued by an order of magnitude in England.

 

Self certification. According to a recent Tele program, the root of all evil
in the housing market (or your saviour, depending on whether you get away
with it or not)

 

I think it depends which part.

140K will get a decent detached 3 bedroomed place in many parts of the
Midlands, 180K a 4 bedroomed place.

 

That's ok in the current situation. When I got my mortgage, we had 12%-15%
interest rates, wages were crap and a burger cost almost as much as it does
now. If we get back to anything like that situation, the housing market will
get flooded with loads of repossessed houses (good for low income buyers,
bad for sellers), as well as loads of homeless families (bad for the average
tax payer). We might end up with those on low wages living in their own
homes and Middle England living in council houses. Quite amusing really, as
long as I didn't get caught up in that.

 

I heard a little news item on "Business Lunch" or somesuch (BBC2,
lunchtimes(surprisingly)) regarding "self-certified mortgages".

Apparently, a lot of people have lied through their teeth and vastly
inflated their estimated ability to repay mortgages made to them on
that basis. So, there is a "major investigation" underway, by the
lenders of SC mortgages.

They have tasked themselves to go through _all_ the SC applications
retrospectively, and ask for proof - and will make comparisons with
actual ability to pay measured the old-fashioned way.

Anybody who is in the shit will be in much much deeper shit following
the investigations.

 

Apparently, it's not buyers trying to borrow more than they should, it's
mortgage advisers telling people to lie. Even Halifax/Bank of Scotland's
(biggest lender in this half of the galaxy) own advisers tell people to work
out what they want, divide that figue by 3.5 and then put down that figure
as their income. Which floods the market with cash which shouldn't be there,
thus inflating house prices, thus tempting more people to lie, thus
inflating house prices,......

 

Beg to differ. I've got a 3x mortgage which has a monthly payment of
around 1/4 of my take home. This is nice because it means interest
rates can go up a fair bit without putting me in trouble.

It also means I have a lot more money to spend on toys.

 

I've now got a <2x mortgage and just switched it to a repayment from
interest only. I've 12 months to run before I can re-mortgage elsewhere
without a penalty and I currently pay about 1/4 of my take home a month
into it which would pay the house off in 16 yrs.

Whatever the mortgage rate does I'm going for an offset mortgage next
time around and plowing all the money I can spare into the offset
account. If the housing market collapses in 3 or 4 years I want enough
of a deposit to snap up a cheap place to rent to students...

 

A nice position to be in - because rates won't actually have to go up
anywhere near as much as they did in the early 90s in order to choke off
demand. Mortgage debt is so much higher these days that a base rate rise
to, say 6% will have the same effect on reducing disposable incomes as
jacking them up to 12% did in the early 90s. It's just as shitty a position
then as now if you're borrowed up to 5+ times salary, but for people who've
kept to more traditional multipliers, life will (hopefully) be a whole lot
less painful

 

Whereas a 2 up 2 down, small backyard (no access), front door onto
street, no hall in Hove is £220+

....just found this (Brighton/Hove average prices over last 3 months)...

To buy a
studio flat £ 92,183
1 bed flat £ 131,694
2 bed flat £ 201,853
2 bed house £ 218,186
3 bed flat £ 312,250
3 bed house £ 275,076
4 bed house £ 386,655

Rents are fucking heart stopping..
studio flat £ 434 pcm
1 bed flat £ 637 pcm
2 bed flat £ 839 pcm
2 bed house £ 947 pcm
3 bed flat £ 1227 pcm
3 bed house £ 1071 pcm
4 bed house £ 1409 pcm

Two earners, as a couple, on the (average) £24K pa wouldn't get very
far... It's madness.

 

Couldn't agree more.

Assuming a joint income of 50k and a willingness to lie and take a 4x
multiple that still only gives you 200k which isn't going to buy much of
a 'family house' in some areas.

Until the average couple on the average income in the average house can
afford to buy on a reasonable multiple it's overpriced.

 

<AOL>

Although I might have to stop buying so many books and toys though :-(

Phil.

 

Did I suggest all Twinkies were likely to be in trouble? no. Just the stupid
ones.

If dodgy practices and stupidity hadn't pushed prices up so then the
consumer economy would be far healthier with much less tied debt. OTOH the
balance of payments would be worse.