SunnySideUp

OK, technically, maybe - once figures are released on Friday.

But, who actually 'feels' hard-up?

I'm sure most people just go along in their little worlds without feeling any different, wealth wise, from one year to the next ..... lose your job and you would feel it - but, other than that?

The Chief

When i read this i thought 'No s*** Sherlock' yeah finding it tough and i know a lot of people who are finding it equally as bad. The upside is things will come down, or should do because of oil prices, fuel, food and energy that coupled that the interest rates will fall further should hopefully stimulate the economy.

tath

A recession isn't something that happens straight away, it's defined as two quarters of negative or zero growth.

Only the BBC 'Daily Mail' News would report speculation about a recession as FACT.

Chris Morris would be proud.

SunnySideUp

Basically, the things that shot up in price - Petrol, Energy and Food - are dropping (maybe Energy will take a while to drop, but drop it will).

Mortgage rates are pretty much where they have been sitting for years now +/- 1%

Unemployment is growing, but interest rates and commodities are falling.

It just doesn't 'feel' like a Recession to me, not yet anyway.

If you are in the Housing Market I guess it is very tough - 1 house per Agent per Week selling - should we have a collection for the Estate Agents and Conveyancing Solicitors and Surveyors who have milked us all dry for decades?

fast bloke

I'm a self employed mortgage advisor............


Fortunately there is enough other stuff to do that I haven't actually lost any income, but I am certainly more cautious about spending than I was. Most clients are the same. They are feeling the pinch from oil, petrol and food increasing rapidly, and want to have a couple of months income saved 'just in case' - Most of these things are now dropping rapidly back, but I think the last few months have created a sort of reality check for people who now realise that there won't always be a bit more money in the pot, or on the credit cards, or in the equity, so they are collectively being a bit more frugal. Strangely(not), I've had more people asking me about and buying unemployment/redundancy insurance in the first three weeks of this month than I did in all of 2006.

SunnySideUp

You cannot be doing many Mortgages?

Are the Lenders really getting tougher with their multiples and LTV %'s?

Are Mortgage Valuers being very cautious about property values?

zip106

Can someone explain negative growth to me?

How can something 'grow' negatively?
I mean, zero is zero so no growth.
Below zero is negative so surely it isn't growing anyway?

Or am I just dumb?
That's a rhetorical question!

fast bloke

Lenders are OK - Trying to stay on the safe side of 80% LTV, but that makes sense. Its the surveyors who are fekin everything up. They take current market value and then reduce it by 25% to get the figure you might achieve in a forced sale. So if you can only get a decent deal at 80% LTV and the valuer knocks 25% off his current market value, you end up only being able to proceed on purchases at less than 60% LTV. A 25% markdown also scares people away. Say you have a house that was worth 300k at the peak. You have to accept that it has probably dropped by 30% (official figures say 12%, but I don't think so), so you put it on at a realistically priced 200k. Surveyor thinks it is worth 200k, so values it at 150k 'forced sale value.' If your buyer doesn't **** and run away at that stage, they will still only get a mortgage for 120k. This goes right to both ends of the chain, but it means that FTB's must have a deposit of around 40% of the real current value........ guess what - they don't.

Bubba po

It's the same as negative acceleration in mechanics, I expect. What you might call "deceleration".

fast bloke

Is negative acceleration not the same as accelerating backwards?

Bubba po

For a given positive value of the X, Y or Z axis, yes.

fast bloke

So can you not get three points and a sixty quid fine if you are going backwards, because you were technically decelerating, or slowing in the eyes of the dumb plod?

boxst

Yes, a strange way of phrasing it. Things decreased from one month to the next by x%, not grew negatively...

Steve

Bubba po

Unfortunately, the dumb plod employ a non-relativistic definition of speed. To them, the notion of a body at rest is a very real thing, as can be observed in the police canteen, or a stake-out near a chippy.

lozgti

Can't be many people who have 20% plus to put down now if everyones equity has been eroded substantially.

As for recession,I don't feel any different I must admit but our economy has only been excited/growing over the last 10 years because of house prices and people being willing to spend on cars ,TV's,etc.

No booming house market in UK,no feel good,no growth.We haven't got much else to fall back on in the uk have we?

StickyMicky

we got hit hard

no income from june/july/august and most of september


what made it worse was we had the bloody rain to contend with, and my missus was waiting to start her new job as a science teach at the start of a new term, so was not getting paid.

i made a decision to leave things until sept and if they did not show signs of improving, i was starting to sack people. as my rainy day funds were gone...


end of sept came and our volumes shot back up, most of the other "small" business round this way said the same.

just as i suspected really, an initial "ohhhh we are ****ed" response due to the press scare tactics, then a period of people sussing out what the deal was, before starting to spend the pennies again.

what is also intresting is that i saw our program percentages slowly change from the basic 1.70 "ramper gypo" wash, back up to the majority of them getting the top 7.00 works wash as the feeling of gloom subsided.

it was actually really intresting to see happen in real time, i suspect people like asda saw the same, with everybody rushing out to buy smart price meat and beans!

FlightMan

So the OP provokes 15 replies, a decent thread is created, and the OP is worthy of an infraction, and now the OP is banned.

What a great system this is.

moneys

iTrader: (5)

so in one way your saying what i have been thinking has a big, or should i say a massive influence on this so called recession, the papers and news are making the majority up?

i have heard of a lot of business's waiting for the downturn to arrive and are still booming, the only people i know that have been effected so far are the people directly involved in the building game, the house market grew far quicker than the buyers did, especially the apartment scene

SiPie

Agree the system is crap but is it not because Pete has been banned for good and can't help himself posting under an alias.... ?

