Interesting article on falling house prices and the 'wealth effect'

mr.broderick

Pobby wrote: »

Sorry brodders, forgot you were in the motor trade. Seriously, how are you finding sales at the moment. Most of my customers are really struggling right now. Hmmm, long gone are the days of £50k a year. Goodness knows what it will be this year. Glad Mrs. P is working right now.

Lynz, interested in what your thoughts are about Reading prices. Born and bred in Berkshire here and when i go to Reading I am gob smacked at the prices. Areas that you really would have thoght twice about 25 years ago are ferching stupid amounts of money. It`s violent, chavvy, congested, certainly not the place of my youth.

We are bucking the trend and doing well to be fair.
Never earned 50K most i have earned is £39700, but normally around the £35k mark.

RecoveringAlcoholic

I recall reading that the average cost of a white wedding was £15,000, the same as the average cost of a divorce!

Davesnave

Conrad wrote: »

I Thinking back over the years it seems a lot of my wealthier clients are in fact drivers of old Volvo estates and keep a very low profile.

Mmm... there was a 'banger' thread on MSE a few weeks ago, where we all extolled the joys of driving virtually depreciation-free. Despite never paying much for cars, I can honestly say that I've needed the rescue service only once in 37 years, and that was a mile from home. I guess that makes my annual subscription terrible value though!

Two elderly friends that we visit own beautiful properties, set in acres of land, but they drive the most basic old vehicles. If you go inside their houses, everything is clean & tidy, yet old and functional rather than ostentatious. These folk only replace things when they stop working, so they must have quite a light environmental touch. It was just the way things used to be years ago, and they obviously haven't felt the need to change.

SouthCoast

And a RightMove link @ £1,650,000

LARGE DETACHED HOUSE FORMERLY THE HOME OF LORD AND LADY DELFONT WITH ALL PRINCIPLE ROOMS SOUTH FACING OVER LANDSCAPED GARDENS WITH INDEPENDENT STAFF BUNGALOW AND ANNEXE COTTAGE ALL SET IN APPROXIMATELY 4 ACRES OF GROUNDS INCLUDING FORMAL GARDENS AND PADDOCKS.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-22700318.rsp?pa_n=1&tr_t=buy

Dithering_Dad

Davesnave wrote: »

Mmm... there was a 'banger' thread on MSE a few weeks ago, where we all extolled the joys of driving virtually depreciation-free. Despite never paying much for cars, I can honestly say that I've needed the rescue service only once in 37 years, and that was a mile from home. I guess that makes my annual subscription terrible value though!

Cars are so much more reliable these days, especially Japanese and German ones. Our Toyota will probably out live us .

We only have one car and it can be a bit of a pain sometimes, but it's much better to have only one car mouldering and depreciating on the driveway that two or three.

Maybe I'm just not that into cars. I do love watching Top Gear and I do like the look of BMW's and Lexus' cars but I just couldn't bring myself to empty our savings account to buy one. I guess if most of my neighbours bought with cash instead of credit and went to the dealership with a sack of money that they'd saved up to 5 years for, probably none of them would come away with a fancy car either.

Pobby

You are certainly right about German and Japanese cars being reliable. Mrs P, 2 years ago had an Almeria, was written off by some guy after just under 3 weeks of owning it, then a Toyota, ummm just had that one written off , no fault again. Now we are back to an Almeria.

My trusty 2001 Omega gives me great service. 2 years old, it cost me about a quarter of its price new. Happy with that.

SingleSue

DD, I am one like you, I look at all these nice cars and think "ooohhh that would be nice", then I look at the price and think "Yeah but I can get a nice second hand runabout for a fraction of the cost".

My ex hubby wanted a watch...not just any watch but one which would cost £1400 :eek: . For some unknown reason, he could not quite get my arguement about it being just a watch....and he could get one for £2.99 off the market which would work equally well and be less likely to be stolen.

He went against my wishes and instead of putting a deposit down on it (his own money which he had spirited away from a bonus nstead of helping out with household bills) and then asking people to give him money for his birthday, he went ahead and took finance on the blooming thing! He also couldn't understand why I chased him down the hallway with a frying pan when he got home :rotfl: .

Our wedding was a lavish looking affair but in reality it was done on the cheap (do you see a pattern here? I am a bit tight when it comes to money!), my wedding dress was £187 (shoes etc thrown in for nothing), we had a sit down reception for 75 people and an evening reception for 150, buffet included (Cost £1100 - my parents fault, they gave me a £1000 budget and I did a package from the hotel which would have cost £584 but they wanted to be snobs and improved the package!) we borrowed a vintage car from a relative and had a horse and carriage which worked out cheaper than hiring a car.

I could go on but it would only bore you ..well those still awake at this point anyway :rotfl: but suffice to say, for what we had - Top hat and tails wedding with full reception, it was done for a fraction of the price it should have been due to my tightness and bargain hunting and none of it was done with loans but paid off over the year we gave ourselves to plan it.

My ex got married again recently - he took out nearly 10k in loans to pay for it.... I was horrified!

Jonbvn

SouthCoast wrote: »

And a RightMove link @ £1,650,000



http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-22700318.rsp?pa_n=1&tr_t=buy

Don't you just love the grass in the dining room?;)

Dithering_Dad

Jonbvn wrote: »

Don't you just love the grass in the dining room?;)

Astro turf, surely?

How nice would that dining room be if the owners had even a modicum of good taste?

Jonbvn

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

Astro turf, surely?

How nice would that dining room be if the owners had even a modicum of good taste?

To be fair DD, I get the impression from some of the photographs that this may be the a sale of a very elderly (or maybe deceased) persons property. Have a look at some of the furniture in the other photographs.....