How buy-to-let turned into a mug’s game

neverdespairgirl

dopester wrote: »

Cram in with friends to share costs, lodgers, caravans, back to parents, turn to DSS (who will also have less money to meet high rents/accommodation costs).
.

I have a (single, childless) mate in Chambers who has rented the same flat for 4 years, now. She's given notice on it. It's a very swanky 1 bed, with roof terrace, and she's decided to down-swank a bit. Can't be the only one.

Pssst

I have no sympathy for BTL landlords. All that many of them have done is engaged in the social experiment of allowing certain people to live in houses and areas that they previously could not afford,thereby blighting the homes and areas of hard working people. This is a generalisation but one with more than a grain of truth.

carolt

Never betted on anything in my life, but with quidco etc keeping offering me money to bet, how do I go about it?

Betting on falling house-prices seems like a bit of a no-brainer!

stevetodd

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

What does "flat book" mean?

It means betting to 100% ie no profit margin. Whereas betting broke means betting to less than 100%, believe it or not I have actually been standing in front of a bookmaker's board and told him that he was betting to 95% his unbelievable response was they (the punters) still have to pick the winner. He didn't last long on the racecourse.

WTF?_2

Pssst wrote: »

I have no sympathy for BTL landlords. All that many of them have done is engaged in the social experiment of allowing certain people to live in houses and areas that they previously could not afford,thereby blighting the homes and areas of hard working people. This is a generalisation but one with more than a grain of truth.

With the effective end of council housing (new stock not being built to replace the sold off stuff and to meet new demand) someone had to take up provision of rental properties.

The problem here is the amateur LLs tempted in by property !!!!!! programmes and the media in general telling them that they couldn't lose. And facilitated by lenders that should have known better than to give them the cash to speculate.

These are the idiots who bid up normal family homes - most professional LLs would have went for properties with better margins but these fools figured that buying up prime residential housing stock at values that gave them negative cashflow made sense.

End result: Would be FTBers having to borrow absolutely silly amounts to own their first house or having to rent it instead with their moron landlord making a loss on the rent.

Max_Headroom_3

brit1234 wrote: »

At its best, punterism inspires shrewd individuals to tuck into free lunches that others disdain. Some pioneers become multi-millionaires. That triggers the related phenomenon of mug punterism, in which rash wannabes rush in after the original window of opportunity has closed. They come spectacularly unstuck pour encourager les autres.

That sums it up perfectly for me. I know people who saw others success in buying property to rent that then doubled in value and thought "I'll have some of that".

But it had happened by then, it's almost like seeing someone win the lottery and thinking "cool, I'll use those numbers and win next week, it worked for them".

I remember urging people to look forwards, not backwards. If property went up so much in the past, what's it likely to do next? Who's going to pay for it? There's only so much income in the country underpinning these prices.

The trouble is that people saw what they wanted to see. A financial elevator with no top floor that just kept going up and up.

Madness.

kennyboy66_2

JonnyBravo wrote: »

Just looked thru my posts and found I actually put this on in April!!! Quite late really looking back.

Ah the benefit of hindsight.

Just seen it was kennyboy66 who tipped it.... he still posts round here I think. Cheers kennyboy66

You're welcome!
I'm glad you got on
I think from memory 0-10% fall was also 5/6 when I placed my bet.

Only wish I had a small fun bet on 20% - although I think you are right it will fall just short.

GDB2222

stevetodd wrote: »

It means betting to 100% ie no profit margin. Whereas betting broke means betting to less than 100%, believe it or not I have actually been standing in front of a bookmaker's board and told him that he was betting to 95% his unbelievable response was they (the punters) still have to pick the winner. He didn't last long on the racecourse.

If there were more than a couple of horses, could you actually work that out in your head?

stevetodd

GDB2222 wrote: »

If there were more than a couple of horses, could you actually work that out in your head?

yes its' easy I know the figure for each odds that adds up to a 100% book, ie for example 7/4 is 36% etc. you just run down their board adding up these figures. Although nowadays the computer software that bookies use does this automatically.

I had a racecourse bookmaking business for quite a few years (1979 to 2008), mainly on a part time basis as I was also a chartered surveyor. Believe me it is not true what they say about bookies, I have seen plenty poor ones.

kennyboy66_2

GDB2222 wrote: »

If there were more than a couple of horses, could you actually work that out in your head?

A good old fashioned bookmaker should be able to within seconds.

You just need to know what each of the odds convert to in % terms. ie 3/1 = 25%, 11/8 = 42.1% etc

I could do it up to a field of say 9 or 10, however it would probably take me a couple of minutes, by which time the price would probably have changed.