Nothing to show for it?
We have a very nice place to live and work where we choose. Our kids go to a great school, we overlook the sea. I can only think of one place we've lived that wasn't ideal due to the cr4p incomes at the time.
I wouldn't call that "nothing." I'd call that "quite a lot."

Don't forget we use the house for work so we have cheap rent personally and for the business.

Meanwhile we keep on saving while having a splendid standard of living.

Using the ladder route would have meant living in rubbish places for decades and wasting time on DIWhy.

 

For balance, I think I increased purchasing power by about £250k by sitting out the market and renting for 5 years, but have made negligible capital growth owning property for the last four. I made an (at the time modest) £90k on my first house in 8 years and £25k on commercial premises in 10 years.

So far I have made more by sitting out at the right time. I would say Scotland should be due a catch up but the politicians are trying to tax heavily any attempt to do better it seems (10% stamp duty).

 

This is the crux of it, you claim to be beating the system, but the reality is your feeding it and it's not feeding you, remember we're talking about money.

Lifestyle and where you chose to live is another subject and you would still be able to run a business from the house if you owned it, my son goes to a great school too, so it's a moot point.

Oh I can see the sea on a clear day too.

 

There are many ways to skin a cat, but my point was based on Matts beating the system/bankers comment, which is just not possible when they have your capital to play with.

 

Building a business could do it, but most businesses would need to borrow money to expand significantly. Even working on a professional hourly rate (rather than building a large organisation with high turnover and small profit margins) usually needs premises, support staff etc that usually needs borrowed money initially.

 

Ditchy - I can think of plenty of examples (like John's) where people have lost on property or even gone bankrupt on it.
Yes yours has worked and I'm genuinely pleased for you but I have close friends, family, people I know of that have worked like nutters doing up a house only to sell it for the same as or even less than what they bought it for.
Yes our money might not be doing a lot in the bank and yes rent does appear to many to be "dead" money but both are predictable, require little effort and very very flexible.

We have "capital" saved up in ISAs and savings - it's safe, it's liquid, it's available right now if needed.

I think if we sold our business, we'd make a decent amount but we have no plans to do so. That's where our effort goes - the landlord can fix our roof/boiler/whatever while we go surfing again

 

So presumably you are still leveraged to the max?

 

Ditch is trying to universalise his own experience is the problem, where he 'heroically' took on a mortgage 'knowing' what would happen over the next 10-15 years with his sage like vision.

What have we come to when our best option in life is to take a massive gamble?

 

I'm from the older generation on here that was brought up to have to buy a house at an early age 19 and a 18k house with morgage a ten percent on £56 a week wages
It was hard Then !!

Worked by ***** off and moved up the ladder in the 80s having a succession on buying and doing up and selling them and finally got my first brand new detached house at the age of only 24 for a whopping 66k and no morgage but I sacrificed a lot to do it

Got rid of the evil ex and met her replacement and kept the house on when I bought my ultimate house which I will always keep as it suits my needs

The bungalow I sold 7 years for 250k after renting it out for years
I could if never Made that by saving up in the bank
That's my ***** waving over but Cumbria is por compared to the southerners

The markets totally knackered now though with houses static prices and new purchasers want brand new houses in brand new estates with a financial incentives to move in thats why it's hard to sell a mid range house 200-300k

It worked well for me as I was lucky in the right generation when there was the boom but for todays youngests ?

No chance
Wages in Cumbria 15-25k
Cheapest house 100k decent ones 220 -250k

Young people aren't taught to save and look for the future and with inflation stripping %rates there is no incentative and a10% deposit takes a long time to save for first time buyers

That's why my boy saw the light went to Australia with 4 times the salary of the uk and just purchased a detached bungalow at just three times his salary and will have it paid off in less then ten years the way he is going he isn't coming back to uk


But those that don't have a house paid for by the time they are 55 ?

Well they are fooked I'm afraid with high rent and house hold bills that will never go down they won't be able to retire as there is no decent pensions now

But for those that have a house you have to hope its valuable enough to sell and downside to one for maybe half it's value so your have something to live off before we end up in the old people's home

Ideally sell up go and live abroad rent a decent place and use up your saving in the sunshine on booze and hookers then come back up the uk and the Goverment will put you on a home and pay your care and you will share a room with someone who has had to sell their home just to pay for their care

 

Ditch just said that house prices double every 10 years so it's a money tree which will keep on giving.

Australian house prices were worse than the UK last time I checked.

 

The system he's talking about is our messed up 'financalized' society where housing is a commodity and there is a big competition to shaft other people, one which you were lucky to win.

