Any predictions on how Tony, Gordon, Ttwo fat Jags etc will present the unavoidable inevitability of the latest houseprice crash to the nation when they can't hide their dirty deed any longer?

I seem to recall Two Fat Jags stating last year that "of course we inherited the housing market bubble from the Tories" over a year ago now.

Might have to kill more than just a weapons inspector to get out of this one?

They'll place the blame, quite rightly, on greedy speculators who pushed prices beyond the reach of ordinary, humble, decent, working folk.

I wonder if they'll remember the Prime Minister is a property speculator.

I think Kirsty could be found dead,somewhere in a wood.

If that were true wouldn't there have been a strong case for a 'competent' Govt. to have intervened decisively and robustly before such an anomaly grew arms and legs?

Sorry, I am no apologist for this government, but do not ever lose sight of the fact that it WAS greedy everyday people who thought they could make a fast buck and buy up every property in sight and then rent it out.

Al Qaeda?

Who introduced the whole Buy-to-let Idea, Tories I think?

So TB & GB will more than like say that houses prices wll be correcting to the long term average. The recent increases due to changes in the law bought in by previous Government.

surprised that TB hasn't bailed out of the market, what was the price of his house he just bought 3.6m? imagine the -ve equity he'll get, especailly if not elected again. He'll need to do well on his autobiography and after dinner speeches to get out of that.

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Hah ha ha aha

kam

Sorry to keep asking this but, not living anywhere near London......are those tanks still protecting Heathrow Airport?

This was a suggestion,not a prediction!

Now there I agree with you. It is easy to blame any government for excessive house prices, but for that to happen there has to be significant proportion (and that's being kind) of the population which was perfectly happy to make a fast buck while the going was good. A case in point is the Cornish, who previously were the poor men of the UK, and still are in many respects. But many Cornishmen have rubbed their hands with glee in climbing on the insane property price hike which has seen houses here go beyond the reach of OTHER Cornishmen and women who did not display the same greed at the same time.

VP

And no doubt every month when your pay cheques come in, you offer 50% back to the employer so as not to be considered greedy.

Come of it.

If there is money to be made, its human nature to go and collect it, those that dont are the fools not those that do.

Its the end of the Nanny State, you have to make your own way in life now!!!.

How you earn a living is your own responsibility and if you find yourselves short later in life you have only yourselves to blame. Greed does not come into it, its called survival and you had better wake up to it.

LJ.....I have suffered you more than enough - man you are a joke!

Given your statement above the Joke is where?.

I think you need a reality check, come back to planet earth and get a life.

Greed? Is a word often used by those ridden with jealousy as they find themselves unable to make a life for themselves and look to blame someone else for their misfortune.

not really. many of the houses bought by btls were ftb homes. just because you might be in a settled mid-life position to snatch up other peoples properties when young ftbs were not at that stage of life yet doesnt mean its acceptable.

when they were ready to buy they found the ftbs homes now owned by middle aged btlrs.

if thats cool with you then i will start by robbing your house.
why ? - becasue im younger than you and i can.

is the reason 'because i can' acceptable to you ?
you might find this attitude comes back to you in spades.

What on earth constitutes a FTB home?.

What next FTB jeans, FTB Food, maybe Tescos should have a FTB discount card.

We live a free market economy, we live in a global economy and from what we have seen this week it wont be long before buckets loads of Chinese people turn up to buy the houses from under our feet.

There is no such thing as a FTB'er home, there are homes and there are vendors and they come in all shapes and sizes, ages, colors.

The small 1 bed flat or 2 bed mid terrace is not the preserve of the FTB'er its the domain of the highest bidder and I for one would not want to see it any other way.

Sure prices are high but then if they are unaffordable people will vote with their feet if not they will continue to buy them.

I think we should spend more time asking the questions that need to be addressed about wage inequality. Why is someone worth a 6Million christmas bonus and someone else worth 4.70ph.

Why can some afford a house, and others cant. Thats the real question to be asked, the prices are not coming down to meet the McPay then surely the real question is why is pay so low for some.

You will find the answer in the much discussed immigration scandal. Cheap workers imported have pushed the wages of the less skilled down to new levels, and the reason is simple. Cash Payments no questions asked for a third world wage.

