General Random Conversation..

[Kid Dynamite 7170]

I got lucky by buying my first property back in 2004, thanks mainly to parents helping with the deposit, before prices went completely insane. I was worried even then about being stuck there when the market eventually crashed and thought at the time we got lucky when we sold it two years later for a big profit but prices have just kept going. It's completely ridiculous when you look at the fundamentals. Defies logic.

 

Got mates who kept putting it off until prices started to fall, it never happened and they have now stretched themselves to breaking point for a one bedroom flat in Sydenham.

 

I think if it was me today I'd just rent. But rents aren't exactly cheap right now either. Fuck knows what the answer is. It's a classic lack of supply and might take some colossal global economic tremor for the foreign investors propping it all up to withdraw.

Aye, we bought at the height of the market in 2008, lost £12k when we sold but that's the closest the price has got to what we paid.

 

We've now spent £190k on a house I've no doubt will also drop in value in the future but it's now or never if we are going to move. It's big enough to be our last house if needed so I'm trying not to think about that

[ChezGiven 0]

It does or it should do. If you borrow e.g. 10% of the value of the home and put down 90%, the bank has covered its risk if it thinks it can sell your home for more than 10% of its market value! The higher the deposit, the lower the risk to the bank basically. The lower the risk, the lower the rate needed so in theory you should get a better rate as the risk premium in the rate offered is lower.

[Dr Gloom 22149]

Yeah, we assumed it'd go pop last time, hence sitting here still renting. Oh well. It's Dutch tulip mania writ large, but what politician is ever going to say "well, we basically need to fuck over a whole generation of homeowners to get back to any kind of sanity, sorry"?

Certainly not the Tories. Quite the opposite in fact with help to buy. Nothing gets voters feeling more warm and fuzzy ahead of a general election than seeing the value of their home go up

Edited July 31, 2014 by Dr Gloom

[Renton 22001]

It does or it should do. If you borrow e.g. 10% of the value of the home and put down 90%, the bank has covered its risk if it thinks it can sell your home for more than 10% of its market value! The higher the deposit, the lower the risk to the bank basically. The lower the risk, the lower the rate needed so in theory you should get a better rate as the risk premium in the rate offered is lower.

Aye, but in practice in the UK once you exceed the 60% loan to value you're on the best rates the bank will offer. I think, anyway. But you probably won't get interrogated over "affordability" like we were if the deposit is even bigger.

[Meenzer 15718]

Got mates who kept putting it off until prices started to fall, it never happened and they have now stretched themselves to breaking point for a one bedroom flat in Sydenham.

 

 

Yeah, even Lewisham has gone mental now. We decided a while back that we're happy with renting and just moving out of London when the time comes to buy - I work from home anyway and his bosses would be theoretically happy for him to work from home too and do one day a week in London, and/or obviously he could just find something else in due course. Plus living somewhere sensibly-priced will leave plenty sloshing around for occasional trips to the big smoke to catch up with friends as and when - everyone's starting to reach that "settling down and coming out to play less often" phase in life now anyway so there's progressively less of a "you'd be missing out on everything!" feeling involved with the idea.

 

Takes so much weight off your shoulders not feeling like you're chasing after something that keeps getting that little bit further and further away. Life's too short to mortgage yourself to the hilt just for the sake of it.

[Meenzer 15718]

Totally agree btw that it's massively different renting when you have a family to think about, obviously.

[Park Life 71]

You lot looking at loans and so on do it quick....Stock market corrections on the way...As usual they use astrology so it will be Oct/Nov.

[Meenzer 15718]

Cheers, Mystic Meg.

[Park Life 71]

Cheers, Mystic Meg.

Banking is black magix. They work on sun cycles and the return of the magnetic field of Saturn. Wars in April/May....Stock market scams Sept/Oct Mostly.

 

Stock Market crashes/corrections:

 

Aug/Sept 2011

Sept 2008 U.S. Market

Oct 2002 Asia, Eur, can large falls

Sept 11 2001 - 9/11 scam and stock market fall.

Russian market wipeout Aug 1998

 

etc...

