You come here, you cry, you moan, you tell us your sob stories, you post about the ignorance of others.

Yet you are sitting on your chair reading this post, doing absolutely nothing about HPI.



We seem more like observers of HPI, like it doesn’t affect us. We are passive, we believe we have no power.


Where is the leadership of this site, why are you not organising a relatively large group of intelligent men & women to fight and educate others about HPI and the economic aspects of it.





Such things as all writing to our respective MPs at the same time letting them know of our concerns.

Such as designing a great A4 sheet about HPC, getting members to print a hundred copies each and distributing them around (even advertising hpc.co.uk to get more members)

Such as educating the general public on inflation (again we could easily design and print sheets about the cost of living going up thanks to labour, post them, email them ect)

Lots of easy, effective, powerfull things can be done.






I ask of the high profile members of HPC.co.uk and the creators of the site to take this site to another level. Use your readership to get the message out to more and more people.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but that is the last thing the owners of this website want. They don't care in a HPC any more than Joe Anybody on the street does. They don't need bad press they want the advertising revenue this site generates.

I concur, are you volunteering to do something then, or just proposing.
I have suggested similar things on the northern ireland board, but it just falls flat on its ****, as lets be honest generally most can't be bothered doing anything about, a good whinge is about all they need and this site provides that forum.

And you wonder why they get the term - whinging pom

I worked with a guy in 2006, at the peak of the 'boom' that I was quite friendly with. He was wondering about buying. I convinced him that this was a large asset bubble. He then convinced his brother who was on the verge of buying. I don't know whether he's managed to convince anyone or not. But there is a definite multiplier effect in action.

I don't think there's anything MPs can do about it now except to bleat on about shared ownership and building more houses. They shouldn't have caused the bubble in the first place and should stop trying to sustain it. But we know that they won't deliberately burst the bubble. The best thing we can all do is not to help inflate it ourselves by buying into it.

Look, all we have to do is educate our friends, relatives and anyone we come across that will listen. When we are in a place in public, we speak a little louder about the doom and gloom.

Just make sure you speak of it with such a matter of fact and forgone conclusion.

Let time and the viral nature of the message do the rest.

such a sheet was created in 2004/5 it was distributed and left on trains offices etc etc, there was a link to the sheet from the front page of HPC>

Yes im more than willing to join in or organise things.

If made easy I think most members would join in or help in various ways




A simple example might be, we design a good A4 poster showing how prices have increased over the last 10 years with a nice picture of Gordon brown smiling in the background. And asking the reader if they have enjoyed paying 300% more for bread and fuel, if they like paying 200% more for council tax, If they like paying 300% more for a roof over their heads.

On the sheet there could be a link to hpc.co.uk to promote the site.




Various members would contribute various skills.
Some might do research
Some might be great writers and contribute good quotes
Some might be very skilled in Photoshop and make the poster look great
Others will just download it, print 20 off and post it through letter boxes
Others might link to it, or email it to friends


It would only take perhaps 5 good individuals to keep something like this going.
A fortnightly poster, newletter,

Perhaps live discussions on internet messengers or similar



Lots can be done

A lot of people don’t have the skills to talk about a HPC to the general public or their friends in a convincing way.



Something like a single sheet showing prices in 1997 and 2007 with Gorden grinning in the background and the slogan “vote labour for bigger bills” would get the message across better to the average jo. It is anti house price inflation but indirectly.

I strongly disagree


A well worded letter would get the point across




“Dear MP


Since you have been in power from 97,


My petrol cost has gone up from £0.50 to £1.05
My council tax has gone up 100%
The cost of bread has gone from 40p to 110p


Why my dear MP would I vote for you? Why would my family vote for you? Why would anyone in his or her right mind vote for you? After all, you’re only giving us bigger and bigger bills!


I’m looking forward to the next election, where I and my family and anyone with a sane mind will be voting you out.

Enjoy the shot time you have left.

Regards”

You Come Here, You Cry, You Moan, You Tell Us Your Sob Stories, You Post About The Ignorance Of Others.

Sums up the pessimism on this site. The losers, the jealous, the sadistic. It attracts people who like to swim in misery. I come here for entertainment.

as Moose has already pointed out we did do this a couple of years back. I wrote the document partially as I was infuriated by the continued ramping of an overpriced asset and the issues it would cause for First Time Buyers.

People did distribute it but it was done more for the fun of seeing people faces. In the end people don't want to listen when they have a vested insterest. That vested insterest is their Cash Machine House.