But no doubt many will continue to join in the ridicule of the daily mail and continue to vote in a party pertaining to be the working classes friend. The party of high taxation for the poor and offshore accounts for themselves and their cronies. God help us all, will the British Public wake up and smell the coffee?.

I think not.

A FTB home is one bought by someone who is new to buying houses, hence F(First) T(Time) B (Buyer), boy you make p1g sh*t look smart.

Speculation is bad, full stop. The government should have brought in punitive second home taxes, made examples of BTL tax dodgers, and allowed councils to create more cheap homes, lessening the need for the poor to throw themselves as raw meat to the Rachmans.

Not to mention the massive real-world inflation caused by the bank lending huge sums to MEWers to buy yet more property? How much do banks need to keep on reserve? About 8%? That's a heck of a lot of thin-air money dumped onto society, making our money worth less and less and less. Thieves.

And it hasn't just inflated house prices, but many essential goods like for are inflating at two or three times the official rates, the price falls in sweatshop made goods masking the reality.

To think, Gordon Brown chastises the workers for demanding 'inflationary' pay rises to cope with it all. A few modest pay rises are a drop in the ocean compared to the inflationary, free money bonanza of the banks.

They will bame all the banks, including the Bank of England for having firstly IRs that were too low and then too high!

Buy to Let is just middle class people trying to protect their wealth after Gordon Brown started removing 5 billion a year from their pensions.

But, even if you got Gordon Brown on the rack, you'd never get him to admit that his raid on the nation's pensions fuelled a boom in property prices that has priced many working-class people out of property ownership.

"Things can only get better......"

Once we get rid of Nu Labour and Phony Bliar.

"I will not allow house prices to get out of control and put at risk the sustainability of the future."

Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer November 1997

Chortle!

Do people believe this? Is this why people say the government would never let a crash occur? Many believe that statement. What they forget is the the "past is a different country, we can never go back there". 1997 and 2005 are way, way different. A whole landscape has changed. And old maxims will not hold dear.

Farewell thee, HousePrices...

By asking the original question can I assume that you think Labour will win the election? I am not so sure anymore.

Interestingly Stuart Wheeler the founder of IG Index the spread betting firm is so convinced the Tories will win he has set up an account with his own company and is taking bets from all comers that the Tories will win by 50 seat margin.

Apparently he is some sort of legendary gambler who rarely loses.

Maybe Tony's wonderfully self sacrificial recent investment is designed to make the public feel better when the crash happens.

I agree - so many people have become apathetic and just *assume* Labour will win that there is actually a real danger that the dark side may take over again, particularly with the rise of pensioner power as a block vote.

I can't believe poeple sometimes, this comment just show that people really do have blinkers on when it comes to certain things. Just because they use a lovely shade of red and the leader look scincere and smiles a lot and they have New before thier name don't be under any illusions this "so called" goverment is far worse and more dangerous than the tories were. This goverment is as dark as any, and I'm certain in years to come people will look back and really see what a load of lying, stealing, murdering, self serving villans this goverment have been.

Has anyone known a modern british goverment to get away with as much as nulabour? And all under the guise of socialism!

It's the Iranians fault!

Lets invade! they got cheap oil and cheap houses. (Bas tards!)

I blame N. Korea.

However, I understand Kim Jong II wears glasses, and as everbody knows it's not right to attack ANYONE with glasses.

Chortle!

Try saying that in Wales, Scotland and most of the North of England mate and you will be strung up by your balls. The Tories not only ******ed those parts of the UK for 17 straight years but they revelled in doing so.

The only people who think the Tories are better than Labour are:

1. People too young to remember what the UK was like under the Tories - the mass unemployment, the complete run-down of the NHS, riots in major cities, greed, greed, greed for the chosen few while the rest of us were shafted, etc, etc.

2. Completely selfish shites!

3. Morons!

I try not to swear but people who glibly talk rubbish about how wonderful the Tories are/were are, IMPO, complete tw*ts!

Spot on Randall!!! Fact is - they let it happen because it was the back-door way of very conveniently increasing Money Supply & therefore consumer spending MASSIVELY; i.e. via "Equity Release" [aka pile of cr~p]....

