Moneyweek's MS-W on why she decided to buy

Blacklight

I've seen this on two other sites now. I can't seem to find the old thread about her buying despite predicting further falls of 50% so excuse the new thread.

Her comments in the FT

Interestingly she blurts out the name of the street where she decided to buy her 3/4 four story, double fronted Georgian mansion in the center of Edinburgh.

And here it is

I can't be bothered to read all her drivel to find out when she decided to perform the mother of all u-turns but the latest figure from the land registry for that street is 12th May 2009. Do you know what they go for 'round Merryn's way'?

13 WINDSOR STREET
EDINBURGH
EH7 5LA
12-05-2009
£935,000

Does losing half a mil over the next six months sound like the kind of astute financial decision you'd expect from someone with her credentials? Or does it sound like someone with worries over inflation piling in before the prices rocket?

Jennifer_Jane

It sounds like someone who wants a home for her family. A place that they can make their own and live in for however many more years.

Nothing to do with investment.

novazombie

If it was an investment it is a very bad time to buy.

Even if she just wanted a home for her family she could get it cheaper in a yr or 2.

StevieJ

Jennifer_Jane wrote: »

It sounds like someone who wants a home for her family. A place that they can make their own and live in for however many more years.

Nothing to do with investment.

Sounds like a hypocrite.

dopester

Then one day he said he thought a house in Windsor Street would suit us very well. We said we doubted it. We had driven down it not long after we had arrived and agreed that if there was one street of Georgian townhouses we didn’t fancy much it was Windsor Street. It isn’t very pretty and it is on the wrong side of town. I wanted to live on the west side of Edinburgh in the sweet gentility of Stockbridge, not in the East End, surrounded by the hurly-burly of Leith Walk.

Those are some major compromises she has made. I'd rather make compromises on the house and its size and features, rather than compromise on choice of area.

Let the Stockbridge crash commence.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

I absolutely loathe and detest this idiotic woman.

When we first moved to Edinburgh 18 months ago, the last thing my husband and I wanted was to buy a house. It seemed perfectly obvious that the house price crash had really only just begun and my oft-stated view (in the FT and in Moneyweek) was that prices would end the cycle a good 30 per cent down from their level at the time.

Oh yes..... Perfectly obvious.

And amazingly, that was when the crash was ending.

So how well did that all work out???

We figured that it wouldn’t be too tough to find a nice Georgian townhouse in Edinburgh within our budget. After all, the Scottish capital survives mostly on the cash that comes in from the public and financial sectors and, with both of those in trouble and the mortgage market crunched, we expected desperate sellers to pour out of the woodwork the second we set up our www.primelocation.co.uk alert for five bedrooms and a garden.

They didn’t.

Instead, there was almost nothing on the market and what there was listed was so grossly overpriced that it just sat there.


But even as I seethed with frustration with Edinburgh’s complacent homeowners and their utter failure to accept the macro-economics of the situation (bank crises lead to credit crunches, which lead to house price falls),

:rotfl:

There really is a God.....

a few other people seemed to be finding houses – and often houses I hadn’t even known were for sale.
I started asking how. The answer was almost always Matthew. Matthew turned out to be Matthew Sinclair of search agents Saint Property. That’s when I realised I was missing a trick. What on earth were we thinking, conducting the most important and expensive purchase we were ever going to make, in a local market we barely knew, without taking any professional advice whatsoever?

!!!!!!?????

In one paragraph, she admits both that the best houses were still selling without ever even hitting the market in the middle of the worst financial crisis in a century or so..... And also that she has absolutely no clue about buying houses.

Yet that odious crash-ramping sanctimonious shrew has the audacity to preach at all and sundry from the pages of Moneyweek, when she can't even follow her own advice successfully.

Words abso-f*cking-lutely fail me.

:mad:

Graham_Devon

I'm not really sure what the problem is here.

She openly states at the end that she thinks it's probably the worst investment decision they have ever made.

However, she also states they think it's right for their family and they found the right house for them.

So, they found a home, they paid for it, but think prices will fall. Basically that's not too much of an issue, because it's a home. They were in a flat they hated, and it was dragging them down, so went looking for what they wanted.

What's the actual problem people have with this?

Dirk_Rambo

the woman is an absolute babe. has anyone got her phone number

Emy1501

Graham_Devon wrote: »

I'm not really sure what the problem is here.

She openly states at the end that she thinks it's probably the worst investment decision they have ever made.

However, she also states they think it's right for their family and they found the right house for them.

So, they found a home, they paid for it, but think prices will fall. Basically that's not too much of an issue, because it's a home. They were in a flat they hated, and it was dragging them down, so went looking for what they wanted.

What's the actual problem people have with this?

The question is does she really believe what she is saying? I suspect she only partly does. I beleive prices will fall maybe 10-15% further but I'm nowhere near 100% sure and I doubt she is 100% sure of further falls. I supect she hedged her bets buying and is partly saving face.

nearlynew

Dirk_Rambo wrote: »

the woman is an absolute babe. has anyone got her phone number

I have but I promised her I wouldn't give it out to strangers.

Dirk_Rambo

good on ya nearly. i just hope you fully realize what a lucky man you are