There is no point trying to convince people anymore of what is happening. People buying houses now are so far beyond stupid that they cannot be saved. However note people buying now are the margin trades and the margin trades set the prices. If anything this credit crunch could actually kill any significant House Price Crash by virtue of the fact that margin trades will not be occuring in any kind of volume that can cause the price trade margins required. Low volumes usually cause very lumpy data.

In the end for so long the people on this site have been viewed as outcasts by friends and family alike. There is only so long you can try preaching to the unconverted before they start treating you like a Jehovah's Witness and switch all the lights off and pretend they are not home. It's a sad thing to watch people make the worst financial decision in their lives but in the end it is their choice.

As others have said before, enjoy the fact you actually made it to this site and had the foresight to seek out a different opinion to the mainstream media. Beyond that it falls on deaf ears....

however total respect to Financial Planner for the PR work he has been doing

Over on the Newsblog, we have agreed to hold a HPC party outside the offices of the Land Registry in London when average UK house prices have fallen to 40% of the peak.

Beyond that, I think many politicians and journalists already read this website, Alphaville Blog in the FT even quotes from it.

Also, the financial vested interests are deflating the bubble for us by being unable to obtain the cash to lend anymore. Maybe it is best if we keep quiet so that we don't get blamed for the inevitable crash.... ?

A friend of mine has his own business, and maybe a tad optimistically has 2 houses and a bridging loan at present. He can get 500K loan for his business, but no-one will give him a 300K BTL loan.

ahh, you see, your not a propaganda machine like BBC or other media outlets.

your honestly portraying your view in the hope that the person your talking to is intelligent enough to understand. The reality is the majority of people are stupid and hence you need to phrase your viewpoints and questions in the right way




for example writing a letter about house prices being too high to your MP would fall on deaf ears.

But writing a letter about bread, fuel, council tax going up and why would you vote for him as all he does is increase prices. well that will wake him up. The MP will probably be too ignorant to understand about inflation, but he will know that increasing prices makes his voters pissed off.

so hopefully he will push for less inflation. which is of course directly related to HPI



you need to word your viewpoints in the right way!

You remind me of a former member. Some guy with a girls name - Marina I think.

Eventually he went mad and decided to terminate his account for his own safety.

Be careful with all this King Canute stuff.

Nobody would be stupid enough to blame a crash on a website


But sites like this with hundreds of active members who are relatively smart could influence politics and educate a lot of people



different members have different skills, so as a site we could simply start by doing a monthly poster to show people how prices have increased since 97 and tell them if they want to pay 2x for fuel and food % Council tax they should vote for labour again.

send a copy of the poster to our MPs with a letter telling them how much we disapprove of rising cost of living ect




a week before the 1st of the month we could start a thread discussing the poster we will make for that month. People would give idea and though, some people good with language would do the writing, some people good with Photoshop would do the editing ect. Then we would put the poster up, encourage members to print 10 off and post it into letterboxes and email to friends.


We would also send a copy to the local MP showing them that there are people out there who really hate inflation, who don’t like rising prices be it food, petrol or houses.



Even if it doesn’t help the HPC cause, it would educate some people.

All power to you Cells.

You have my full support.

Why would I do that?

Seems like a lot of effort to give up the advantage I currently have...

Recently we needed people to gather previous sold prices for the Allsop auction, only 3 or 4 people were prepared to volunteer. I was surprised at such a pathetic effort.

People are prepared to gass all day about doom and gloom, but ask for a few minutes of their time to gather hard facts about the deteriorating market conditions and you'll find yourself on your own.

yeah just thinking that, it was Marina...battered old seventies car with dodgy handles that they put onto Land Rover Discoverys up until the 90's. Bottom line resistance is useless. Remember posting something at the time of his suggestion that "yep, that'll work", why not march up to Downing street, if you weren't diverted through Watford junction first, chanting "What do we want? 2 bed terraces in areas close to local ammenities at 3.5 times joint or single incomes, when do we want it? Now! Or at least once we've paid off the student debt, or increased our living wage above the fudged level of official inflation figures...." ...fukc it, let's go to the the pub and wait for things to turn and take our turn on the great wheel of capitalism...

'They'? Where are you from?

