BBC - Rising prices good for majority? Wrong, wrong wrong.

Turnbull2000

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7059718.stm
I'm sure most MSE'ers already have the good sense to know this :beer:

Few cash in on rising house prices

Three in four home owners believe they are better off as a consequence of rising house prices, but in most cases they are wrong.

Less than a fifth of the public are in a position to benefit from rising house prices - even though the vast majority think they have done well.

And more than three quarters of homeowners think they have done well off the back of rising house prices, even though most of them simply have not.

Those are the key findings of research undertaken for a new BBC Two television series which aims to counter the plethora of go-go property programmes by drawing attention to some widespread public myths about what property prices do for your finances.

Claire and Jonathan Whitehead live in a compact three-bedroom house in a suburb of Leeds. They desperately want more space, but they say they have been priced out of moving up.

I asked Claire what rising house prices meant for her and her family.
"They are absolutely killing us, absolutely killing us.

pamaris

I watched this last night. I thought it did a pretty good job of explaining why inflated house prices are not beneficial for most people, though I thought that the people they chose as examples were not easy to empathize with. Well, except for the woman in London whose mother had to share a room with her grandchildren.

The others– the very middle class couple "stuck" in their 3 bed semi (they only have 2 kids, what's wrong with that)... the beefcake dunce from Hackney... the millionaire in Cheshire. I guess they chose extreme examples on purpose so as to have a broad range but these people were almost caricatures. I'd rather they just get into the nuts and bolts of why HPI does not make everyone rich than distract the audience with people like this.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, maybe they chose the Audi TT council house buying Hackney guy to show how absurd it has become.

nollag2006

More bleating and wailing from the house price crash brigade on just how unfair life is.

Welcome to the real world.

pamaris

nollag2006 wrote: »

More bleating and wailing from the house price crash brigade on just how unfair life is.

Welcome to the real world.

EDIT: I was just commenting about how flippant, uncompassionate comments are not helpful. What I had to say was irrelevant (at least it would be to flippant, uncompassionate people). Whatever.

nollag2006

My obvious question is why have you left it 'til now to consider buying a house?

Hubby should have bought one 10 years ago, and made provision for himself and his family then.

aint life hard??

pollyanna24

Whilst I do think house prices are absolutely ridiculous these days, I don't think it's completely impossible (not if I can do it anyways).

My situation is that my parents have never owned their house, they rent from the FHA.

I am 26 and am on my second house with my bf. Lucky? No, not at all. My parents are on low incomes, but I was fortunate enough (like a lot of other people) that they let me and my bf live with them until we got on our feet.

I've been with bf since I was 18 and we started saving straightaway for a deposit. By the time we were 21 (2003), we had £12K and bought our first house for £110K. This was hard going, we were not on great wages and had to move 30 miles out of London (and that far from our jobs, but still travel to them everyday). Lucky? No sheer hard work even in the face of these mad house price rises.

We sold cos I couldn't cope with the travel into work, yes, we made a little money on it, but not as much as we would have if we had just carried on saving. Bought another house closer to London for £210K which is expensive, but doable... if people saved like we did.

EDIT: I suppose the ones that I do feel sorry for are the 18-25 years old now who are looking to buy, they have no chance at all!

pamaris

nollag2006 wrote: »

My obvious question is why have you left it 'til now to consider buying a house?

Hubby should have bought one 10 years ago, and made provision for himself and his family then.

aint life hard??

Well if you really want to know, 10 years ago I didn't know hubby but he was ill for 2 years at that time. He recovered, we got married in 2000 and moved to the states in 2002. Bought a house there, twice, very easily. Moved back here in December 2006, but we had moved from low HPI areas, so not enough deposit. Sometimes life gets in the way of perfect scenarios.

In hindsight we shouldn't have moved away and come back; but HTH were we supposed to know what was going to happen with house prices? I had never experienced a bubble before, now I know.

tr3mor

nollag2006 wrote: »

My obvious question is why have you left it 'til now to consider buying a house?

Hubby should have bought one 10 years ago, and made provision for himself and his family then.

aint life hard??

10 years ago I was 13.

I suppose I should've had more foresight really! :rotfl:

Conrad

Nollag, I've done well from property but I find your tone unfortunate.

That lady investor last nigh (cross between Mary Poppins and Barbara Cartland) thought she was so clever having £4.2m 'worth' of property and £1m in equity, what a joke! Much of her supposed profit could be wiped out in the blink of an eye. She is not an investor, shes a fool.

Really not difficult to do what she has done as long as you leave the brain at home.

Far better to have say 4 properties with zero mortgage and a net rent of £25000 pa and then use the £25000 +interest to buy another property every 5 years or so.

People like her think they are so smart, when in actual fact she is just a chancer. So much could go wrong for her.

pamaris

Conrad wrote: »

Nollag, I've done well from property but I find your tone unfortunate.

That lady investor last nigh (cross between Mary Poppins and Barbara Cartland) thought she was so clever having £4.2m 'worth' of property and £1m in equity, what a joke! Much of her supposed profit could be wiped out in the blink of an eye. She is not an investor, shes a fool.

Really not difficult to do what she has done as long as you leave the brain at home.

Far better to have say 4 properties with zero mortgage and a net rent of £25000 pa and then use the £25000 +interest to buy another property every 5 years or so.

People like her think they are so smart, when in actual fact she is just a chancer. So much could go wrong for her.

Oh I forgot about her... she should spend less time at the tanning bed and more time reading economic analysis. She did try to portray herself as a serious, seasoned investor though. To me, it seems like folly to invest in property solely for capital gains. Investing for income seems better to me, but what do I know. I didn't realise until we came back here what a gravy train property had become for some people. If it is mostly debt and paper profit then things could end very badly... as the mysterious swanky BTL flat investor from Leeds (from the program) found out.

EDIT: Hey can anyone give me the number to Inside Track?

[Deleted User]

The next boom is in gold, sell your houses and buy as much as you can.

I spoke to an estate agent only yesterday he said he sold 15 houses yesterday, everyone of them was BTL landlord that are are now buying gold as its the market thats going up and up and up and up.

Long live the gold boom.