Are you in the building Trade - is work falling?

thriftybabe

I think a few more may be doing this. We had a joiner who previously worked with us phoning for work. He told my OH that the money was c**p where he was working. My OH told him you are lucky that you are in work I would stay put as things are going to get tight. Joiners are in for a big shock. They have demanding great rates for years and are now going to find that they have to reduce them just as we are!

carolan78

It's been tough in Leeds since after Christmas, husband was a shutterer on some apartment block in the city centre the company he worked for had 5 or 6 other builds in the pipeline (similar thing to the apartment blocks). As the site he was on came to an end they had all the contracts retracted as the builds were no longer going ahead.

Thankfully he is an aircraft engineer by trade so has gone back to that but I do feel for the families that will suffer as building grinds to a halt. FIL has been a shutterer in London for years, he has now moved onto maintaining the railways as he can see building stopping.

PasturesNew

So you were right all along http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=11035673&postcount=12

He'll realise now and think you're a god ... dinner's got to be on him this weekend.

Thread started last night at 6pm as your OH didn't believe you thought it would take a downturn ... 18 hours later and he's hit with the news.

ruggedtoast

One family member fits windows in the SE and says its very hard going now, he does mostly private customers and no ones paying for home improvements at the moment. Other family members are in plumbing and seem to be alright - I understand they dont rely on site work much but if they did there wouldnt be much out there.

thriftybabe

Yes PasturesNew especially as he thought this site was a safe bet. It was to be a build out but people have obviously cancelled. In addition one of our friends has told us that a certain company was very pleased to have sold 8 houses at the weekend only to have 4 possibly 5 cancelled today! I think it is hitting home now. Albeit we have gained a good contract today which will see us through to Christmas (thank goodness) I think the penny may be starting to drop!:j

phil_b_2

If he's just scored a 7 month contract up to christmas I doubt any pennies will be dropping, that will just be the go-ahead for some lavish spenditure over summer!

thriftybabe

phil_b are you kidding not whilst he is married to me. Maybe I have not painted a great picture of my OH. TBH he does not spend much. My gripe is that he wants to do an extension at a time where things are uncertain. It is a large extension and even with him doing lots of the work it is still going to cost £60k. At a time where things are uncertain in his work i feel we should not be doing this. We do have the money however if we spent this on the extension and then he ran out of work then we would need to be careful. We have this money along with some more for times like this and that is why i feel we should not do the extension. He feels that we used to have a large mortgage and paid this off and just thinks that I am worrying excessively.

I do however think the penny is starting to drop as we are hearing more and more of people losing their jobs around us!

phil_b_2

Well the extension thing is debatable I guess. you say you dont need one, so you're right not to want to rush into. Whether there would be benefit to having it done is different though. needing one and wanting one are very different. Would the extension improve your home life? Perhaps add a sizeable play area for kids, give you and the OH a bit of personal space etc?

For 60k it must be a pretty damn substantial extension?? Especially if he is doing a lot of the work himself! You could probably build a whole house for that. See what similar sized houses to the one you would end up with have sold for in your area. An extension could whack a hefty amount of value on to your house.

wot_a_life

My OH is in the building trade and work has came to a total stand still.

It was filtering off after xmas and now, he cn't find anything at all, every day is spent with him phoning around all of his contacts and scouring the job centre online, there is nothing!

We are now expecting repossesion as we can't afford the mortgage on my wages alone, we feel like sitting ducks

Dinah93

I work in planning, and we have seen the workload fall off a cliff since last year. In November each officer on my team had between 35-55 cases. Now the highest anyone has is 17, with no increase in staffing levels, and we're struggling to find enough work to fill the day, so are working on rewriting guidance notes etc. There have been no large scale housebuilding schemes come in (nothing over 3 dwellings), and even the standard extensions and conservatory work just isn't there. It may take a few months to filter down the chain to the construction trades, but I would expect an effect to be felt by more and more eventually.