Panorama tonight: The Great House Price Bubble?

Loughton_Monkey

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Like how you are now stating a charity is a vested interest!..

Shelter is a registered charity but with a focus on lobbying. If that's not a vested interest, I don't know what is!

michaels

BBC website headline: '31% pay unaffordable housing costs' Call me stupid but if they are unaffordable then by definition they can't be being paid.

Loughton_Monkey

I found the pompous woman from Money Week the most irritating. She gave a soundbite straight after the program reflected on a 6% rise in house building since HTB had started.

Here's what Merryn Somerset Webb offered:

I think help to buy is really is the wrong solution to the problem. We have a very clear problem which I think everybody recognises which is that house prices in Britain are too high. Now there are two solutions to that problem. One is to help people borrow a great deal more money than they can afford to borrow to pay prices that are too high and the second solution is to allow prices to come down to a level at which people can afford to buy them without taking on undue levels of debt. Now if I were in charge, I'd say that the second solution would be a significantly kinder solution than the first.

I can undestand a strategy (misguided as it might be) to stop HTB [which would almost certainly staunch whatever new house building is taking place] but how do you "allow" prices to come down?

Without HTB, they would ultimately go up but the new building would be much slower, so I cannot understand how she thinks she could 'allow' them to come down.

It's like Cameron admitting that gas and electricity prices are too high, so his action is simply to "allow" the energy companies to bring them down.

Einstein!

Thrugelmir

michaels wrote: »

BBC website headline: '31% pay unaffordable housing costs' Call me stupid but if they are unaffordable then by definition they can't be being paid.

Was reading today that of 150,000 BTL mortgages in Eire, 40,000 are in arrears. A warning sign for sure.

michaels

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Was reading today that of 150,000 BTL mortgages in Eire, 40,000 are in arrears. A warning sign for sure.

Is that a higher proportion than other mortgages? Ireland had a huge increase in supply during their boom which would push down rents as well as prices.

CLAPTON

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Was reading today that of 150,000 BTL mortgages in Eire, 40,000 are in arrears. A warning sign for sure.

desperation is setting in here

sulphate

Bogof_Babe wrote: »

One of the kids was 20, so not even the father's responsibility to feed. Just lack of budgeting skills I'd say.

I noticed this, although perhaps the 20 year old was unemployed and couldn't find work?

As only a recent FTBer this program terrified me. :eek: I'm off to go count my pennies and work out how much more we can save.

Graham_Devon

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

I found the pompous woman from Money Week the most irritating.

I bet you did.

Faced with those bare truths about the scale of the problems, including the scale of the debt people are taking on, you probably found your cosy insulated view of the world quite challenged!

grizzly1911

Thrugelmir wrote: »

The UK is increasingly a low wage economy. As many lack skills of value.

Not surprising when we simply buy anything of value in.

We "exported" the skills and the jobs.

ukcarper

Graham_Devon wrote: »

I bet you did.

Faced with those bare truths about the scale of the problems, including the scale of the debt people are taking on, you probably found your cosy insulated view of the world quite challenged!

What bare truth all she contributed was a couple of meaningless sound bites.

The debt was a point, the figures quoted were to service debt they were careful not to say mortgage.