Mine too Merryn..

i didn’t see that post, id of helped in my free time.


not to sound patronizing but perhaps if you titled your post "need help doing...." you would have got a lot more views and hopefully a lot more people helping


you also need to understand that some people cant give up much time, i work and on a normal day i browse hpc.co.uk and don’t even have time to reply to things let alone help people, other times I have a lot of spare time. But im sure there are people on this site who would be willing and happy to help other members so long as they see some benefits to helping the person.

thats good of you laura, appreciated

I'm doing my part by not contributing to corruption & borrowing madness. Don't underestimate those who can buy but refuse to do so as millions of pounds have been removed from the property market. People are emigrating, selling to rent, taking all other options until the end of madness and nicely contributing to the 'cash crunch' that is now bringing the over-inflated housing market to its knees.


Well you need to blame the culture for that people are generally passive & sheeple in this country. What do you think would happen, in Germany, if German government changed the law to adopt our tenancy law removing the tenants' right they rightly have & enjoy over there?

If one doesn't mind being milked there will always be people that will provide this service!

Erm... I thought someone was talking to you here

Here is a simple one from me, im sure HPC can do 100x better!

Ditto. The effort required to get through to the average British skull is too horrible to contemplate.
I would rather eat my own foot!

Most of that stuff in the pic is not down to Brown but Blair.

Its interesting to see that HPI started to take off just after this govt came to power. How ironic for a party that claims to be for the working man, has now made housing unaffordable for the average working person. Blair and Brown just sat back and watched HPI go ballistic...why would Blair and the rest of the MPs give a sh1t about the average person, seeing as most MPs have multiple properties.

And what exactly is the housing minister Caroline Flint doing ??? She seems to be invisible.

I don't feel the purpose of this site is to motivate people to revolt.
it is for members to voice opinions on what will happen to house prices in UK.
lots of easy effective things can be done, but it does not have to happen here nor do many feel that it has to.
a lot are of the opinion that house prices will rise to levels that are unacceptable then will drop due to market forces.
why even bother to take any action to accelerate what will happen anyway.
anybody who chooses to ignore opinions here have that right and they may take their own consequences.

again the causes leading to HPI are numerous and subject to opinion as to what has had more effect.

I guess it will not be too long before members on this site are being sued for not being forceful enough in their arguments to prevent people from buying who then find themselves in negative equity/financial difficulty.

this isnt a plea to protest or revolt.

a few kooks from a website protesting makes us crazy people.




but there are other ways to get the message across. Simple easy effective ways.
Such as highlighting inflation, cost of living going up. Manufacturing jobs disappearing. More and more taxation. ect

In the 18 months or so I've been visiting this site, I've had one success and one failure.

The failure was a friend I now worked with in a previous job; bought a one-bedroom flat in Whitby around this time last year for £125k. I don't know what he earns, but would guess high 20s or early 30s. The only ray of hope there was that he got a five-year fix at 4.8%, and so will at least have several years to prepare for what may be a huge interest in monthly payments, and should be earning a fair bit more than then. And because Whitby is a tourist resort, I guess he'll always be able to rent the place and move even if he gets into negative equity territory and but wants to move. But even so, I tried gently explaining all the arguments we're familiar here, and it didn't work.

The success was another friend in another part of the country. She's about my age (mid-30s) and had been renting with a resident landlord, and really wanted her own place for independence and security of ownership. She was on the verge of buying a small house for £140k. I haven't known her that long (to swap emails with for 2-3 years, but only really as a friend since eight hours of chatting on a flight home from a conference last autumn), and so decided that it would be presumptuous for me to jump in with HPC-style evangelising. Anhyow, fate rescued her: her survey revealed that the place was a damp-ridden shitehole, and so she pulled out. At that point I did write expressing relief for all the reasons which don't need explaining here, and pointed out that as she got on well with her LL and had no short-term need to move, she was potentially saving herself from a nightmare by staying put.

Remember though that a house price crash is not a forgone conclusion.

From where I'm sitting the economy is in a pretty good state and the medium term looks rosy. Much of the house price "correction" may only affect new build properties, and in the case of my home town, this correction has already happened in 06 - 07.

Care to elaborate Doc!

No because then it's just another political advert that becomes Labour VS Conservative and the tories would be keeping the bubble going just as much as Labour are. Forgive me if I'm wrong but wasn't shared ownership a Tory policy in the first place?

What we need a completely non-party directed advert which simply targets the issue without blaming any one party as that would tell the public that all the parties aren't addressing the issue which is true.

What we need to focus on is linking HPI to all the negative it brings like higher prices. Educating the general public about inflation and so on.

"Jamie... when I say run, run.... RUN!"

how about we come up with some daft plan to kidnap someone (Kirsty?) and demand the BoE raise rates to comabt 20% inflation. ?

Yes, and post her back to Mervyn a bit at a time. Mind you, that would take ages!