Daveyboy_The_Red

almost all of us would be better off if we could buy a decent house for a fiver.[/QUOTE]


yes you are correct but sadly people get very greedy and want more and more. would you sell your house tomorrow for half of what its worth just to 'do the decent thing'?

(if you would, pm me!!!!)

MarkG

Most people are expecting wage inflation to erode their debt and make them hundreds of thousands of pounds for doing nothing. For my parents generation that worked, but it's unlikely to work when wages are pretty much static, jobs are being outsourced to China or replaced with cheap immigrants in the UK and nominal price inflation is low as a result.

Once people realise that wages aren't going up much and they can't afford both a mortgage and a pension, things are really going to get interesting in the UK. The funny thing is, my parents got a cheap mortgage and high inflation when they expected to have to pay a large fraction of their income for years... and today's buyers who want high wage inflation to destroy their debt are probably also going to get the exact opposite of what they expect.

iaink

Fair point I suppose. The crashes in the stock market are also more frequent and deeper though arent they? For me its an academic point anyway, I left the UK never having been able to afford to get on the property ladder.

iaink

No so different to the situation to the recessions of the 80s and 90s, job insecurity , low wage increases yadda yadda yadda. Prices continued to rise. Property in the UK is pretty much a finite resource, it will continue to rise in the long term.

SANDRAPAUL

What's long term? A decade. 2 Decades. Retirement age be that 60, 65, or 69?

Yes you are right but investments are looking very tight for the people with little money right across the board.

And the north south divide will extend as time goes by as nearly all the money is in the south.

Unless you kick a ball for well known football clubs or sell BLING to the chavs by the bucket load.

I hope the Canadian house market does not go down the same route.

andy_bee

we've left our house in the uk as were on a work visa and my wife wasn't that sure she'd like Vancouver. It is working out, so now we have to decide if/when to sell the house in the UK.

Our rent just about covers our mortgage, but were already down a grand now as the original tenants pulled out and not the next lot are buying a house in our road...so you have to factor in 'empty time' as well when your renting the place out.

Its become a bit of a pain in the arse really and with the exchange rate changing so much, were worse off than if we had sold it when we left in March.

Never mind, you take the lows with the highs, were happy here

CalgaryBlade

Prices didn't continue to rise in the late 80's and early 90's during the last recession, they actually fell. Remember "negative equity" and people posting keys back to the Building Societies?

You mention in another post that you couldn't afford to "get on the property ladder" in the UK. IMHO that's why prices will not continue to rise indefinitely. Most people need to borrow to buy a house and that debt needs to be serviced.

Salaries aren't rising particularly steeply, so where is that money to pay a bigger mortgage going to come from.

iaink

Sure, it sucked if you were selling or if you couldnt meet the payments as interest rates went up, but, if you had property then and held onto it till now, you would have made a tidy profit.