Panorama tonight - Bursting the house price bubble.(merged)

Generali

vivatifosi wrote: »

Interesting one Generali. I'm a trustee of a pension scheme and we've never even been offered CDOs as an investment vehicle (thank goodness), can't remember them coming up in trustee training either.

I would imagine that the most likely ways for your fund to have invested in CDOs would be through money market funds - AAA rated CDOs could be seen as near cash as so would be an acceptable substitute.

I don't see why a pension fund would be holding large amounts of money market funds though. I know some pension funds have small holdings of specialist CDO funds but several of these have made significant sums by shorting.

The other obvious way for a pension fund to lose large amounts on CDOs is by having large holdings in banks.

SquatNow - I believe that US pension funds have very different rules to those in the UK as a result of Maxwell largely.

I wonder what level of holdings the Chinese govt has. That would be too funny - they buy a load of US assets to keep the dollar high and they turn out to be worthless junk!

Jemma48_2

I watched this and i dont thik teh title reflected teh content

SquatNow

Generali wrote: »

I wonder what level of holdings the Chinese govt has. That would be too funny - they buy a load of US assets to keep the dollar high and they turn out to be worthless junk!

If the chinease government call in the debts and repossess, do they own America?

MissMoneypenny

Doozergirl wrote: »

I'll put my money on the repossession program being about people on benefits with self-cert mortgages who were never going to be able to meet repayments.

Or they might feature people like the couple who use to live near me. Their business (a shop) got into problems, so they lost their house too. They tried to sell their house, but the market is not good. Very sad.

BenL

I'm happy they showed Leeds again on this show. I hope its featured on the repossesion show tonight as well.

It might start to make people around here realise things are overpriced and its not other areas of the country.

melancholly

SquatNow wrote: »

A land tax would resolve the issue... there would be a small number of professional landlords offering high quality properties at reasonable prices

i can't see a difference between a 'professional landlord' and someone who has 4 BTL mortgages and is adhering to all the regulations. i may be missing something.

WTF?_2

melancholly wrote: »

i actually shouted at the TV yesterday when this was on! i wish just once these programmes would show people with half a brain who got in trouble for reasons other than their own stupidity.

Yes - but much of the boom in property has been driven by these idiots - would be landlords/property magnates who leverage themselves to the hilt without doing any homework. Oh, and they were ably helped by any number of middlemen and crooked professionals who were after a cut too.

Their effect so far has been to price average people out of the market or to force people into near debt-slavery to own their own, modest home. I suspect the next stage will be increasing numbers of repossessed BTL properties leaving tenants out on the street as their landlord fails to meet the mortgage.

Mr_Mumble

I learnt about the practice of bumping up land registry prices a few months ago from an excellent post at the fool, its well worth a read:
http://boards.fool.co.uk/Message.asp?mid=10688050

SquatNow

melancholly wrote: »

i can't see a difference between a 'professional landlord' and someone who has 4 BTL mortgages and is adhering to all the regulations. i may be missing something.

A professional landlord will provide a well maintained property for a very fair price, with excelent backup service (repairs etc) to attract people to WANT to live there.

BTL works on pricing out the population and giving them no other choice.

If you tax land, then leaving a property/land vacant will cost you the same tax as renting it out, so simply owning land for the HPI alone isn't viable.

The result is an incentive for landlords to find tennants or sell the land, essentially forcing down rents and forcing better service... they will be competing for tennants.

Currently there is massive oversupply in the rental market... land tax would move those properties back into the market.

harryhound

Hi Squatnow,
I have not had a chance to read you web site yet, but are you a fan of Raffles; the bloke commemorated by the bar in Singapore?
Harry