Council tax to used to fuud property speculationi.

Duracell? *

Neither is coal. OR gas.

You could also use springs.

You wouldn't get much water out of a spring, a river maybe...

Obviously you would be using more than one.

Buying at a knockdown price which will continue to fall isn't very savvy, doesn't matter when you are spending someone else's money though.

Labour have presided over a decade of rampant house price inflation caused almost entirely by their strangulation of supply by planning regulation. Ridiculously easy money just supported the unsustainable bubble which has now burst.

The shit the housing system (not market, people need houses to live in not to trade) is now in was entirely predictable and Labours claims of double whammy credit crunch and fuel prices and everyone in the world has the same problem and it isn't our fault are just bollocks.

I'm not convinced there actually is a shortage of supply. Rents have not increased very much over the past 10 years, whereas most other things have. If there was a shortage of housing supply, rents would have increased in line with house prices.

Gas is very suitable for peak load.

I must confess that I thought that, but it is quite common to have the workings "inside" the mountain.

tim

The problem is that it's also suitable for the base load, so having built it we use it for all our power needs.

And oh look, we run out of gas and the price shoots up, now what a surprise!

tim

I'm still trying to work out if he meant mechanical springs

It doesn't matter how many time you (and others) say this, it simply is not true.

The rise in house prices has not been caused by a shortage of house, but by investor speculation.

tim

Don't you suppose all the 'buy to let' crowd buying rapidly appreciating properties and getting some mug to pay the mortgage for them and the lack of mugs paying someone else's mortgage instead of their own would have anything to do with that?

There are about 21 million homes in the UK, over the last decade we have built less than 1.6 million. That means average life of a home has to be

130 years just to maintain the existing number never mind a rising population and increasing demand for people to have their own homes rather than lodging or sharing with extended family. What proportion of housing built in the 1880's is still around and fit to be lived in today?

There is a severe shortage, if there wasn't house prices would bear some resemblance to the actual cost of building and we would not be in the shit we are today.

Yes certintly I have seen houses built left right and center I wonder were the people to fill them come from. Every spare bit of land is built on ans warehouses made into flat.

I like Warehouses converted into flats. I'd pay a premium for one provided it is done right (which invariably it isn't, they think people are going to be wow-ed by the high ceilings and cute "features" and then forget things like in a high spec property people expect at least space for a dishwasher even if not one installed in the price).

But I digress.

On my way to work I pass two complete new blocks of 12 flats. Expecting to find them hard to sell in the current market the developers have put them up for rent and they have been like that for the past three months with no takers. They are in a convenient location, on three (frequent) bus routes with an easy walk to shops (including a large Sainsbury's) and an easy drive to the motorway. I can't understand it.

tim

Of course it does, but if there was actually a shortage of housing, then I wouldn't be able to select from a vast choice of available rental properties with rental levels well within my budget.

The place I'm sitting in at the moment was built in approx 1890, and doesn't look like it is going to fall down any time soon.

There was only a shortage of properties to buy because the "buy to let" crowd you refer to above in the hope of being able to sell them to someone else at an even higher price. In many cases, they are lying empty.

You argument falls on this point alone, but as another one: did you know that there were around a million empty properties in the UK.

If there were a shortage of properties to live in, people would be living in these

Absolute twaddle. How many people do you see living in cardboard boxes?

The price rise has been cause purely by speculation (some of it by the builders). I agree that if there was more houses there would be less speculation, but this doesn't mean that there are too few houses

tim

Or elastic bands even ...

derek

4 or 5 a day. In one town. There are, at best guesses, several hundred thousand homeless people across the country. Not all sleep out where they can be counted in the annual count. And cardboard, if dry, makes a good insulator.

We are also a little unusual in that we have so many people wanting to own their own property. Its an investment. Compared to the stock market recently it has proven to be a good investment. Just not so easily turned into cash as shares can be.

Martin <