"The fundamental problem of the Conservative Party is that it doesn’t have a strategy - and hasn’t had one for four years." Well, it has now been 10 years, and there is still no settlement. The Tories have ignored strategy, and instead jumped from tactic to tactic. As a result they have never seemed anything other than muddy-headed and negligent of their own future. What’s to fasten on to? What’s to vote for?

Laurejon, you really fail to see the difference between working for a better life, and greed. They are not the same thing. You constantly assume that someone who does not wish to play the property game equals "a loser".

That is surely because apparently your only way of assessing people's worth is on the basis of how they manipulate money for their own gains. You describe anyone who wants no part in your philosophy as jealous and envious. In fact they are neither, and some people seek other avenues to enrich their lives. The fact that you don't appear (from your posts here) to have any measure of quality of life other than jumping on the property bandwagon indicates that you seem to have no other values, but I can hardly believe that is the case.

I doubt whether you would be personally rude or objectionable to others when you meet them, and I assume you have some sense of civility when you go about your daily life? The problem with your insistence that taking advantage of property "opportunities" is a good thing, is that you appear unaware that doing so is in effect THE SAME as being rude and objectionable to others, except that you can hide behind the paper work and complexities of transactions.

I think you might consider, for once, the possibility that some people simply do not want to play the property game, usually because they are far too interested in other pursuits which go well beyond material gain. That does not make them "losers" and nor does it imply that others have an inaliable right to do things which scupper everyone else while they are not looking. Not everyone spends every minute of every day looking for a quick buck, but you find that hard to understand.

VP

Look people aren't Saints and they do not have power to see into the future.

1. Landlords provide a service. For me they provide the ability to short a dangerously over-valued property market, and to try out a new town before I commit to buying there. For others they provide accomodation they either can't afford or they don't particularly want to buy at that stage in their life. Any profits they make from this service are like profits made by a corner shop, perfectly legitimate.

2. Speculation is not wrong. It is simply a function of different people believing different things about the future. I have sold and not bought and so am speculating. Everyone who has taken into account future property values in their calculation of whether or not to buy is a speculator. This applies to a FTB who can afford to move into a one bedroom flat but thinks that by waiting they can get a two bed house as much as a BTLer who is subsidising his tenant.

3. People who believe that property will always go up are reacting to a government set stimulus - interest rates. Interest rates are lower than they would be if they were simply set by the market, and this is because the interest rate setters have been told to use a poor measure of inflation. Price controls beget economic distortions. It is not the punters fault that they react to them in the desired way, it is the government's fault for being either incompetent or short sighted.

4. Planning regulations and massive immigration don't help on the way up (although I suspect that they won't hold the prices up on the way down).

The property price boom was made in Whitehall. It is simply not a case of the government electing a new people.

Agreed.

However, I don't blame speculators for taking advantage of a lucrative commercial opportunity. We live in a capitalist society after all.

The blame for the bubble lies primarily with the government for allowing the opportunity to exist. They could easily have avoided this speculation by introducing legislation or taxation to reduce its attractiveness.

You are sure living on a different planet to me.

We now live in a society where during the Ikea sales people were stabbed in the mayhem to get a nice throw for their beds.

I am afraid your age is very telling times have changed. Nobody is going to give you that free lunch anymore.

This government have made it very plain and clear, if you dont provide for yourself you can expect nothing from them irrespective of how much you think you have contributed to the social fabric of society.

Come retirement I hope you dont find yourself suprised that you will be entitled to nothing and can expect to continue to be taxed despite having no earnings as is the case with thousands of pensioners today.

Take a look at todays Job Ads, they dont want shrinking violets in the world of business they want people who would shoot their granny for a couple of quid.

We live in a dog eat dog society and there is no getting away from it, survival of the fittest and the weak and infirm can go whistle for their supper.

Do I think this is a good thing ?. No I dont but then nothing in life is fair is it.

They'll just say that house prices fell around the world and that Britain was no exception.. sort of like an inevitable force of nature. And they'd have a point, too. However, it won't stop people from blaming them, because a lot of policies they have pursued have inflated the bubble to unprecedented levels, and the fallout will be huge.

Surely you mean, 'Speculation and greed are bad, m'kay?'

Apologies to South Park

The blame for the bubble lies primarily with the government for allowing the opportunity to exist. They could easily have avoided this speculation by introducing legislation or taxation to reduce its attractiveness.


