Council tax to used to fuud property speculationi.

Ah, that will explain the plans to build all these extra homes they announced a couple of years ago.

So who predicted it and when?

and Labours claims of double

So our problems with housing are completely seperate to rising bills, less mortgages offered, less approval of mortgage and banking problems? Is that what you are suggesting?

Martin <

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Your other two posts at the same time, suggest that you are on "my side"

and yet here you are on the "other side"?

I have to say that I find this figure a bit 'high', but will have to look into it. But in any case, I doubt that many of these people can afford a

We are also a little unusual in that we have so many people wanting to own their own property.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So that means that I don't know how you mean this. I can read it as supportive of my view or the opposite of my view, so I can't usefully comment.

tim

Those aren't top of the market prices, then. They may not be the lowest that might occur, but they're clearly not the top!

Today we are knocking down some of the 'slum' housing built in the 60's and

What's the difference? Demand exceeds supply and prices go up. In any normal market rising prices leads to increased production to restore balance. The housing market can't increase production because the supply of land to build on is strangled by planning regulation.

Brownfield crap means pulling something down before you can build, small plots which are expensive to build and s*it quality housing (like the row of 6 detached houses built on half of a local car park which don't have a gap big enough for a wheelie bin between them).

A bloke I know runs his business from a couple of converted 3 bed terrace houses. I think one was previously converted to a shop and he bought and expanded into next door. They are small almost no garden and in a regional town not an expensive city. He was offered over a million quid by a developer who intended to pull them down and build a block of 10 flats. Why was the s***ty bit of land his business runs from 'worth' a million quid? Because being a s***ty brownfield site in town currently used for business it would get planning permission for a block of flats. If it had happened each of the buyers of these flats would have paid 100,000 quid for the land they were built on, yet a couple of miles away there are grassed fields big enough for whole housing estates. I drive past one big enough for 50 nice detached houses with gardens and see its current use is grazing for one scabby horse.

"Miss Baltimore Crabs" wrote in message news:017JVjFP2puIFw+ snipped-for-privacy@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk...

But not the bottom only a mug would buy now.

The number of visible homeless is not the only indicator of a potential housing shortage. There are many overcrowded households where there are more people than bedrooms.

I thought most of the council tax rises was to prop up their final salary pension schemes.

It really annoys me I have to bail out someone else's pension when there is no assistance for my own available.

If they wanted to be effective in that, they'd wait until the crash has bottomed. As it goes, the proposal seems to be that taxpayers should buy in near the top of a bubble and ride it all the way down. A more efective way to throw away taxpayers' cash could be hard to find.

FoFP

I'll volunteer for that spot. Check the uk.finance archives for

FoFP

Did you say when it would happen?

--­-------------------

I'm mostly with you Tim. I work for a homeless charity so perhaps keep my eye out for locals more than most. It helps if you look in the less obvious places - woods, multi storey car parks, between buildings, by industrial units. Not been in a major town yet where there weren't rough sleepers, just some councils don't make real effort to find them for the annual count.

None of the ones I know will be able to afford to buy a house. Hard enough for a couple with both working to be able to buy one these days.

Unusual in that we have so many people wanting to own their own property is somewhat different from parts of Europe. I suspect that has fuelled our housing market.

Martin <

But waiting till the bottom of the bubble doesn't help those being evicted. Just helps the council and the taxpayers later. If the whole point is to increase housing stock only, then waiting until the bottom is a good target. If however the whole point is helping homeowners in trouble, waiting defeats the purpose.

Martin <

Nope, and quite deliberately. If it were possible to spot when a credit bubble topped, everyone would sell the day before. Then the top would move back a day.

If I alone knew when it would top, I'd be posting from my yacht now.

My contention was always that this was a credit buble, not a housing bubble and that the denoument would be similar to the other large credit bubbles. That is credit would dry up and we would enter a debt-deflation as asset prices dropped.

Of course there will be some differences from previous cycles, but overall the structure of the bust will conform to the general pattern, just as did the bubble itself.

FoFP

It's something of a zero-sum game. In the bubble, those outwith home ownership are "punished" as prices rise beyond their means, just as those in ownership are rewarded by paper gains on their assets.

In the bust, those who were reckless with their finances lose the assets while others see papeer losses as prices fall. Conversely those falling prices mean that a family outwith ownership is rewarded by moving into a cheaper house just as another family is evicted.

It's no obvious why it is any more incumbent on the government to interfere when prices fall any more than they do when prices rise. certainly those outwith ownership aren't going to thank the government for using their tax money to try to keep prices beyond their reach. They can't stop the bust because the bubble was just too big. What they might do though is foment a tax revolt that will make the Poll tax riots look like small beer.

Indeed. At that point at least they have a chance of convincing folks that they're getting a bargain.

The evidence from the US is that the vast majority of people helped as they're about to go into foreclosure, end up in foreclosure anyway. Help delays the inevitable and wastes a lot of money from the help and from the homeowners themselves as they continue to struggle with their debts. The banks won't like it either since while the struggle goes on, the house will be losing more value.

Nobody seems to have noted that the idea of swapping mortgage for rent as a meas of saving people implicitly assumes that renting is sufficiently cheaper than buying to make this feasible. Clearly if that isn't the case, it won't help anyone at all.

Given that there are supposed to be so many BtL landlord wannabes out there, I don't see why taxpayers are needed - just organise some sort of matching service for the would-be landlords and those moving from ownership to tenancy.

FoFP

But once again, that is because this is all that they can afford, not because there isn't a less crowded house available for them to live in.

If an "own house" cost what someone on minimum wage could afford, no-one would be building houses because it wouldn't be profitable. Making houses at this cost level is only possible if the government does it (and I for one fail to see why you should take tax money away from people to give to others so that they can make a windfall gain on property).

tim

and in 2002 and in 2001 etc.

Are you the person who correctly forcast 10 of the last 3 recessions.

tim

But it does maximize the losses with the council

A far cheaper way would be to fund the mortgage shortfall for a couple of years and then leave the householder on their own.

ISTM that the purpose of the proposal is to stop the housing market falling off a cliff becaus eof thousands of reposessions, not to stop the prices going down.

tim

Renting round here is quite a bit cheaper than buying a property. A £150k house can be as little as £400 a month rent while that level of mortgage probably won't even buy half.

Martin <

Same here, except I was predicting a house price crash in the days when many people were still denying there would be a dot.com share crash.

I'm now predicting a commodities price crash.