Re: why so many houses now being sold without onward chain?

well-endowned

i was thinking of Paris or Madrid or Rome v London. there is not the same fashion IMHO in these cities for the detached and semi-detached properties.

is cheaper.

well-endowned

Certainly not true of Paris suburbs (banlieu) which bear strong resemblance to London's suburbia - lots of detached houses. Also not forgetting that London's central 6 mile diameter is in fact largely dominated by flats .

IMHO people have foolishly taken on debt they would never have dreamed of taking on had interest rates not been so low and house prices so high. I assume that if their house price had only gone up 10 K then an extra

100 K from the bank would have been unimaginable. But nothing else about their situation - job security, income etc - has changed . Just the theoretical value of their house.

quite so. There are posters to this ng who expect prices to continue to rise and in the world at large I have heard (occasionally but don't quote me) that more than 50% of 'those asked' believed that prices would continue to rise for the forseeable future. I suppose there's an element of the self-fulfilling prophesy about that. The whole thing reminds me of one of Kurt Vonnegut's little literary devices called a 'Ponzi scheme' named after an infamous Ponzi. Parents are now taking equity from their own properties to help their kids pay the inflated prices and to get on the ladder. Oooops.

50% of 'those

help their

and just a little footnote to that - my partner has just agreed a sale for her house to two young teachers. BOTH their parents are apparently chipping in (i.e. releasing equity) to potentiate that,

50% of 'those

help their

Big fan of Vonnegut - Galapagos was the last I read. I also remember Galbraith writing about Ponzi schemes . I think it was during the Florida real-estate boom in the 30s. Ponzi was robbing Peter to pay Paul. I know a woman in her 50s who has done just that to help ger son get a semi in Hendon for only 300,000 ! ouch.

But most of the houses in the'burbs were built for "A fiver down and ten bob a week" in the 1930's under the stimulus of the expanding tube network. "Metroland". Suburban land was not at a premium then.

Closer in to central London what I see from the A1 and Finchley Rd. /Swiss cottage, Maida Vale are indeed blocks of medium rise flats (usually called "Such&Such Mansions/Villas".

I doubt I would like such little control of my environment, I notice my contacts in Milan don't buy carpets for their rented apartments, or light fittings, they settle for the standard issue 'cos it's not their place.

DG

releasing equity)

How else can the system work?

I'd be very interested in an affordable Paris one if you could be so kind as point me in the right direction?

Neb

and in the

50% of 'those

I suppose

thing reminds

named after

help their

Your reading's a bit more up-to-date than mine - but I'd read most of his books up to Jailbird. This woman isn't unusual but I suppose if we remain in a period of low interest rates for the next 5-10 years or more then it needn't be a problem for her even if property prices fall. I still feel that soon after the next election Labour, assuming it wins, will raise stamp duty significantly after the french approach. In a way, this could keep everybody happy (except of course those who will have missed the equity-release boat) since low rates will enable people to continue to service their mortgages. Prices will come down as soon as the tosh-it-up-and-sell brigade see their margin disappear in stamp-duty and the perhaps the buy-to-let mob will see their margins reduced as G Brown - if he's in the ascendancy by then - does what his 're-distributive' conscience dictates and taxes them appropriately. Who knows?

On Sun, 4 Apr 2004 20:48:40 +0100, "stuart noble"

My daughter's first house was a Victorian workman's cottage, in a terrace with the walls built on 12 ft centres. Originally they were two up and two down with a staircase between front and back rooms, with access from the back kitchen. Now extended at the rear with a kitchen downstairs and a bathroom upstairs. It did have gardens front and rear, though.

Eeeh,

My mother's house was a mill house also on 12 foot +/- a bit centres. but it was back to back. Small front garden only 8 foot square + path

• dustbin space.

She paid £700 for it in 1966. And paid off the mortgage in 3 years despite my father being invalided out of work because of emphyseamia.

It was soundly built of stone and quite cheap to heat despite being poorly insulated as it had dwellings on 3 sides all around and her house was kept colder than theirs. :-) Didn't help dad's emphyseamia tho' !

She was fond of the house but she always said she didn't see how anybody could bring up a family in one. But obviously over the years several families must have been brought up in it. It was built in

1888. However in those days folks didn't have so many posessions.

Nevertheless, she had a front garden and a front door opening into the garden not directly onto the street and she didn't pay £169,000 for the house. Which would take *2* salaries of £45,000 each to get finance for that's over twice the national average, for a very miserable house in the industrial south of Leeds where the local average salary is probably 33% down on the national average.

Now, my point is we thought we'd moved on from this level of housing provision, certainly many houses like your example and mine were demolished during the various slum clearance phases of the '50s and '60s. Probably those remaining were the better specimens. However to be building new houses of that standard in 2004 begs the question "Is the country now so poor in reality, we are going back 100 years in the standard of housing provision". I accept that current houses will have central heating (but coal fires have been banned) and a garage, but mum's house had a *cellar* with storage space and space for drying laundry.

DG

Nothing. What would you expect to happen?

So how come you know its 'foolish' given its a hypothetical person, about whom we know nothing, for example how much money they earn, their personal circumstances etc?

Its not a theoretical value, given that they have just gotten 100k on account of it!!

Banks becoming a bit twitchy? Like the Japanese ones which loans against houses which depreciated by nearly 90% even with low mortgage rates - but, of course, that could not happen here in the UK? :)

No, that would only happen if banks over-exended themselves,and is nothing to do with this one particular house falling in value by 50% :-)

But if houses depreciated by 90% we'd have pretty cheap housing, so many would view that as a good thing. However, I wonder by what factor 90% fall is measured by? For example, if they rose 3x and then halved, people would be saying its a crash, but that would only affect the minority (possibly) who bought or remortgaged during that period. My house has probably tripled in value (or a bit less) in the past 10 years. If it now halved in value, or even fell by 66%, I wouldnt be affected at all. In fact, if it fell to a fiver I wouldnt be affected on a day to day basis either.

If only a few houses fall by 50%, it's the borrowers' problem. If all borrowers' houses fall by 50%, it becomes the lenders' problem.

Not the owners who have to keep servicing debts ten times the value of their house. Not the lenders whose customers are going bankrupt left, right, & centre.

It would be measured with respect to the last peak. More precisely, with respect to the biggest peak in living memory. So if prices rose to 200k then dropped to 100k then rose to 150k then dropped to

50k, it would more likely be a 75% drop from 200k than a 67% drop from 150k.

Yeah, but it'd still be called a 50% drop. That's because to those unlucky enough to buy at or just before the peak, this represents a real loss to them, even though to those who bought before the 3x rise leading up to the peak, the 50% drop is still a 50% gain.

The thing that is appreciating and may depreciate is the price of the land on which the house stands, not the value of the house itself.