Saying that Matt is siding with 'the system' because he has cash in the bank is nonsense. We've had banking for centuries but 'financialization' is more recent, besides modern banking doesn't rely upon cash deposits in the way you think it does, this is one reason we had run a way credit creation in the 00's.

 

What do yo do Mattee? Just being nosy I'd love to live in North Devon but don't think there is much call for lawyers there

 

A few law firms doing well in Truro but that's a bit far down. Exeter is also close enough to North Devon; worth a look!
We run a small PR firm but most of our work is Bristol and London based.

 

good luck to you.Sounds like its doing ok

 

I had a mate who has dabbled in property for 20 years or more..

He had 3 small houses when the rest of us didnt have any!..

he played the game and made a lot of money.....He lived in a million pound house in Mobberley and kept on dabbling....

He took a chance on a few high end properties including a school and a church conversion..... Houses dipped in price and he found he couldnt service the morgages..

House and properties got repossessed and sold at auction...

Result was he landed himself in 2 million pounds worth of debt..... Wife left him and he was stacking up lies totry and look like billy big *****...

He now lives in a 2up2down in Manchester... He got greedy and lost the lot..


Im glad i was payed up before i hit my 40th birthday... To me money renting is money wasted,but you cant tell this to most people under 30.

They have a culture of trying to look great on the never never...

 

Do you live in Mobberley fatscoob? I'm nominally looking around there and places like Lymm, although the latter is more my preference. IIRC there are plans to develop some theme park? around Tatton and a big incinerator is being build to the east (so the smoke will blow towards Knutsford). Know anything about that?

 

There is allsorts going on at the moment..

Do you mean the Biomass generator in Trafford and Bewilderwood at Tatton ?

 

Yes I'm thinking about the Bewilderwood thing but the incinerator is at Lostock Gralam I believe?

Why Tatton needs some plastic kiddies experience I don't know, but the concern is about more traffic and noise I suppose?

 

Lostock gralam is over near pickmere isnt it ?

Its all a worry,but things aint gonna get any better.....

You have been looking for years,you either need to jump or miss the boat..

 

Have a friend the exact same bar he now resides in HMP wherever.
Bouncing dodgy deals off his other companies trying to keep his books and his wife's lifestyle good........4 years for half million fraud .
I know of another kid the same 20+ rentals and owes more than what any are worth....trapped with them , still lords it up though but lives on credit cards day in day out........fooooook that for a lifestyle

 

Nope not at all, I own one out-right and have around £50k mortgage left on the second, which is worth in the region of £220k if current prices are to be believed. I only ever took what I could easily afford to pay, my mantra was always one wage that could pay for everything and the second spare, that way if one person lost their job the other could foot the bills.

 

Yep when I had £150k + in the bank after the sale of my first house, I thought about buying 10 or so @ circa £100k with 10% down and doing the buy to let thing, but it all seemed a bit too much like a house of cards to me, and I thought why be greedy, so decided against it and did the one out-right so my family would always have a roof over their heads and the second with a sizeable deposit so I had plenty of equity, small mortgage that was easy to pay, I did ok first time round and didn't want to lose what I had made so far.

I think the problem comes when people get greedy and think it will never happen to them, well my opinion was always stay inside what you can comfortably afford that way any risk is minimal, thus far I have done ok out of it, also I never went into it wanting to be a millionaire, I only did it because it made more sense than renting.

 

Anything people "Need" will always become a commodity, human nature unfortunately, it's nothing new, it's been that way since the dawn of time.

No point going around hating the game, FYI I don't particularly enjoy it either, but it's they way it is, as much as you or I may dislike or disagree with it, it's what we have to deal with as best we can with the cards we're dealt, simples.

The sooner you get with the program the sooner like me, you can get out.

 

I think that ship has well and truly sailed even though I do believe I'd be better off with a house now than renting, but that is mainly because I have substantial cash saved so my mortgage should be relatively small, so even with small interest rate rise I would be paying less per month out.

In a sense rent is no more dead money that the rent you pay on your mortgage (interest). Our course if everyone believe the opposite then its a self-fulfilling prophecy and the market rises.

 

The interest part is very small compared to rent, artificially so at present. This was reversed when I rented and when it flipped was one of my buy signals.

 

That's true and our interest rates have never been so low for so long. The idea that it is inevitable that people will pile into BTL, ignores that this is only possible because interest rates are so low that they make it significantly cheaper to buy than rent (BTL turns the difference into profit).

 

How about introducing a Law that prevents people from having mortgages on 2nd properties unless the first one is paid off? Too far down the road to consider or could it be viable?

 

The market is a Holy thing. Will never happen.

 

Shame really. Could re-address the balance a bit.

 

It's Never too late.

"Sometimes in life you just have to Grab your *****, close your eyes and Jump"

Ditch: 1999.