HPC thread of the week

Generali

TheCountofNowhere wrote: »

Post reported.

Shouldn't there be a smilie on the end of that:D

irrationalactor

Thanks MFW for your thoughtful and considered post.

MFW_ASAP wrote: »

These people are not 'priced out', they want to gain from the misery of others who may have to sell their house to the HPCers at a loss because of economic issues out of their control (i.e. recessions, etc.).

But I have seen this idea come up a lot on this board - that people who are hoping for a crash are somehow hoping to 'profit from the misery' of other people.

All people in my position want is the same chance at home ownership as our parents' generation. The fact we've been denied it is a massive failure on the part of the whole country.

I've endured a decade of housing 'misery' already - paying someone else's mortgage, the last five years stuck in an overcrowded shared house. Not much sympathy comes the other way - on various message boards I variously get told that I should live even more frugally, that I bought too many iPhones, that I should settle for buying a hovel despite building a successful career that in previous decades would have bought me a very nice house indeed.

The interests of homeowners have been protected above all other considerations. My life chances and those of the generation below (who have no hope of a mortgage given they start out with 50k of Uni debt!) have been sacrificed in order that those who have borrowed too much can avoid the 'misery' of a few years of negative equity.

The country nearly bankrupted itself in 2008 bailing the whole mess out - taxpayers like me saw no benefit from that (it ensured we remained priced out!) but will be paying for it our whole lives.

I think people have a right to be a little bitter, and to argue for change that will benefit them, for once.

We could do with sharing the 'misery' a little bit more equally.

Jason74

TheCountofNowhere wrote: »

Post reported.

Thank you for that . I should of course qualify my post with the obvious statement that my previous post is simply my opinion, formed based on my observation of the site (HPC).

If you are the same Count of Nowhere who Posts on HPC, and you have indeed reported my post (rather than the statement that you have done so being dry humour, in which case i doff my cap to you accordingly and afford you an element of grudging admiration ), I would humbly suggest that doing so makes the point I expressed in my previous post far better than any words I can write.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

irrationalactor wrote: »

I have seen this idea come up a lot on this board - that people who are hoping for a crash are somehow hoping to 'profit from the misery' of other people.

All people in my position want is the same chance at home ownership as our parents' generation. The fact we've been denied it is a massive failure on the part of the whole country.

I've endured a decade of housing 'misery' already - paying someone else's mortgage, the last five years stuck in an overcrowded shared house. Not much sympathy comes the other way - on various message boards I variously get told that I should live even more frugally, that I bought too many iPhones, that I should settle for buying a hovel despite building a successful career that in previous decades would have bought me a very nice house indeed.

The interests of homeowners have been protected above all other considerations. My life chances and those of the generation below (who have no hope of a mortgage given they start out with 50k of Uni debt!) have been sacrificed in order that those who have borrowed too much can avoid the 'misery' of a few years of negative equity.

The country nearly bankrupted itself in 2008 bailing the whole mess out - taxpayers like me saw no benefit from that (it ensured we remained priced out!) but will be paying for it our whole lives.

I think people have a right to be a little bitter, and to argue for change that will benefit them, for once.

We could do with sharing the 'misery' a little bit more equally.

You appear to be trying to view the housing market through a morality filter rather than understanding the real causes of prices being where they are.

An understandable mistake if your main point of reference is HPC.

I've just bumped a few threads you may find interesting.

gadgetmind

Jason74 wrote: »

You're absolutely right here, and I think the tendency of some posters to be (to say the least) a little insensitive to the issues faced by those on the wrong side of the HPI equation is probably the least appealing aspect of this board.

But MFW also has a point, when he says that there are a group of posters on HPC (albeit quite a small number, perhaps best personified by the Count of Nowhere) who actually deserve a large element of derision. Claiming year after year that "collapse is inevitable" and that people who buy are losers, and actively wishing people to lose their shirts so that they can pick up a bargain. While all the time prices keep rising around them.

HPC as a site has a problem in that having previously been an excellent source of debate (with discussion encouraged to the point where people could declare themselves bull or bear at sign up), it's now become little more than a cult. The hard core zealots promote a message, and anyone posting anything contradicting that is either banned or abused to the point where they just don't bother posting. The Count and others then claim that they have "called out a troll" while failing to realise that sensible people just don't bother to engage with people with their mentality.

A sensible forum would have reigned in the behaviour of that group, and probably eventually banned them if they hadn't toned it down. Had they done so, the forum would have continued to be a good source of debate. Instead, it's simply become a "safe place" for the disaffected or bitter to rant unchallenged.

None of this changes the fact that you are right in what you post. The situation with housing in this country is nothing short of a national scandal. Sadly I don't see it being resolved any time soon ,as most of the meaningful solutions imho involve policies that would by today's standards be considered "socialist" and that is of course a dirty word in the current climate.

I dont blame you, or anyone else under 35 (people older than that perhaps have to look to themselves to some extent as to why they're where they are, with this being more true as people get older) who is absolutely fuming at the current situation, and if HPC provides a place where people in that situation can vent very justified frustrations, then it still serves some form of purpose.

But much as his way of saying it is imho more than a little distasteful, Hamish is dead right when he says that HPC have a pretty poor track record of predicting the future, and the increased concentration of extremist posters means that this is only likely to get worse. In terms of finding actual solutions to the problem you find yourself in, HPC is imho pretty much the worst place you could look.