Doogie had hit the nail on the head here. The government should not have allowed people homes to be traded in a free market, they should be viewed as places to live not investments!

There you go again! "We live in a dog eat dog society". No, YOU live in such a society. "Nobody is going to give you that free lunch anymore." I didn't ASK for one.

You are confusing one issue with another. I have NEVER argued against self responsibility. I have also NEVER argued here against pulling one's own socks up. I have NEVER proposed here that one should not work. I have NEVER suggested that self improvement is not desirable. I have NEVER said that investment is a bad thing.

In fact all I have ever in essence disagreed with anything you have said conerns one crucial thing: I do not agree that making money out of rising property prices is desirable, or enterprising, or clever, or cool, or in any way productive. That is ALL I have every proposed in my arguments with you.

Yet each time I assert that argument your response is to trawl up completely unrelated issues, assumptions that I am a "communist", a "loser", "envious" and all manner of things which I am not. I am sick and tired of your knee jerk, one dimensional, catch-all cliched sound bites. You completely confuse the notion of creating wealth with your interpretation of it, which is nothing more than gambling.

Buying a house and waiting for it to rise in value is not "anti-communism" and it isn't triumphal capitalism, it is just GAMBLING. I am not in favour of gambling as a means of pretending that you, or me or society as whole is somehow richer. I have proposed that such gambling merely gives the illusion of wealth, but for each person whose wealth is temporarily increased by it, another person's wealth is diminished. The sum total is a LOSS of wealth.

What you propose is that this gambling on property is a torch bearer for enterprise. It is nothing of the kind. Enterprise is designing, making, selling things which ADD value for everyone, including those who produce them and those that buy them. Property inflation achieves none of those things. I accept that a little gambling does no harm, but a whole economy BASED on the notional value of property is a total disaster in the long term, and that is why, again, we are shortly to experience yet another bust after a ludicrous boom which is nothing but dust.

When are you going to get this into your thick head?

VP

I'd just like to make the following disclaimer.

The person masquerading as TB is in no way connected, aphilliated or in any other manner anything to do with myself. The initials TB are sole property of Topher Bear, and no other can use them for their own advantage, or gain, whether financial, political or social. Topher Bear has given general acceptance for the use of TB by other like-minded Bear-Contrarians, freely and without need for written permission.

The current TB mentioned in this post, is in no way a true TB, he is really Tony Blair, real name Anthony Blair, initialized to AB. TB has certainly not given permission for such an arrogant, bloody minded, self obsessed, self important, bigotted, right wing idiot to use such hallowed initials as TB. Further pandering to this imposters desires to be associated with such greatness as TB will not be tolerated. please decist from addressing him as such.

thank you for listening to this public service TB broadcast on behalf of the Contrarian and Bear Society of Tophers.



And back to the original question, they will blame it on the election results (hung)!

(the real) TB

Yes and no. NuLab have been running artificially low interest rates for years to try to convince people that 'you've never had it so good'. The end result has been massive house price inflation, since it's one of the few areas where you can make money and not have to pay capital gains tax. The housing crash, when and if it occurs, will be entirely NuLab's problem: if they'd run sensible exchange rates and fixed the capital gains tax (imposing it on houses too, or, better yet, removing it from everything else), we wouldn't have this bubble.

Of course then NuLab probaby wouldn't have been re-elected, which is precisely why they follow economic policies that are hugely harmful in the long run. Bliar learnt from Clinton's experience: you can get away with anything provided you keep interest rates low.

Certainly I hope a few worthless speculators get burnt in the process, but for NuLab to blame speculators for the problem they created would be hypocritical in the extreme (i.e. perfectly normal behaviour for Bliar and his mates).



Indeed. Why should people expect to buy a house today and sell it for twice as much five years from now? What exactly has changed to make the same house twice as valuable in that period of time?

It's insane that so much speculative money in this country goes into worthless speculation in real estate, rather than creating new companies that would produce new products, and new industries that would benefit everyone, rather than just a few who buy and sell the right time. Unfortunately decades of propaganda has convinced most people here that they can get rich just by taking out a mortgage and waiting for the government to inflate away the debt.

Why would anyone promote innovation to setup a company create jobs and then watch this Government allow the offshoring of the work after the staff have spent years in study and invested huge amounts of time and effort into their careers.