Edited July 31, 2014 by Park Life

[Christmas Tree 4827]

House prices will always rise. Sure there will be a few peaks and troughs but the trajectory is only going one way. It is an limited resource with a big demand.

[Dr Gloom 22149]

House prices will always rise. Sure there will be a few peaks and troughs but the trajectory is only going one way. It is an limited resource with a big demand.

The evidence from Japan suggests otherwise, unless you describe a 20 year bear market as a trough.

[Christmas Tree 4827]

The evidence from Japan suggests otherwise, unless you describe a 20 year bear market as a trough.

Forget Japan we are talking UK.

 

The only way is up.

[Howmanheyman 33844]

CT, you've been listening to Yazz again, haven't you?

[Monkeys Fist 43067]

He's been to see his Bong dealer next door.

[Meenzer 15718]

You wonder where it leaves a society when a higher and higher percentage of earnings is having to be spent on housing (whether rented or owned). There must be a tipping point.

[Tooj 17]

You wonder where it leaves a society when a higher and higher percentage of earnings is having to be spent on housing (whether rented or owned). There must be a tipping point.

 

Not if you're a Conservative sympathiser it doesn't.

[Park Life 71]

Economics based around housing bubbles is ridiculous and shows the lack of determination and real intelligence to build society. They bought credit cards in the time before that to get people spending (80's) got the whole nation into debt (the highest personal debt in the world iirc). The banks and the politicians are in this together, time to bring the Tower of London back into operation.

[Alex 35583]

 

Not if you're a Conservative sympathiser it doesn't.

Tbf Blair's / Brown's neo-liberal economic policies were in many ways a continuation of those of Thatcher before them. I commend them for having more on public services, which the Tories may not have done, but it was against the backdrop of a booming world economy which Britain benefitted. During that time they did very little to improve on a social housing crisis. Arguably their hands were tied by the events of the previous government but the same argument is then even more applicable to the current one given they have less money to work with. That's not to say I agree with many of their other policies.

[ewerk 31202]

You wonder where it leaves a society when a higher and higher percentage of earnings is having to be spent on housing (whether rented or owned). There must be a tipping point.

 

But think of all the virtual money home owners are making from rising house prices!

[ChezGiven 0]

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/11/global-house-prices

[ChezGiven 0]

Also, on the topic of conspiracy....

 

Theory: The U. S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Plan to Terrorize the U. S. PopulaceThe Joint Chiefs are the 5 generals and admirals in charge of the 5 branches of the U. S military. In 1962, those men were George Decker (Army), David Shoup (Marines), Georg Anderson, Jr. (Navy), Curtis LeMay (Air Force), and Edwin Roland (Coast Guard), along with a few others, all chaired by Lyman Lemnitzer (Army). The entire board of the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed, drafted, and agreed on a plan to concoct a casus belli for war against Communist Cuba, under Fidel Castro. Their collective motive was to reduce the constant threat of Communist encroachment into the Western Hemisphere, per the Monroe Doctrine.

 

This plan was named Operation Northwoods, and entailed the most impossibly indifferent cruelty ever envisioned by a government against its own people. In order to sway public sentiment in favor of the war, the Joint Chiefs planned to bomb high pedestrian-traffic areas in major American cities, including Miami, New York, Washington, D. C., and possibly Chicago and Los Angeles; to frame U. S. citizens for these bombings; to shoot innocent, unarmed civilians on the streets in full view of hundreds of witnesses; to napalm military and merchant vessels in port, while people were aboard; to sink vessels carrying Cuban refugees bound for Florida; to hijack planes for ransom.

 

Not only did every single member of the Joint Chiefs sign his approval of this plan, they then sent it to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara for his approval, and then to President Kennedy. McNamara claimed years later never to have seen it, but that he would have rejected it. Kennedy, however, did receive it, and promptly called a meeting of the Joint Chiefs, in which he threatened, with severe profanity, to court martial and incarcerate every one of them. The President cannot actually do this, but can order the Congress and military branches to do so, and in these circumstances, they most certainly would have. But Kennedy decided that it would cause irreparable disrespect around the world for the U. S. military. He did remove Lemnitzer from his position as Chairman and assign him as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, not much of a demotion.Theorists claim that the military may have had a hand in Kennedy’s assassination because of his blistering rebuke of the Joint Chiefs. This, however, remains unproven.

