suddenly their are few cottages and houses in our village up for sale - which is quite rare

but with prices starting at 600k no young families can afford them - unless they are selling up from London

wealth/assets inevitably accumulate at the top of the socio economic scale

 

Why is it that from the point where they are trying to say the trend is changing they have changed the unit of measurement on the x axis?

 

No idea. Not sure it's significant.

 

Maybe, but if somebody presented medical data like that it would laughed out of the room and never see print. It's too unscientific, not sure why the press should be able to get away with it.

What they are saying may well be true, but there is no way you can infer anything from that graph without a good explanation of why the units of measurement have changed.

 

It's the mail not a journal lol.

The unit is still appears to be one year, just the last four don't cover a calendar year, like they might measure average (or final) % from April to April instead of Jan 1st to Dec 31st. Something like that. Don't think it affects the trend significantly.

 

Mangled data is garbage though, and you can't draw conclusions from it. Presenting it this way, without clarification, is lazy. If Dingdongler interpreted data from his anaesthetic machine in this way, people would die. Instead, he looks for collaborative data, sense checks readings, considers plausibility, uses certified and maintained devices, keeps accurate records and has a high level of prolonged training with legislative protection and high entry criteria. He doesn't get paid well just because he has a good trade union like some would have you believe

 

You can, just they are more tenuous.

I'm not defending the Mail, but to dismiss the whole graph seems a bit fastidious. Both figures still add up to 100%, I don't see a good reason to view the trend over the last few years as 'false'.

 

Isn't it just reiterating the fact that since 2007 renting has increased and buying has decreased

 

Sure, but the point is on the lower axis they measure time as a whole year ie 2007 up until 2008 and then change to 2008-2009, 2009-2010 etc. The question is why?

It's no big deal as such to this thread and I'm going a bit off topic. It's just that I always look for the 'fiddle' when looking at statistics. Pharmaceutical companies try this stuff all the time.

 

EXACTLY - house prices are completely unaffordable for most people..... I agree with MatteeBoy - they HAVE to correct, they are completely out of touch with most peoples wages.

 

Prices are supposed to be up almost 4% this year and the estimate for the year is 5%. Help to buy makes it easier for buyers to buy but in causing the rising prices it causes affordability concerns so also make it harder to buy. Of course the price changes are variable by region.

Help to buy is scheduled to run for 3 years and the second stage of the scheme starts in Jan 2014, so we have this intervention until the start of 2017 basically.

I won't be in a position to buy until late next year and this could be the worst time to buy if we believe that help to buy is creating a bubble. I'd be better off waiting until 2017 when I could probably have saved up enough cash to buy a modest place outright or close enough. It's a long time and kind of depressing facing 4 more years of miserable renting.

 

You know the saying 'there's lies, damned lies and statistics'.

 

Yes, or the other one '86.5% of all statistics are incorrect'

 

It's not quite that straightforward though. It's about affordability and that takes into account interest rates.

You could argue that with interest rates so low the affordability index still stacks up in many areas. It might just need a readjustment of expectations though ie those people who grew up thinking they would buy a 3 bed semi like their parents are actually destined to live in a 1-2 bed flat.

 

Better work harder then as well as offering something people really want so you get something valuable in return. The desire to own housing is such that they will never be easily attained and come at the price of prostituting yourself in our capitalist society to get one.

 

I know that thanks and apart from the last year and a bit I've been working hard for a decade. I can still moan that government intervention is making things harder for me, it isn't like the weather, it's people making decisions which hurt young (ish) people like me who have done nothing wrong.

 

Leeds BS are now offering a 0% fixed rate mortgage!

 

We could comfortably "afford" a fairly decent house. But we don't have any desire to buy one at the moment as a mortgage is in fact, an enormous loan (or we could buy a cr4p house outright).

We've never followed the herd and never will; irks many but things seem pretty good doing it this "crazy" way.

