450k for a three bed flat-madness ! Now these people face ruin.

Surely there are enough bulls out there to want to take over these positions and help those who find themselves unable to buy? After all property is a one way bet. Just the rental yield on those flats must be worth a fortune, and the capital appreciation over a month or so will easily make up any shortfall.

Step forward Hamish, Chucky, ISTL, etc. These people need some practical help from people who believe in the propery market.

Just strikes you how it's the young who are paying the price. They probably had advice of "buy now or you will never get on the ladder"...I know I did, but chose not to buy out of my depth, hence SA.

You don't get 20 something landlords in general, you just get these people facing financial ruin while the generation before them tried to hoard money for their own children, while financially ruining their peers children to try and do it.

Generali wrote: »

I took a financial risk and it didn't pay off in going to run a hedge fund. I'm getting on with things, perhaps these people would be better off doing rather than whinging.

To be fair, faced with a no win situation they may as well fight their corner. Nothing to lose and if they get enough publicity they may well force a climbdown to some extent or other. Developers won't want bad publicity around the idea off plan purchases, they'll want to try and sign people up. In practical terms all they'll end up is the deposit and whatever else they can get by bankrupting the buyer, it's not really in anyone's interest.

I don't on the other hand think that it would be a good thing if that happened.

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Just strikes you how it's the young who are paying the price. They probably had advice of "buy now or you will never get on the ladder"...I know I did, but chose not to buy out of my depth, hence SA.

You don't get 20 something landlords in general, you just get these people facing financial ruin while the generation before them tried to hoard money for their own children, while financially ruining their peers children to try and do it.

Every generation will have a small minority facing 'financial ruin' for one reason or another, with one of the reasons often being poor decisions made.

I don't disagree with what you're saying in one way Graham, but you're using emotive rhetoric to give an impression that there's a whole generation of people who have lost hundreds of thousands at the hands of the greedy previous generation. Which isn't the case for most, is it?

I get bombarded with bad financial advice every day: take out this credit / store card, consoladte your loans in to one easy payment, buy this flat for £99 deposit today, join an internet forum, etc. etc. Doesn't mean I need to follow any of it.

Generali wrote: »

The buyers took a risk and it didn't pay off. I am sympathetic towards these people as they find themselves in horrible positions but if the flats had risen in value they'd hardly have been clamouring to pay the seller more money.

I do feel for them and agree the contracts are often weighted very much in the favour of the developers. But these people signed that agreement.

But think the above point is key. How many of these people bought off plan because they thought their flats would have made them money in that time? Nobody would have been supporting the developers if in times of HPI they wanted people to stump up extra above the agreed price would they