The decent thread may continue in his absence though

davegtt

Why the fek was the OP infracted? Looks a perfectly reasonable post to me.

Agreed regarding everythings fine until you lose your job. I know Id be stuffed. Getting by comfortably at the minute but I am renting one of my bedrooms out to a friend.

MikeCardiff

iTrader: (2)

TBH most businesses wont be hit in any major way - the ones who will be are the ones who have made a killing over the past few years ( mortgage advisors, estate agents, new car dealers, holiday companies, huge screen TV sellers etc...) due to people spending money they didnt have on stuff they didnt really need.

Now... if these businesses werent owned by shareholders, then they could have saved up a big contingency fund. Simple rule in business is not to look at short term income. If you have 2 or 3 years where you are taking a LOT more than you normally would, it is quite possible that you are going to get a couple of years where you take a lot less, and they will balance each other out.

I have to say I havent noticed any real changes that effect me - I dont buy things on credit, my mortgage is fixed for a good few years, food and fuel bills havent gone up a huge amount and I have money in savings that I could use if things got really tough.

Unless you actually lose your job, then you still have the same income, and are still going to spend roughly the same. You may decide that you'll keep your car a couple of years longer, and not have two holidays this year, but if you were paying for those on credit anyway, then you arent significantly worse off.

john banks

We were hit as my wife was suddenly made redundant with no pay for the last month, no notice and no redundancy as the company went into administration. There was a fraction of the amounts due that was paid by the government.

Thankfully she now has another job, although it pays better than the last one it is a six month fixed term, although previous similar positions have been made permanent.

The losses through holding savings (for buying another house c.2010-12) in sterling are astonishing. Additionally by self employed income is being squeezed. The net result if you value income in many currencies other than sterling is that I earn less than I did 5 years ago.

After inflation, houses are now on average getting on for about 20% less than their peak, more like 40% less when you take into account the depreciation of sterling.

When half the jobs in some communities are wiped out after a major industry fails there, recession really does hit home.

TelBoy

Are you Alistair Darling in disguise?! I strongly challenge this assumption.

Leslie

I seem to remember telling you a good many times that your hero's policies and dogmas were going to lead us down the tubes financially. There was no way that the encouragement to borrow and borrow was going to lead to anything else once things fell apart as they have now. It made the economy look artificially good but was really all just a house of cards.

You may think that it does not look all that bad, but the recession has not started to bite yet. We are in for a hard time and will slide back into austerity and all that means.

There are no reserves sufficient to cope with all the troubles since all the cash was squandered by them instead of saving for a "rainy day". In fact they even sold off half our gold reserves!

Goodness knows what our national debt will become-until the IMF tells them to shove off and stop trying to borrow more momey-as they did to Callaghan!

Les

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Les, the problem is pretty global, please don't forget that.

The government deserve a huge heap of criticism particularly over their borrowing etc., but the bank's and financial institution's greed coupled with that of many individuals has put us here and that is the same in many other parts of the world.

To be fair this country enjoyed a very stable economy for nearly a decade under this government and if people (and the government) had just tempered their expectations somewhat and prepared for a rainy day we would be sitting pretty, but sadly greed on the part of all parties (the government, the financial institutions and individuals) always wins through these days.

Now I wonder whose mantra that was?

MikeCardiff

iTrader: (2)

Telboy, my point is that although businesses may have reduced income and profit, not to the degree where it is going to severley effect most of them.

Yes, there will be some who go under or really struggle, but a lot of these will be the ones who are operating on such small margins they are ALWAYS at risk of any small downturn in trade.

Unless you get to the point where you are losing more money than you can cover from your reserves, then even if you are only making a small profit compared to what you were before, you arent in any danger, you just sit it out the bad times and wait for things to improve.

I used to work for a business that made the classic mistake of over-borrowing to expand, and was run on very small profit margins. Even when times were good it was often a juggling act trying to balance the finances, and when the bank decided to recall the overdraft, it sent the company bankrupt as they didnt have the capital to pay their suppliers to get stuff to sell.

TelBoy

That's precisely my point, Mike. This downturn will be exacerbated by banks calling in risky loans quicker than you can say "repossession". I'd love to think that business won't be hit hard as you predict, but in reality it could be a very long winter for a lot of people...

Leslie

Yes I thought I made it clear that I don't blame the world's financial state purely on our goverment and of course it has been set off by the actions of greedy bankers etc.

What I was trying to say was that our own position has been made worse by the unseeing policies of spend it all as fast as possible on items which have been useless to the people, hopeless action by the FSA and the treasury, and gross overborrowing. It should not have been allowed to happen, and then as you say we would have been very much better placed than we are now. The previous way the economy was run may have looked good at the time but it was all a false situation and to my mind is unforgiveable.

Les

Gear Head

iTrader: (2)

Anyone with half a brain cell would have realised that and not borrowed so much.

Supercue

iTrader: (1)

Thought it was just me having a "Kinder Egg Moment"

If the public are feeling the pinch now just wait until March/April time next year when this years shananigans realy start to kick in.
Jobs are already being axed and Flash Gordons own unemployment figures show that even with Labours woeful misinterpretation of the correct figures they are at 1997 levels.

Now with his current level of panic spending/borrowing and the fact our Countries assets have been stripped faster than a ****** draws on a Saturday night where is the glimmer of hope going to come from?

Maybe now more than ever that headline from of all places the Sun has never had a stronger meaning..
"WILL THE LAST PERSON TO LEAVE BRITAIN PLEASE TURN OUT THE LIGHTS"