Property is not a Gamble at all, its a plain fact that housing is a scarce resource and a resource in demand. On those points houses will always rise and as such there will be winners and losers.

It is a shame that the only way to ensure that you can be cared for in retirement is to buy up as many houses as you can get your hands on but then given that most people are paying a grand a month in taxes and getting nothing in return come their retirement then what else is there to do.

To play the property market requires no qualifications (In fact the deep thinkers usually end up the losers) and its tax free.

Property is here to stay and unlike shares you wont get someone taking 25% of your profits in management fees or handing vast amounts of cash to the taxman. In addition when the market crashes you are still left with something tangible, whereas with shares when the company winds up, you are left up sh1t Creek without a paddle.

Bricks and Mortar are all that the economy of this nation is built on, its greatest money generating asset is the construction industry and the property market.

Huh? Innovation is the only way that this country can avoid the outsourcing of almost every job that still exists. But it's not going to happen without a major change in government policy.



How are those houses going to 'care for you in retirement'? Will they come around and rub your back or something?



Unless it burns down, gets repossessed, falls apart, is built in an area that becomes a slum, drops 80% in value in a crash, etc, etc, etc.



You will if the government run out of other things to tax. Just look at America, where people retired in their $100k house, saw it rise in 'value' to $500k and are now having to pay five times as much in property taxes on a fixed or declining income.



Then the country is fscked. You can't build a 21st cenutry economy on selling increasingly overpriced houses to people flipping burgers or slinging coffee cups at Starbucks. It's precisely because of that attitude that we've gone from owning a quarter of the world to our current apparently terminal decline.

Some sort of limit should be put on BTL bastards.

Construction and building:yes. Holding on to existing proprty: no. Reason: because just holding on to property does NOT create wealth, and of course if everyone did it there would be no profit at all. The profit is a temporary consequence of one person being at the top of the property pyramid. There is NO real wealth there at all. What you are suggesting only works for a minority of people and of course, you want to be that minority.

Ironic then that you should want to encourage everyone else to do the same thing because there is only profit if you jump on the escalator at the right time and jump off again at the right moment. All you are doing is acting like an antique dealer, passing the same asset round and round. At some point the price is reached where the next buyer says "no, not at that price". Yet you are suggesting that this merrygoround can keep turning forever. It's simple maths that it CAN'T do this ad infinitum.

VP

Property has and always will rise.

To most people a house is the single most expensive purchase in their lives, and upon their deaths the greatest asset they have.

I would challenge anyone to show how property has not risen from the year 1946 to the present day.

There is no getting away from it, Property is one of the best purchases one can make in ones life not only can you utilise it you can also profit from it.

There is no other single purchase that produces such wealth with such functionality.

The analogly is a good point, Antiques go up and down but in the long term they are an irreplaceable resource houses are much the same (In fact it is the land they occupy that is the value.).

"and upon their deaths the greatest asset they have"....

LJ, I don't suppose I have to point out the irregularity here. Or were they indeed, the richest homeowners in the graveyard?

Try saying labour are any good in any part of the middle east!

Read my post again, I never said the tories were any good, I never defended them, I think they are just as bad. My comment (if you had read it instead of reading what you wanted to hear) was that this goverment has been as bad if not worse than any other and all they have done is spin the truth. In years to come when pensions are shite and this counrty is in the midst of ressession you;ll be saying the exact same thing about NewLabour.

Your comment about selfish shites is very amusing, what on gods green earth has this labour party done exept feather it's own nest?

Some people are still living in a time warp thay havn,t realised that New Labour is in fact the Torys gone wrong.
This goverment is as corrupt, greedy, self funding and self indulgent as any on record. They are the masters of spin and deciept you have to be seriously thick not to see what a sham they are. Four more years should bring the country down to the gutter level more bloody immigrants (& don,t insult my intelligence with your a rascist bullsh*t) more irrelevant public funded jobs and a **** up of a chancellor who will put the country into more debt....utophia!
On a bright note Leverkusen 1 Liverpool 3

And your evidence for government corruption and greed is...? The Labour government has its faults, but it's not as corrupt as the Tory government, which wasn't very corrupt itself. The UK is one of the least corrupt countries on the planet.