What, this post?

Conrad

irrationalactor wrote: »

I find all this sneering at HPC rather offensive.

There are a lot of posters over there (like me) to whom the housing market is not a game. Housing is not optional - everyone needs one.

In the 90s people bought decent houses at sensible salary multiples. By the time I left Uni in the early 2000s it was becoming impossible, and by the time I had a bit of a deposit the average salary multiple had gone from 3.5x to more like 7x. In London, now, it's something like 12x.

Even if I eventually manage it, how on earth are people just starting out now going to be able to pay those prices?

Ridiculing posters on another forum because people 'got it wrong' and/or 'missed the boat' and you didn't leaves a bad taste in the mouth when the reason many people missed that boat is because they were born after it had left.

If prices remain crazy and there is no crash, then I will be ending up significantly poorer than my parents, despite having a much more stable and higher-earning career than both of them put together. My entire working life I have been saving towards a house but at the end of every year I end up farther away than when I started.

I don't find anything to celebrate in that.

I want to politely and genuinely point out to you that in spite of all you say (and it's a narrative I've heard for many years), people of modest means are right now buying property and 'finding a way'.


*Until recently I owned a mortgage brokerage and I assure you people are very inventive and determined.


Who was I to know whether an applicants boss has allowed a temporary pay rise to enable a mortgage? Perhaps the employee even paid it back as a loan thereafter.......


Plenty of people have a relative, family member or mate that owns a company. Who was I to question whether a mortgage applicant really worked there...


In just about every field of Human endeavour, people do what it takes.

Jason74

Thing is Conrad, it seems to me (and correct me if I'm wrong, as I'll be happy to retract the statement) that you're suggesting that its possible to own a home on modest means, provided you're willing to break the law to do it. I would personally suggest that this is more evidence that there is a problem, rather than evidence that there isn't

gadgetmind

Our daughter just bought a house (3 bed end terrace with off street parking) and she's a student. Yes, bank of Mum and Dad involved, but not as much as you'd think.

Deposit of £25k and renovation budget of £15k came from a bit of luck she's had with shares bought for her in 2008 (20 baggers!) and we loaned her £100k at commercial rates. She's paying off interest and loan by taking in two lodgers.

Were she working and getting just above average income, a mortgage wouldn't have been impossible and the £550 a month mortgage payments wouldn't be a massive struggle. At least I hope not as the plan is that she mortgages in her name some time in the next 5 years or so!

Conrad

Jason74 wrote: »

Thing is Conrad, it seems to me (and correct me if I'm wrong, as I'll be happy to retract the statement) that you're suggesting that its possible to own a home on modest means, provided you're willing to break the law to do it. I would personally suggest that this is more evidence that there is a problem, rather than evidence that there isn't

I sincerely promise you it's always gone on, little has changed. For a time we even had non-status and self cert catering to this need. My earliest experiences (prior to being a broker) were of the N London Asian, Turkish and Cypriot communities that were way ahead of 'us' on things like buy to let, they tended to spend their days working out ways to get more property but not using buy to let mortgages as they did not really exist. There was always a way round the system.


In the early 90's when I and other colleagues were buying our first homes, the Bosses were always happy to help us with the right reference etc.


Everyone going over the speed limit is breaking the law, yet I would think just about everyone does it.


I notice so many areas of business involve a degree of corruption. Even such things as IT providers deliberately implying a job is simpler than they let on knowing full well all sorts of issues will arise that give rise to charging opportunities.


So no I don't perceive a special problem any more than I did in 1995, although population rise and property demand is becoming a big issue, but building more homes wont help as new resource always attracts more migrants anyway, so its a viscous circle.
Building the M25 did not lead to less congestion in the south east, the resource bought more people, more traffic.

Conrad

gadgetmind wrote: »

Our daughter just bought a house (3 bed end terrace with off street parking) and she's a student. Yes, bank of Mum and Dad involved, but not as much as you'd think.

Deposit of £25k and renovation budget of £15k came from a bit of luck she's had with shares bought for her in 2008 (20 baggers!) and we loaned her £100k at commercial rates. She's paying off interest and loan by taking in two lodgers.

Were she working and getting just above average income, a mortgage wouldn't have been impossible and the £550 a month mortgage payments wouldn't be a massive struggle. At least I hope not as the plan is that she mortgages in her name some time in the next 5 years or so!

Yes, the issue I have with HPC'ers is they tend to think in a very constrained, rigid, quite naïve manner.


All their talk is of 'traditional multiples' and other conformities that bare little relation to the way a great mass of people work the system to their advantage and at the route of their energy is a can-do positive mind-set, not a 'woe is me, I don't fit some standard affordability model' mind-set.


Your example is one of an infinite manner of ways people find a way of acquiring property, and mainly without parental help.


I really have dealt with many new migrants in my time that quite easily bought one or multiple properties.
2 worked in a bloody fried chicken shop! One of these now owns 2 houses and his own shop.


SERIOUS POINT; watch this video, it's quite short, and I'm the last to go in for fluffy happy clappy uber positive gurus etc, but this video here may well help those of a gloomy mind think quite differently, yes it's Arnie... but he does talk about modest goals, not just world conquering, 'how can I speed up a process' - principles that apply to getting that first home as much as body building;


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVQtF9Q4920