I can't stand the doom crew anymore

Jonbvn

mr_magoo wrote: »

More Doom and Gloom if anyone interested,

US stocks down 300 points tonight

Don't you just love it !

Are you completely nuts, or perhaps this is the Anarchists R'us board?

Do you really want the global economy to go disappear down the plug-hole? You will be able to afford a house then, but don't worry the money you have saved for a deposit will not be worth the paper it is printed on.

carolt

boyse7en wrote: »

The idea that, at some Utopian point in the past, FTBs didn't worry about the mortgage and had money spare to go for nights out doesn't tally with my memories of either my parent's struggles to make ends meet when I was a child (1970s), nor my own experiences of buying my first house back in the early 1990s. It was no holidays, old cars, cycling to work, no take-aways, no restaurants, hand-me-down clothes, etc.

It has always been difficult to afford to buy a house, whether it was in the 70s, 80s, 90s or 00s

Rubbish. I know lots who bought their own places in the early/middle 90's with no effort at all. You must have been on a really paltry wage or desperately overstretched yourself to find it that hard.

Jonbvn

carolt wrote: »

Rubbish. I know lots who bought their own places in the early/middle 90's with no effort at all. You must have been on a really paltry wage or desperately overstretched yourself to find it that hard.

Or maybe you know lots of well paid people with good jobs?;)

Only trying to keep things balanced......

WTF?_2

For the average person, buying a house always entailed belt-tightening and sensible budgeting to balance the debt-servicing commitment of a mortgage with incomings.

However, that's where it stops. With suitable budgeting (including borrowing only what you can afford to pay back) you then just adjust your lifestyle, pay the mortgage and your main worry is that you lose your income.

Such were the mental prices and loony lending (hence barmy borrowing) of the last few years that virtually no amount of sensible budgeting was going to be enough to live within your means once you came off the short-term fixed-rate part of the mortgage and on to SVR.

Also, many people deliberately stretched themselves beyond their means to pay on the basis that they could make up the shortfall in cost of living from credit short-term and that a booming house market would bail them out by quickly giving them decent amounts of equity which could then be used to refinance the original loan at more favourable terms. Because " House prices only ever go up, innit?" - a commonly held misconception perpetuated by the mass media.


That's the key difference this time around - lots of people have taken on board simply un-serviceable levels of debt.

vigesimal

Jonbvn wrote: »

Are you completely nuts, or perhaps this is the Anarchists R'us board?

Do you really want the global economy to go disappear down the plug-hole?

Nobody wants that. But sometimes, giving the tree a little shake and letting those people who tried to grab all the fruit for themselves, fall off, is not a bad thing.

Jonbvn

vigesimal wrote: »

Nobody wants that. But sometimes, giving the tree a little shake and letting those people who tried to grab all the fruit for themselves, fall off, is not a bad thing.

A reasonable analogy. Thanks!

Dan:_4

carolt wrote: »

Rubbish. I know lots who bought their own places in the early/middle 90's with no effort at all. You must have been on a really paltry wage or desperately overstretched yourself to find it that hard.

So how come you didn't buy during this period, if it was so easy?

Max_Headroom_3

carolt wrote: »

Rubbish. I know lots who bought their own places in the early/middle 90's with no effort at all. You must have been on a really paltry wage or desperately overstretched yourself to find it that hard.

To be fair though, that was a brief period of time as extreme as recent times for house prices, but for entirely the opposite reason. Prices were absolutely on the floor.

If you were fortunate enough to be in a position to be a first time buyer at that particular moment in time, then great. If not it's not much use pointing at one specific extreme downward blip and saying "well if you had been...".

carolt

I agree that's true to a degree, but I was responding specifically to boyse7en's post, where he was talking about 'buying my first house back in the early 1990s'. I was disagreeing with him that it was hard then - not that it has never been hard.

boyse7en

Thanks CaroleT, I must have forgotten the lavish parties and new cars that I was buying while I was paying the 2p per month mortgage on my first house:rolleyes:

Obviously you had friends richer than I was in those days, which is fine for them. It was fine for me too, as I managed to afford to save a deposit and pay the repayments (on an endowment mortgage, but that was another story), by scrimping and saving, but the idea that it was easy for everyone to buy is ludicrous.

It is harder for FTBs now, and house prices are daft compared to wages, but that doesn't mean that everyone could waltz into an Estate Agent and flop their wad on table and have their pick of properties in the past either.