Hmm, pound is looking a bit scary today!

sabretoothtigger

Property taxes, lending costs if any or loss of capital derived income if not. Cost of repairs, cost of insurance

Housing does cost, I just find it preferable to renting in most cases but not always

You must be pleased about gold's relentless progress.

Unsurprisingly as its done very little of use previously, its still sitting there now and in a years times yep just the same inert heavy yellow blob.
Benefit and drawbacks both the same, but still advantageous to relying on the common sense, honesty and integrity of politics capital ship HMS Sterling

Harry_Boyle

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

Property taxes, lending costs if any or loss of capital derived income if not. Cost of repairs, cost of insurance

Well I was asking Devon, but...

Those costs are not applicable across all properties. For example, lending costs are not applicable to people who are mortgage free (a significant number of UK properties). Council tax is not applicable to people on certain benefits or for students, etc. Repairs are not applicable if you don't do them for the duration of ownership, insurance is not compulsary, and so on and so forth....

Graham_Devon

Harry_Boyle wrote: »

Well I was asking Devon, but...

Those costs are not applicable across all properties. For example, lending costs are not applicable to people who are mortgage free (a significant number of UK properties). Council tax is not applicable to people on certain benefits or for students, etc. Repairs are not applicable if you don't do them for the duration of ownership, insurance is not compulsary, and so on and so forth....

Stamp duty. Buying and selling legal fee's. That's a chunk of growth gone straight away if you are comparing this to other investments.

There are of course the other costs which you have done your best to write off.

Harry_Boyle

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Stamp duty. Buying and selling legal fee's. That's a chunk of growth gone straight away if you are comparing this to other investments.

There are of course the other costs which you have done your best to write off.

Well stamp duty and Buying/Selling and legal fees are obviously costs associated with acquiring (or getting rid) of the property. You were talking about the costs of keeping it:

Graham_Devon wrote: »

So are houses if you include all the costs associated with keeping it.

All the other costs mentioned are not associated with keeping the property but with paying for services such as policing and refuse collection, improving the property and insuruing your belongings, and they are not applicable to everyone who owns a property.

I used to rent a place and I paid council tax and I had my belongings insured. These were costs I incurred and yet I didn't own the property.

wotsthat

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Stamp duty. Buying and selling legal fee's. That's a chunk of growth gone straight away if you are comparing this to other investments.

There are of course the other costs which you have done your best to write off.

I mainly compare costs to the alternative of owning which is renting. Every month therefore there's an imputed return on my 'investment'.

I know you don't like this concept but if owning is £100 cheaper/ month then every year I've saved £1200 against the alternative of renting.

Don't read too much into people comparing owning a house with investing in gold or silver - for one serial socky it's really important - for everyone else it's a bit of fun to wind up the socky.

Graham_Devon

Harry_Boyle wrote: »

Well stamp duty and Buying/Selling and legal fees are obviously costs associated with acquiring (or getting rid) of the property. You were talking about the costs of keeping it:

Well yer, I was. So maybe the cost of selling it can be excluded, but certainly not the cost of buying it.

I guess if you keep it forever more, you can never relaise it and that's something else altogether when comparing investments. Most, I'd guess, are looking to realise and / or change their investment at some point.

Graham_Devon

wotsthat wrote: »

I mainly compare costs to the alternative of owning which is renting. Every month therefore there's an imputed return on my 'investment'.

I know you don't like this concept but if owning is £100 cheaper/ month then every year I've saved £1200 against the alternative of renting.

Don't read too much into people comparing owning a house with investing in gold or silver - for one serial socky it's really important - for everyone else it's a bit of fun to wind up the socky.

Agreed 100%.

However, the initial point was about comparing 2 investments. Which is what happened.

Harry_Boyle

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Well yer, I was. So maybe the cost of selling it can be excluded, but certainly not the cost of buying it.

I guess if you keep it forever more, you can never relaise it and that's something else altogether when comparing investments. Most, I'd guess, are looking to realise and / or change their investment at some point.

Well you seem to be changing the parameters of the argument from the cost of 'keeping' a property to the cost of 'acquiring and then keeping a property'.

Hey ho, it's what we expect from you in a discussion so I guess I'll go along with it. However, what are the costs of acquiring if the house is worth less than £325k and left to you as an inheritance. What about if it is gifted and the person who gifted it lives for 7 years after the gift?

What are the Acquisition costs then?

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

For that matter the costs of holding any serious quantity of physical gold/silver yourself are not insignificant. You're talking a very expensive safe and not terribly cheap insurance at a minimum. More than stamp duty on the average house.

I suppose you could just buy "paper gold", but the goldbugs keep telling us thats a bad idea....

Graham_Devon

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

For that matter the costs of holding any serious quantity of physical gold/silver yourself are not insignificant. You're talking a very expensive safe and not terribly cheap insurance at a minimum. More than stamp duty on the average house.

I suppose you could just buy "paper gold", but the goldbugs keep telling us thats a bad idea....

I never knew before now that the many (or rather one or two with serveral names!) goldbugs actually held onto gold bars themselves.

That's quite cute