House Prices Up....

pop_gun

mwpt wrote: »

No, sorry, you're just trying really hard to invent reasons to justify your already formed view that there is no way average people can buy. Those things have always been problems. I do admit that I believe it is far harder to buy a decent place in London today than over the last 20-30 years, but hey, people in that period were lucky, they just didn't realise it at the time (some still don't). But what can we do about that? We can't reverse time, we are where we are, so you've got to try make the most of it.



Yes, I too believe the government will do almost whatever it takes to keep the property ponzi scheme going. And since I can't beat the house, I had to play the game according to their rules, and I bought a house in 2014 after years of waiting for a correction. What are you going to do now that you admit the game is rigged?

You can buy a home. It's just difficult or impossible to own it.

I'm going to eventually buy a place in Milton Keynes, Northampton or similar. These are lovely areas and not overly expensive.
I would like a large deposit. Something that would allow me a BTL should I choose to go down that route. My biggest worry is having a mortgage in later life. I want to over pay and own the property within a reasonable time frame.

Just out of curiosity how much did you put down and where did you end up buying?

mwpt

pop_gun wrote: »

You can buy a home. It's just difficult or impossible to own it.

I'm going to eventually buy a place in Milton Keynes, Northampton or similar. These are lovely areas and not overly expensive.
I would like a large deposit. Something that would allow me a BTL should I choose to go down that route. My biggest worry is having a mortgage in later life. I want to over pay and own the property within a reasonable time frame.

Just out of curiosity how much did you put down and where did you end up buying?

I put down 20%. I took a 30 year term and started at 2.4% repayment mortgage on a two year fix. I've just remortgage at 1.7% on another two year fix. I guessed (correctly) that the economy was addicted to cheap debt and rates wouldn't be going up for a long time. t bought in Zone 4 South West London. I have had lodgers paying more than half my mortgage for most of the time since I bought (2014). My mortgage payment is 30% cheaper than renting an equivalent house and that is repayment based, the interest portion is far lower than again. So in fact my lodgers more than cover the interest portion, so all my payments are going to pay down the capital, in other words, I basically live for free.

I am a natural saver and not a big risk taker financially. So I bought (trying to remember) about 30% cheaper than the mortgage amount I was approved for and left a lot of equity free to either (a) pay down a bigger chunk of the mortgage in an emergency or (b) buy a bigger place if prices did crash. In fact, I am still hoping that prices do drop so I can trade up but doubt that I will get my wish.

Also note, that because I bought in an area where prices are not out of whack with rents, I can rent the house out if I need or want to move elsewhere.

There are ways you can make the best of the a tricky market and I'm glad I finally realised that. My advice to anyone just holding out for a crash is to take a hard realistic look at government actions and take a look at ways you can make things work for you.

EDIT: I realised I didn't address your point about "owning" the home eventually. I don't currently earn a salary because I run a small business now consulting and advising to various firms in London, but I have a lot of spare capacity to increase my payments into the house. If I stopped saving and started putting all my spare earnings into the mortgage I could pay it off in about 7 years, if nothing changes.

westernpromise

pop_gun wrote: »

The official figures will be skewd in favour of these erroneous valuations.

Exactly wrong as usual.

The figures published by building societies are based on actual transactions. Unless you know of a source of surveyors' remortgage valuations that we are all missing.

cells

p1212 wrote: »

So if population is increasing in London why exactly cannot we build on the vast agricultural areas within and around the M25?

What use we have from having agricultural fields right next to millions of jobs, instead of building houses there and letting people live where jobs are and do the agriculture thing a bit further out?

You speak a lot like a typical hpc cheerleader. Be warned they have been calling for a London house price crash since 1996 that is 20 years and prices are up 5-10x since then.

If London could be cheap like say Birmingham what's to stop it growing by 400,000 a year or even more?

cells

p1212 wrote: »

Yes, exactly as the boomers.

