Preparedness for when

Charis

Twenty years ago, after my husband died I sold our family home in London for £70K, and moved twice. The second time I took out an additional £35K mortgage to buy a bungalow in a modest market town. I made the mistake, this afternoon, of looking up the price of a similar house to the one we had, in a not very nice area of London, only to find that it's now [STRIKE]worth[/STRIKE] priced at about 50% more than my current property, without considering the mortgage (which I scrimped for and paid back in eight years instead of 25).

Who on earth can afford to buy a home in East London, where an ordinary terraced house now sells for almost £400,000? Of course my generation ('baby boomers' :mad:) gets the blame for the situation but, like Mrs L, we got by by going without. I wouldn't move back even if the rent was free, but I do miss my sons, who had to move away to find work.

GreyQueen

Frugalsod, I was holding in my mind one particular neighbour who is unemployed despite an in-demand skill-set because his bad temper causes him to row with his employers and occasionally punch them. He loses a succession of jobs, spends every lunch time in W and has made several visits to the food bank because he hasn't got grocery money.

Bit different from Joe and Joephine Ordinary having a modest treat, to my way of thinking.

He's not the only one from this block drinking their dole money down there, either.

[Deleted User]

Oh my I've just been passed an article in the Telegraph today in the business section that has made my hackles raise somewhat. It's not just the house prices in the London area that are raised and unrealistic this article is about a brewery chain that has pubs all over the country including in this village!!! The boss of this firm has admitted that they serve better quality vegetables, salads, fish, burgers and steaks to people who live in london'to make them more premium and worthy of spending a bit more on in terms of quality', lovely, since when did the residents of the capital become deemed more worthy and therefore entitled to the best quality on offer while the rest of get 'these articles would also be served in the rest of the country but would not be premium or special event' it would appear therefore that ALL MEN ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS. The brewery chains shares have fallen in value on the stock exchange today, Oh I do wonder why that has happened???

Frugalsod

GreyQueen wrote: »

Frugalsod, I was holding in my mind one particular neighbour who is unemployed despite an in-demand skill-set because his bad temper causes him to row with his employers and occasionally punch them. He loses a succession of jobs, spends every lunch time in W and has made several visits to the food bank because he hasn't got grocery money.

Bit different from Joe and Joephine Ordinary having a modest treat, to my way of thinking.

He's not the only one from this block drinking their dole money down there, either.

He clearly has anger issues and alcohol issues and possibly mental health issues as well. I have known alcoholics and they put the booze above everything else. I once had one staying with me and he was drinking before dawn. Food was very low on the list of priorities. Though there are clearly more issues that demonstrate that your neighbour has something amiss with him.

If he has mental health issues then many areas have totally inadequate services for such people. Alcohol for some may be their way of moderating their behaviour.

As far as the others they may have drink dependency issues as well. Long periods on the dole can make people do things which most would thing was not sensible.

Frugalsod

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

Oh my I've just been passed an article in the Telegraph today in the business section that has made my hackles raise somewhat. It's not just the house prices in the London area that are raised and unrealistic this article is about a brewery chain that has pubs all over the country including in this village!!! The boss of this firm has admitted that they serve better quality vegetables, salads, fish, burgers and steaks to people who live in london'to make them more premium and worthy of spending a bit more on in terms of quality', lovely, since when did the residents of the capital become deemed more worthy and therefore entitled to the best quality on offer while the rest of get 'these articles would also be served in the rest of the country but would not be premium or special event' it would appear therefore that ALL MEN ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS. The brewery chains shares have fallen in value on the stock exchange today, Oh I do wonder why that has happened???

They will also be impacted by property values. So will have to do something to raise income. Most public chains are really property companies with a retail public house sideline. If they did not raise the prices somehow they would end up being taken over by some other company that will look at the value of its pubs, its book value and compare it to the share price.

They probably justify it on the basis that Londoners earn more so can afford higher prices but they probably have to offer "organic" or premium fare to get the punters to hand over the higher prices. £20 for a pub lunch otherwise would seem overpriced unless they could pass it off as gourmet tat.

Frugalsod

Here is an example of problems to come.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-04/stock-largest-austrian-bank-crashes-after-revealing-40-surge-bad-debt-provisions-rec

First thing to remember that this is in Austria supposedly the second highest rated economy and their biggest bank. They have had to report a 40% INCREASE in bad debts. This is the same problem that is really at the core of all our banks as well. TPTB have been trying to reflate the asset bubbles in the hope that everything can resume like the global financial crisis never happened.

daz378

watching question time last night broadcasting from croydon, one guy said the rents are so high, that the rich property owners will start complaining, when because public sector workers priced out, consequently waiting longer for ambulances, fire services etc

Charis

daz378 wrote: »

watching question time last night broadcasting from croydon, one guy said the rents are so high, that the rich property owners will start complaining, when because public sector workers priced out, consequently waiting longer for ambulances, fire services etc

I'll wager that they'll still have more of each than anywhere outside the big cities.

"As proposed, full-time 24/7 first response fire and rescue fire cover at Hereford fire station comes down to a single appliance and no more than seven fire fighters on a shift.
Those seven [persons, not appliances] presuming all are present - would be the full-time 999 response for the whole county, including the manning of specialist appliances, with Malvern as the nearest full-time back-up."
http://www.herefordtimes.com/news/11252673.Plan_to_cut_full_time_fire_cover_in_the_county_presses_on/

Similar situation for ambulances. Not good news, bearing in mind that there are more serious accidents on rural roads than in city centres, and that the Fire Service rescues more road traffic victims than persons trapped in fires. They're also called out to deal with incidents involving farm machinery and/or slurry pits, and chemical spills on roads.

GreyQueen

Not sure how that works out, daz. High property prices do force people not to buy in certain areas and I have known of firefighters in London who commute in from SOUTH WALES, but it doesn't change where the jobs are.

If you work in X school in Croydon, you job isn't going to be relocated to say, Middlesborough, because of high property prices in London. You have to cope with the transport and housing costs in order to get/ keep your job, until there comes a point where you cannot sustain it, and look for work elsewhere, if you can get it.

Provincial City isn't close enough to London to be commuter belt, but we do have some higher-earners who do commute daily and there's constant agitation for better transport links to London from this minority. Trouble is, if we got them, it's fairly predictable what would happen; our property prices would start to go up, and the rents would follow, and life for the non-high earners would become even harder.

I know people who've had good job offers in Lunnon Town which they cannot take up, because of the ridiculous cost of living. We're two countries, I think, London and then the rest of us.

Perplexed_Pineapple

The London effect now covers a big chunk of the south of England, property prices are affected for hundreds of miles in all directions and more so where the rail links are good. The economic effects make my head spin. When a bank offers a house buyer a mortgage, it is creating the money as debt. The buyer repays the loan with "real" money earned by the fruit of their labours, but since the vast majority of money in the UK system is now created on the loan books of banks, that originated as debt too. Essentially a massive proportion of the "wealth" of the UK is tied up in the property market in and around London. It's a self-fulfilling Ponzi scheme,and the more house prices are divorced from earnings, the higher the chances of it collapsing. Crazy.