58% of properties can be bought by "average income"

moggylover

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Bailed out more than others. I think your underestimating how big the 4 major banks are, and the effect that the demise of RBS and HBOS would have had on London as a financial centre.

I am not underestimating anything at all. Had RBS and HBOS been allowed to fall, then as I said the domino effect would have been alarming. I believe you are underestimating the effect that this would have had Worldwide, just as the banks underestimated the effect that the US banking failures would knock on to them;)

My personal feeling is that had we actually allowed the fall of the UK and US banks then we might well have been looking at banking armagedon and a part of me believes that this would have been a good thing and might have brought about some radical changes that would have been good for the entire World.

At the moment, the status-quo has been preserved. I'm just not convinced that the banking fraternity has learnt any kind of a lesson from their debacle or how long it will take them to !!!!-up again or whether it will even be possible to bail them out next time, either here, in the US, or elsewhere.

Unfortunately, so long as there remain a large number of people willing to blame Government and not financiers and a large number of people who are still willing to live their lives permanently in hock to afford flim-flam and rubbish, and major companies whose debts are equal to or greater than their assets, then I think we are going to continue to walk a fine line between the status-quo and financial hari-kari:D

IveSeenTheLight

Really2 wrote: »

The only think I can see is stamp duty so in reality even if property was booming at the time all these things would have still been done (with the exception of stamp duty)?

Discussing stamp duty, there is an argument that the threshold should be higher.
Not just a temporary absolution but an increase from where stamp duty starts.
Of course the government are reluctant to do so as it reduces their tax revenue and if they did, some would state that they are artificially stimulating the market.

The truth is that if the percentage of properties bought by FTBers incurring stamp duty was to be maintained with periods of the past, that stamp duty thresholds have to rise or more unlikely that house prices need to reduce in line with the current tax levels.