Sky News now interest rates and housing.

julieq

There's no evidence at all that rising interest rates will cause mass repossessions. What they would cause is a contraction in the economy generally which would be bad for everyone at the moment.

It seems to be a bear staple that the entire population is living on the edge of disaster such that one small increase in monthly expenditure will tip them into an abyss because of spending on housing and flatscreen TVs. It's rubbish.

You've had the crash. It's done and dusted. You're going to get stagnation now for a bit until confidence picks up and lending increases. The cuts won't be nearly as devastating as people believe, bearing in mind redundancies are spread over time and a great many are from natural wastage. And interest rates can go up 8 fold and we're just back to historically normal base rates. Why would that hurt anyone particularly?

The unfortunate truth for the young is that they will see a global rebalancing of living standards, which inevitably will see them having to settle for less than previous generations who were benefitting from much cheaper raw materials and resources and not in competition with harder working nations for their slice of the pie. You may not like that, but that doesn't make it less true.

I'm currently in the Far East and looking out from my hotel window I can see a mixture of luxury and extreme poverty. I passed essentially a corrugated iron shanty town a couple of days ago. So when I read the complaints about our young people only being able to afford a small house with postage stamp garden, and isn't that awful, I do think it's time for a bit of a wake up call on the level of entitlement thinking we have in the UK. A good standard of living is a luxury, not a right.

Running_Horse

B_Blank wrote: »

I want rates to go up, people to get repossed, and house prices to crash. Call me selfish if you like but I couldnt give a !!!!.

Nobody is going to "reposs" me, because I have spent my interest rate cut windfall on reducing debt, and my mortgage is half what rent would be.

You are selfish.

AD9898_2

Julie you miss the point, IR rises would hurt many people, let's not forget many households have dropped onto SVRs who can't remortgage due to NE, credit scores or simply don't have the equity to get a good deal.

The question is how many are there ? As prices are set at the margins it wouldn't take that many with transactions already at an all time low to quickly shift the market further into reverse.

People seem to underestimate the difference between IRs in 2007 when credit was freely available and now when it's not.

Dan:_4

B_Blank wrote: »

I want rates to go up, people to get repossed, and house prices to crash. Call me selfish if you like but I couldnt give a !!!!.

They had they day in the sun with their nice house they couldnt afford, a crash is required.

Doubt it will happen, but at least we are getting a slow slide in house prices even before the cuts take effect or interest rates rise.

A double whammy of IR rises and the cuts starting from april should see some tasty falls in house prices late this year. Cant wait.

Instead of lazing around on this forum praying for a housing crash, your time may well be better spent re-training for a job which pays a decent salary - you are much more likely to obtain your dream of home ownership this way.

Sibley

There's no evidence at all that rising interest rates will cause mass repossessions. What they would cause is a contraction in the economy generally which would be bad for everyone at the moment.

It seems to be a bear staple that the entire population is living on the edge of disaster such that one small increase in monthly expenditure will tip them into an abyss because of spending on housing and flatscreen TVs. It's rubbish.

You've had the crash. It's done and dusted. You're going to get stagnation now for a bit until confidence picks up and lending increases. The cuts won't be nearly as devastating as people believe, bearing in mind redundancies are spread over time and a great many are from natural wastage. And interest rates can go up 8 fold and we're just back to historically normal base rates. Why would that hurt anyone particularly?

The unfortunate truth for the young is that they will see a global rebalancing of living standards, which inevitably will see them having to settle for less than previous generations who were benefitting from much cheaper raw materials and resources and not in competition with harder working nations for their slice of the pie. You may not like that, but that doesn't make it less true.

I'm currently in the Far East and looking out from my hotel window I can see a mixture of luxury and extreme poverty. I passed essentially a corrugated iron shanty town a couple of days ago. So when I read the complaints about our young people only being able to afford a small house with postage stamp garden, and isn't that awful, I do think it's time for a bit of a wake up call on the level of entitlement thinking we have in the UK. A good standard of living is a luxury, not a right.

That really is a great post.

Running_Horse

julieq wrote: »

You've had the crash. It's done and dusted. You're going to get stagnation now for a bit until confidence picks up and lending increases.

I suspect this to be the case. It feels like the 90s all over again.

I was in negative equity for years and just got used to it, then suddenly every time a house sold in my road it seemed I had another £10,000 of equity. Took £120,000 to my new place when I finally sold.

