Would you march for more affordable housing?

chucky

according to the Nationwide, FTBs in 1983 were paying £20,810 for their first property on average in the UK.

in London it was an average of £31,796
http://www.nationwide.co.uk/hpi/downloads/first_by.xls

you couldn't really read much with the Scotland figures as the Nationwide aren't really a Scottish based lender - someone correct me if i'm wrong though.

carolt

Yes

Harry_Powell wrote: »

£45k in 1985 is the equivalent of £107k in today's currency.
The average house price was £23,742.
The average income was £10,466.
The average mortgage loan was £20,260.
The interest rate in 1985 was 13%
Average repayment as a percentage of income was 19.9%

http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/chp/hfrtable/up02040ab.PDF

Gosh you're a mine of information.

Pobby

Yes

Marches! Demos! I remember them well. I was in the big fracas outside the US embassy as a student. Ho, Ho , Ho Chi Minh. Then anti cruise, rock against racism and So on. Last one was the poll tax. About 6 of us turned up in the pouring rain! Carol, I will march with you but might need a bit of a piggy back these days! Lol!

carolt

Yes

Excellent - sounds like a good laugh.

There was no way I would have marched against the war - knew several people from Iraq and Afghanistan and quite how appallingly awful life was for them before the war. Obviously, it's awful for their families now. Sigh.

But yes, I'm all up for a march on something I believe passionately in.

It would be both an opportunity to have ones points made - if not necessarily listened to - and have an excellent laugh at the same time.

You can ride in the pushchair when you get tired.

IveSeenTheLight

No

carolt wrote: »

So let's get this straight - your 'solution' is for everyone priced out of their areas to move to Aberdeen?

Are you sure this is entirely practical?

For so many reasons, please don't

carolt

Yes

For so many reasons, I definitely won't. :rolleyes:

moggylover

Yes

carolt wrote: »

Excellent - sounds like a good laugh.

There was no way I would have marched against the war - knew several people from Iraq and Afghanistan and quite how appallingly awful life was for them before the war. Obviously, it's awful for their families now. Sigh.

But yes, I'm all up for a march on something I believe passionately in.

It would be both an opportunity to have ones points made - if not necessarily listened to - and have an excellent laugh at the same time.

You can ride in the pushchair when you get tired.

It can also be a perfect opportunity to get bashed over the head with a truncheon or arrested though Carol;):D

captainhaggis

No

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Pretty much.

[rant]

I am sick to death of people denigrating property owners and sneering at "unearned wealth", and it's most often the non-property owners who do so.

It's so obvious that this is nothing more than the shallow "politics of envy"
nonsense that we so often hear form the same crowd.

"Luck, fortune, right place at right time"...... blah blah blah.

We all have choices to make in life. People that bought property took a risk, worked hard for it, and probably sacrificed a lot of other things to do so. And most of them gained as a result.

Many other people chose not to buy property, to instead p1ss away money in their 20's and then wake up one day to realise they could no longer afford a house. These people then expect an almighty crash to come along and save their bacon.

Well, tough !!!!!!....

They screwed up, they didn't buy, a significant correction occurred, bigger in percentage terms than the last crash, they got greedy and still didn't buy, and now they want to bleat about owners having "unearned income" or "paper wealth" and so the state should implement policies that would redistribute it to them.

Well sorry, thats not how things work.

They had their chance. It's not as if the advice to buy as young as you can hasn't been drilled into every youngster for at least my whole adult life. And no doubt for generations before as well. Everybody knows thats the right thing to do.

These crashaholics thought they could do better. They thought they could game the system. They thought it would be "different this time", that some magic fairness fairy would come along and reward them for being lazy, incompetent, and failing to plan for their future.

Well thats not going to happen.

Life isn't fair. Never has been, never will be.

If you can't afford a house where you live now, then move somewhere cheaper, or make more money.

Those are your only two choices.

[/rant]

(:D I feel much better now )

Excellent post, Hamish.

Like I said regarding HPI not being due to hard work but more being in the right place at the right time, I do wish to add that, at the moment, I'm paying high mortgages on my properties and the rents don't cover them. I make good money at my main job but not enough to pay for all the bills I have so, in order to be able to afford these properties and not find the banks banging on my door to take the keys away, I have to work another job.

I don't do many hours but every penny I make goes towards paying the shortfall for the properties I rent out. I get no pleasure from the extra money I earn.

Shouldn't I, therefore, be able to expect to make a few extra (thousand) quid when the time comes for me to sell them?

Again Hamish, great post.

captainhaggis

No

carolt wrote: »

For so many reasons, I definitely won't. :rolleyes:

What's wrong with Aberdeen?

boomerangs

Yes

captainhaggis wrote: »

What's wrong with Aberdeen?

Well for starters, it's in Scotland. Secondly Hamish McTroll lives there. I could go on....