So if cheap houses are so good for the economy....

Generali

TruckerT wrote: »

That is not what we are being told by the government. The message is that we have become addicted to debt, and that we have to change our ways.

As Annie Nameless posted on another thread, statistics are as unrelentingly subjective as unsupported opinions.

TruckerT

It's the Government that has lived beyond its means. Consumers just lived less within their means than usual.

John_Pierpoint

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Exactly.

Now back on topic.

Why aren't the places with the cheapest land and house prices now the places booming?

After all, for many years the bears have told us that cheaper house and land/building prices mean cheaper employment/operating costs and greater competitiveness.

Houses, land and commercial premises are seriously cheap in many parts of the UK.

Why aren't those places booming?

Yes lets get back to global reality:

The minimum wage is still a fortune by world standards.
The unemployables in Northern towns have no capital and no jobs so they won't be demanding to buy homes, even with a nearly guaranteed deposit, any time soon.
No way will they ever be able to mine cheap coal with their skills and lack of capital going down traditional deep shafts . They would be competing with new mines that look like this:


Even in Australia the boom period of six figure miners on on the wane.
They are being put out of a job by fracking gas and even lower cost coal mines.
Anyone with the get up and go, and not stapled in position by lack of qualifications, kids and benefits would have got and gone from the Northern towns by now. Those northern towns where the bankrupt council is selling off houses for £1.
It was ever thus, in 1965 I was pounding the streets of Vancouver, looking for a job. I got into conversation with a guy grafting in a hole - he was a redundant miner from the boom mining county of Cornwall.





It is debt and deficit Britain's inability to compete that that is the problem; I really cannot see Britain or its trading partner Europe pulling itself up by its boot straps any time soon, having a short term housing boom for the next election is only a distraction.

chucky

TruckerT wrote: »

Your presumption that some of the 'haves' in society can save £1000 a month for 3 years, and still have enough left over to spend £6k on carpets and curtains, may well be true.

Others, however, have to hang bed-sheets inside their windows and buy a second-hand rug or two from the charity shop.

An extra £250 per month would be a game-changer.

TruckerT

How different would that have been 50 pr 100 years ago?

Could everyone buy property then?

chucknorris

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Exactly.

Now back on topic.

Why aren't the places with the cheapest land and house prices now the places booming?

After all, for many years the bears have told us that cheaper house and land/building prices mean cheaper employment/operating costs and greater competitiveness.

Houses, land and commercial premises are seriously cheap in many parts of the UK.

Why aren't those places booming?

This was a nice tactic Hamish, they are not going to be able to respond to you intelligently without admitting that rising house prices are a result of a healthy economy.

If you were the England football team and they were the Poland football team on Tuesday, it looks to me like it is England 1:0 into the last min of injury time with Joe Hart taking his time over a goal kick and the referee looking at his watch on a freezing cold night dying to get into a warm bath after the match. Well done Hamish you have qualified England into the world cup finals.

ukcarper

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

If you have a regional economy based largely on unionised industries and mining, permanently on strike, hell bent on destroying these industries, then when you finally get rid of the unions, nothing will go in their place other than a few call centres, it can't come as much of a surprise when those regions fail to do well.

Nothing to do with bad management then funny how those Japanese companies can run some of them successfully.

Graham_Devon

chucknorris wrote: »

This was a nice tactic Hamish, they are not going to be able to respond to you intelligently without admitting that rising house prices are a result of a healthy economy.

Rising prices are partly to do with the economy.

But the majority of rising prices are to do with funding for lending and indeed, help to buy has raised confidence and the expectation of price rises.

And as Hamish has said before, the expectation of price rises pushes prices up.

If price rises were solely due to the economy we'd see a healthy jobs market and wage increases. As it is, we don't.

chucknorris

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Could have fooled me with your response to chucky which quite clearly shows you suggesting those with lower intelligence are useful as they clean the bins.

If you want to wind back and try and suggest you made some random post stating you just meant you didn't want to empty bins while throwing some abuse around, be my guest. It's amusing, if nothing else.

Looks like I did fool you then. They are useful not so much because they empty the bins (where did 'clean the bins’ come from, do Devon’s bin men offer a premium service and clean the bins?) but because they empty them, means that I don't have to. So I’m grateful to them because I certainly don’t want to do it.

Does that mean that I look down on them? No I don’t. Does that mean that I think that I have a ‘better job’? Yes I do, does that mean that my job is actually better than theirs? Not necessarily, that is subjective, an old friend of mine Joe who used to come to the races with me was a bin man. He really liked his job because he could knock off as early as 11 am some days and come to the races with me (and do other things on other days). I wouldn’t fancy it though, in fact there are less and less jobs that I fancy doing these days, I’m grooming myself for retirement.

chucknorris

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Rising prices are partly to do with the economy.

But the majority of rising prices are to do with funding for lending and indeed, help to buy has raised confidence and the expectation of price rises.

And as Hamish has said before, the expectation of price rises pushes prices up.

If price rises were solely due to the economy we'd see a healthy jobs market and wage increases. As it is, we don't.

So what is the answer to Hamish's question:

Why aren't the places with the cheapest land and house prices now the places booming?

adouglasmhor

markharding557 wrote: »

Because there is no money in these places, no one wants to invest.
Isn't Glasgow in your country in the same state?

Glasgow has some absolute holes and an appaling employment rate, but it has a healthy ecomonomy and it's growing.
http://www.glasgoweconomicfacts.com/Dept.aspx?dept_id=125

Graham_Devon

chucknorris wrote: »

So what is the answer to Hamish's question:

Why aren't the places with the cheapest land and house prices now the places booming?

Isn't it obvious? It's pretty simple and follows the same reasoning as has always been.

They aren't booming because they don't have the employment around them.

Hamish has taken something that was stated a while ago to the absolute extreme, ignoring the context that was applied at the time.

If there is little employment, there is little money to pay for houses, and therefore little scope for booming house prices.