People here will wet their knickers over every 0.2% annual rise or fall in prices, but owning a house is for the long term, and not likely to affect me until I downsize in 15 years to put my daughter through university. By then the mortgage will be just a memory.

PasturesNew

When most people got their mortgages, IR were higher, so they're used to them.
When many people got their mortgages, it was at a time when rates were rising and expected to go higher.
Not everybody with a mortgage has a biggun.
There is a 7:1 ratio of savers:borrowers, savers have been hit by losing interest income, making a huge difference to many in their standard of living (e.g. for me that interest would pay rent on a flat, without it I can't really afford to rent and don't want to spend my savings directly on rent as that's house buying money).

Higher interest rates aren't new, they're the norm. How quickly people become 'accustomed' to hand outs.

B_Blank

julieq wrote: »

There's no evidence at all that rising interest rates will cause mass repossessions. What they would cause is a contraction in the economy generally which would be bad for everyone at the moment.

It seems to be a bear staple that the entire population is living on the edge of disaster such that one small increase in monthly expenditure will tip them into an abyss because of spending on housing and flatscreen TVs. It's rubbish.

You've had the crash. It's done and dusted. You're going to get stagnation now for a bit until confidence picks up and lending increases. The cuts won't be nearly as devastating as people believe, bearing in mind redundancies are spread over time and a great many are from natural wastage. And interest rates can go up 8 fold and we're just back to historically normal base rates. Why would that hurt anyone particularly?

The unfortunate truth for the young is that they will see a global rebalancing of living standards, which inevitably will see them having to settle for less than previous generations who were benefitting from much cheaper raw materials and resources and not in competition with harder working nations for their slice of the pie. You may not like that, but that doesn't make it less true.

I'm currently in the Far East and looking out from my hotel window I can see a mixture of luxury and extreme poverty. I passed essentially a corrugated iron shanty town a couple of days ago. So when I read the complaints about our young people only being able to afford a small house with postage stamp garden, and isn't that awful, I do think it's time for a bit of a wake up call on the level of entitlement thinking we have in the UK. A good standard of living is a luxury, not a right.

What you forget is that when all the 50+ people get into retirement and demand their huge pensions in their massive houses which they wont sell without completely ripping the person off then they will be relying on the young working people for their pension. And that remains true for people who have investments as a pension, for people who have private pensions, and for people who have public pensions. They are all going to rely on young working people in our country.

So the question you have to ask yourself is this: Do you think we(the young people) are going to be happy paying massive pensions and rents to fund the baby boomers retirement whilst (as you put it) we are going to face a decline in living standards? I think not. So your attitude is fine, and you say young people should get over it, but if we arent helped more, and wealth isnt rebalanced from older people to younger people then the ones who will suffer in the end will be the baby boomers.

I, for one, will not be happy paying high taxes to fund the retirement of a generation who have had it so good, amd wh are hoarding alot of the land in the country.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

PasturesNew wrote: »

.
There is a 7:1 ratio of savers:borrowers, .

PN, I don't normally disagree with you, but as far as I can tell this is an urban myth. Yes, it's repeated in the media on occasion, but it's still a myth.

Worse, it's particularly easy to deconstruct because it's just obviously false given the widely published stats on mortgages and population.

There are 11.5 million mortgages alone.

With 61 million people in the county, including children, then just based on mortgage debt the ratio could be no better than around 5 to 1.

When you include the fact that many of those mortgages are held by couples, increasing the number of debtors beyond the number of mortgages, it's going to be more like 3:1.

Now subtract children...... Maybe 2:1 at this point.

Now add in all the non-homeowners with debt...... The homeowners with no mortgage but other debt, etc etc etc

I'd suggest if you're talking about adults, the ratio is 1:1 if you're lucky....... But I'd actually think the number of people with debt of some type is a majority of the adult population.

Running_Horse

B_Blank wrote: »

What you forget is that when all the 50+ people get into retirement and demand their huge pensions in their massive houses

{Snip}

So the question you have to ask yourself is this: Do you think we(the young people) are going to be happy paying massive pensions and rents to fund the baby boomers retirement

Not everyone over 50 has a huge pension or a massive house to sell.

When you (the young people) stop moaning how unfair everything is, you might realise how lucky you are to be living in the most priveliged generation in history.

Would you rather go back twenty years when thousands of elderly froze to death and couldn't get an operation?

Why are people who haven't earned a decent life yet, so unpleasant?