Nice people thread 2 - now even nicer

carolt

michaels wrote: »

But does Hamish and his back story really ring true?

If Hamish is really trying to influence the housing market let alone the election on a poxy forum (sorry mse!) where no more than a few hundred people a week read his outpourings, then I think he is wasting his time, frankly.

Unless his activity is duplicated under the same/different names on many, many other forums, I can't see it having any measureable impact.

Believe me, if I thought my posting on here could change the direction of house prices (not so bothered about the election), then I'd do it a lot more than I do currently.

I think Hamish is just one of many messengers - he's not the message, and doesn't create it either.

silvercar

If forums are mostly negative, I would have thought that is because people with an axe to grind, grind it. I doubt that the overall forums' opinions reflect the real world where, for the people with no axes to grind, this is a non issue.

Sure if you are looking to buy a home and they are more than you can afford it becomes an issue. If you are troubled by negative equity and want to sell its an issue. Forum jabber away. But for the rest of the population, they will be more interested in the effect of the economy in general or specifically the effect of interest rates on their mortgage. Unless you want to buy or sell iminently, house prices are a boring topic.

carolt

Aah, but you surely give the lie to your own argument, silvercar?

After all, you're still posting gamely on here, and AFAIK, fall into neither category.

Mr.Brown_4

I think it's interesting that since I started posting house prices have fallen and Macdonald burger sales have risen.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Mr.Brown wrote: »

I think it's interesting that since I started posting house prices have fallen and Macdonald burger sales have risen.

I think it's interesting that since I started posting house prices have risen and Beer sales have fallen.

There's more than one pub landlord in Aberdeen cursing the day MSE was invented....:rotfl:

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

michaels wrote: »

Hamish and the butterfly effect

I flap my gums, and 6 months later a buyer in Rotherham pays an extra £3K for a house.

Nice.:D

I feel a bit bad about posting this as I know Mr H already has trouble getting his head through the door but I was wondering if he may end up writing his memoir about how a party hack turned an election through the power of online communities.

:rotfl:

Could one person writing on a few forums change perceptions enough to revive the housing market and then swing the entire political pendulum? I postulate that prior to Hamish most forums were almost universally negative and ths would self reinforce sentiment and in turn ripple out to the real world. Hamish arrives and starts posting upbeat but 'sensible' (key bit here - no point being OTT or unsubstantiated as he needs to be seen to engage in discussion not just get ignored). Gradually he turns sentiment on house prices just by making it appear that there are 2 viewpoints rather than just negativity so there becomes a middle vaguely optimistic position for others to hold. And having achieved this for house prices he is ideally placed to start linking political arguments to his outlook along the lines of 'Like what you are seeing on housing, the Tories might wreck it whereas Labour will try and sustain it'.

So if you are a hack and this has been a deliberately orchestrated campaign I take my hat of to you 'Mr McTavish' from 'Aberdeen'.

It's an interesting hypothesis, but I think you overlook the obvious.

HPC and here, the only two forums I've posted on re house prices, are absolutely meaningless in terms of impacting the wider housing market.

A couple of hundred active posters on hpc, and a couple of dozen here, can have absolutely no influence on pricing when there are currently 90,000 or so houses being sold every month.

Much as I would enjoy basking in the glory of singlehandedly being responsible for the turnaround in the housing market, the fact is that I just like to argue. And arguing about house prices or the economy is far less tedious, and much easier to research, than arguing about other equally contentious topics like global warming or religion.

wageslave

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

I think it's interesting that since I started posting house prices have risen and Beer sales have fallen.

There's more than one pub landlord in Aberdeen cursing the day MSE was invented....:rotfl:

I doubt that it is just in Aberdeen.

MSE seems to keep a lot of men off the streets. Of course they aren't actually paying any more attention to their wives and families.

It is however keeping them away from the remote control so it is all good;)

carolt

To be fair, wageslave, most of us on this thread are female... even if we are debating the truly important things in life like good music, chocolate and boots, rather than the tedious things like house prices.

SingleSue

Well I think everyone on this part of the forum are very nice.......and so do my boys.

Heyman_2

It's like a forum within a forum that's immune from being moved t'Arms with all the rest of the....actually I'll stop there because it's supposed to be a nice people thread. :eek::p