[ChezGiven 0]

I also like this one

 

Theory: The CIA’s Heart Attack Gun

 

This weapon exists. The CIA actually invented it with taxpayer money in the late 1960s to early 1970s. It was not disclosed until 1975, when Senator Frank Church displayed it to a subcommittee investigating the CIA’s illegal activities. They are specifically forbidden from directly killing anyone in the performance of espionage and intelligence-gathering. The gun was designed to be untraceable. It fires a bullet made of ice, about 0.11 inches wide, less than the diameter of a BB, which has been brushed with a minute amount of shellfish toxin. This toxin induces a myocardial infarction in any human, regardless of size or physical fitness. The bullet then melts leaving no trace of any kind. Autopsies would discover the presence of shellfish toxin in the bloodstream, but if the victim has died of a legitimate heart attack, unnaturally induced or not, an autopsy is unlikely. The entrance wound of the dart would appear about as minor as a mosquito bite.There is no consensus on who, if anyone, the CIA has assassinated with this gun, but it is most likely that they have used it. Theorists point to Andrew Breitbart, a conservative media mogul who published less than flattering stories and details about President Barack Obama. He had promised in the months prior to his death that he would publish proof that Obama’s presidency was illegitimate. Breitbart collapsed on the sidewalk in a Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles on 1 March 2012 and was taken to a hospital where he died of a massive heart attack at the age of 43, despite being relatively fine health. He was not seriously overweight, but the coroner report states that cardiomegaly caused his heart to fail.It is possible that the gun was used to assassinate Mark Pittman, the financial journalist who, in 2007, predicted the ongoing American economic recession, which was caused by subprime mortgaging. During the subsequent federal bailouts of major financial companies, Pittman famously sued the Federal Reserve for mishandling taxpayer money. The case is still on appeal. Pittman, however, died on 25 November 2009 in Yonkers, New York, in the very same circumstances as Breitbart. He was walking down the sidewalk and collapsed from a heart attack. He was 52. but possible victims notwithstanding, the heart attack gun does exist, and the CIA invented it. They could have had only one purpose in store for it. The conspiracy theorists got this one right.

[Alex 35583]

Here's a little nugget I heard recently about MI6. I'm not sure if it's true but I read about it on Adam Curtis' BBC blog (which is very interesting if you're a fucking massive dweeb and always seems well researched). He reckons that MI6 (bearing in mind it's their whole raison d'etre, or at least it was before the War on Terror © ) have never actually caught a spy by its own devices in its entire history Makes you wonder why we should trust anything they ever say about anything given that level of incompetence.

[Park Life 71]

Here's a little nugget I heard recently about MI6. I'm not sure if it's true but I read about it on Adam Curtis' BBC blog (which is very interesting if you're a fucking massive dweeb and always seems well researched). He reckons that MI6 (bearing in mind it's their whole raison d'etre, or at least it was before the War on Terror © ) have never actually caught a spy by its own devices in its entire history Makes you wonder why we should trust anything they ever say about anything given that level of incompetence.

Yeah they tend to catch their old operatives they've forgotten they 'turned' back in the day. Or protect 7/7 insiders lest the Americans get the truth out of em...

 

@ Chez...They cook that shit up all the time. Not much weirdness happens without one of the Agencies having something to do with it. Gulf of Tonkin is the other classic (to start the Vietnam war).

Edited August 1, 2014 by Park Life

[The Fish 10965]

Here's a little nugget I heard recently about MI6. I'm not sure if it's true but I read about it on Adam Curtis' BBC blog (which is very interesting if you're a fucking massive dweeb and always seems well researched). He reckons that MI6 (bearing in mind it's their whole raison d'etre, or at least it was before the War on Terror © ) have never actually caught a spy by its own devices in its entire history Makes you wonder why we should trust anything they ever say about anything given that level of incompetence.

 

Not being funny, but how often is it in their interests to actually "catch a spy"? When it's probably more valuable to trade that operative for whatever is their interests at the time?