Standard procedure; "buy" a house (ahem with a huge loan) and lease cars/ everything else.
Us; rent house, buy cars outright.
Crazy huh?

 

Sort of.

No interest for an initial period but then it goes on to a chosen rate and the interest not paid at the start is added on to the end of the mortgage. You still make capital payments.


I do see Santander offering fee free 90% LTV at 4.49%.

Funny how funding for lending has killed savers but come one come all if you want to gear up on your property. Yet we are being told to save for our future and pay off our debt. There is some crowd manipulation going on there.

You could argue its the best time to buy - particularly if you need the borrowings to fund the purchase. House prices are still depressed in some areas and lending is becoming more relaxed.

 

Edd; we are always looking just in case but will probably end up doing something a bit left field like building our own pad on a relatives plot or similar. The "standard" housing market is simply daft and we won't join for it.

 

Agree.

 

Mattee you paint the whole country as a bunch of debt junkies all living in leveraged homes and leased cars they can't afford. Of course there are plenty of people who behave like that but there are millions who don't.

If you look at the link below you'll see that about 25% of people in London own their home outright and that rises to 38% in Wales. Also only about 15% of people feel their mortgage is a 'burden'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datab...debt-uk-trends

Now you may take pleasure in the fact that 'we've never followed the herd' as you put it. The problem is you have to understand herd mentality and know when to run with the herd if you are ever going to invest wisely, and as the thread is actually about return on capital this point is pertinent.

You have to run with the herd because that's where the money is all headed and so that's where the capital gains are to be made.

Now you may feel that that things seem 'pretty good' but I presume that's because you've got a nice pile of cash to count and stroke

The issue is though that for the last five years or so you will have never got a return on them that outstrips inflation. Your purchasing power has been eroded year on year.

Your pile of cash will now buy less house, shares, car, food, petrol ie you are getting poorer.

Sometimes you have to follow the herd or you'll get eaten alive

 

The government doesn't agree hence help to buy.

 

Okay then maybe it's just an in-built instinct to do things differently but to increase our wealth (!), we just work more and save more - which is far more efficient for us than paying grands a year in interest.

Yep our money is technically eroding but we just try and add more to it (easier said than done quite often). IMO buying a house is a catastrophically bad decision financially but if you find an ideal house and plan to stay there for a long time, go for it - we are still looking.

We're also investing is other businesses; could go t1ts up but it's more fun than tiling a wall and claiming it adds £10k to the value of a house.

This isn't a bash at anyone - many many people got it just right and are now laughing. But for many more the housing thing just doesn't make sense - the total dependence on it as a nation is brainwashing on a HUGE scale.

You CANNOT fund a nation on an artificial valuation of property and then print a load of extra money. You need to MAKE stuff, SERVICE stuff or MINE/GROW stuff. The constant manipulation of economics is just making the inevitable crash much worse. We do loads of things well - farming, manufacturing for starters but we backed banking and property. These are the horses that are now lame.

 

I think he can be excused as he is Cornish

 

You have to either be born here or live here about 4000 years before you are Cornish.

My kids are, I'm not

 

Whereabouts in Cornwall are you, I spent quite a bit of time working down there when I was with Nat Grid. Nice place if you look away from the huge slag heaps down toward Truro.

 

We're in Polzeath on the North coast - it's not a direct view of the sea but it's not far off:



Those slags heaps are more St Austell way where I went to sixth form college -that area is pretty grim.

 

Nice view. We spent a few days staying in Padstow when we were working on the Dobwalls by pass. I now know why they call it Padstein.

 

Total no-go zone from the end of June until September - it gets RAMMED! But off season, we often jump on the ferry and have a meal there. Or occasionally take a boat across - a lovely way to spend an evening.

The ripple effect means there are actually a load of very good non Stein restaurants too one of which recently got a star (Rick Stein has none... ). The Stein empire restaurants are good though as is his pub nearby.