Originally Posted by NedKelly

But that's not the case now. UK house prices have tanked and you still can't sell. The Pound has tanked against the Aussie Dollar so you get even less. Many people are delaying their emigration for this reason.

Originally Posted by sonlymewalter

The perception has always been that Poms have "loadsa money" and that's because a few made a killing from "darn sarf"..not so much northern UK as house prices weren't so great.

Add that to the fact most Poms didn't spend their equity [unlike the Australian market where it has been encouraged] and the poms bought their equity over with them so it looked like they were cashed up.

I think to the average Aussie this must have looked like we were loaded, rather than more frugal than them

Originally Posted by Wol

Sky News had a stunning example this morning of the way that the financial geniuses who have already broken the planet, think.

The female financial correspondent was cheering the "fact" that housing is becoming more affordable at last, with interest rates at an almost alltime low.

She was blindly ignoring the facts that:

1) First time home buyers are being lured into the market by the uplifted FTHB grant.
2) Affordability has nothing whatsoever to do with interest rates - except in the very hort term. If people with marginal incomes are inveigled into a housing market they can only just afford now, they will be out of a home in a year's time when interest rates are escalating.
3) We are entering what may well be a period of well above historical unemployment rates. Many of those entering the market for the first time will be, almost by definition, among the first to lose their jobs.

Just to educate them: housing affordability is a matter of the ratio of price to income. Transient payment rates are just that - temporary.

How many of these financial whizzkids/esses could balance a household budget? Not many, by my reckoning.