Today you have no chance doing that with the same jobs you had at that time.

This is non sense. The homes will exist in 100 years time but all the people alive will be dead. Therefore its obviously clear that plenty of people fr now to then can and will buy

buglawton

mwpt wrote: »

I put down 20%. I took a 30 year term and started at 2.4% repayment mortgage on a two year fix. I've just remortgage at 1.7% on another two year fix. I guessed (correctly) that the economy was addicted to cheap debt and rates wouldn't be going up for a long time. t bought in Zone 4 South West London. I have had lodgers paying more than half my mortgage for most of the time since I bought (2014). My mortgage payment is 30% cheaper than renting an equivalent house and that is repayment based, the interest portion is far lower than again. So in fact my lodgers more than cover the interest portion, so all my payments are going to pay down the capital, in other words, I basically live for free.

I am a natural saver and not a big risk taker financially. So I bought (trying to remember) about 30% cheaper than the mortgage amount I was approved for and left a lot of equity free to either (a) pay down a bigger chunk of the mortgage in an emergency or (b) buy a bigger place if prices did crash. In fact, I am still hoping that prices do drop so I can trade up but doubt that I will get my wish.

Also note, that because I bought in an area where prices are not out of whack with rents, I can rent the house out if I need or want to move elsewhere.

There are ways you can make the best of the a tricky market and I'm glad I finally realised that. My advice to anyone just holding out for a crash is to take a hard realistic look at government actions and take a look at ways you can make things work for you.

EDIT: I realised I didn't address your point about "owning" the home eventually. I don't currently earn a salary because I run a small business now consulting and advising to various firms in London, but I have a lot of spare capacity to increase my payments into the house. If I stopped saving and started putting all my spare earnings into the mortgage I could pay it off in about 7 years, if nothing changes.

Spoken like a true Moneysavingexpert.

lisyloo

AnotherJoe wrote: »

How about moving the jobs out instead? Make use of existing housing stock and brownfield sites, revitalise poorer areas, avoid contributing to the vicious spiral of congestion and increasing prices in London that so concerns you.

Which employers are willing to move their businesses for the wellbeing of their staff!

I think it's a great idea, I just don't think employers have any motivation to do it. The will have a greater concentration of talent in London.

Filo25

lisyloo wrote: »

Which employers are willing to move their businesses for the wellbeing of their staff!

I think it's a great idea, I just don't think employers have any motivation to do it. The will have a greater concentration of talent in London.

Where I work we're actually pulling roles in from the regions to London in spite of needing to pay significantly higher wages in London, basically because we struggle to fill open positions for developers when existing employees leave the company.

AFF8879

Filo25 wrote: »

Where I work we're actually pulling roles in from the regions to London in spite of needing to pay significantly higher wages in London, basically because we struggle to fill open positions for developers when existing employees leave the company.

So true. I work for a large US bank in London that has an operations processing centre in a much cheaper UK area. They tried moving a couple of more technical / qualified roles out from London to that site but have since had to move everything back because they just couldn't get decent enough talent.

AnotherJoe

p1212 wrote: »

Making it possible to build on agricultural areas is very easy, you can do it overnight, but how exactly do you "move the jobs"?

Part of that will happen naturally as more jobs move to internet based where you aren't talking about a thousand people in a factory or large numbers in cubicles in one place, but distributed across their homes and smaller facilities.

Another part will be natural, the price of offices and factories in London becomes unaffordable.

And then government action (at multiple levels from central to local) with subsidies to move out or start up in the regions.

A lot of it isn't moving jobs as such but as new jobs arise they are not based in London and jobs in London sometimes move outside as and when natural events occur in the business.

The alternative is that we fill everything up up inside the m25 with offices and factories and then a huge ring of housing estates around the periphery. Jobs are changing, your vision is one that harks back to the 1950s and 60s with everyone commuting daily to their factory or office, just like Reginald Perrin. Times are changing.