Chart of the day

[The Lone Gunman]

Ah....yes, Pete Best springs to mind

LG, 666 posts. Do you smell of brimestone?

I dont want to post this, I like that number.

The smell is my normal aroma, sorry about that!

[Joe Black]

Dont tell me about missing the boat. If you want a missing the boat story I have the mother.
Whilst at college in 1980 a mate said he was going to invest in some property and asked if I wanted to bung in, even if it was only a few quid. I didnt have any spare so politely declined.
He bought a couple of old warehouses somewhere called Docklands. D'oh.

Tell me about.

I had a mate who suggested a similar thing 10 or more years ago about us buying a loft apartment or two on York Way in London, at the time still a very dodgy area (perhaps a bit even now?).

At the time they were going for circa £70K for a very large 2 bed open plan loft, now (with the Eurostar terminal and all the other renovation) your'e looking at around £400-500K.

[sasguru]

Well if you look hard there are still opportunities around. Need to do your legwork though and take some calculated and quantified risks. Remember that there was a time when 100K seemed like a lot of money.

Here's what's going to happen in the future. The slowdown in the economy is due to a retrenchment among consumers who are paying down their debts. This process is well in train, though and should last for another year. Barring a huge economic shock in the US, the economy will bump along for a year of so of zero growth. Unemployment will rise steadily but not enough to materially affect the housing market. Don't forget the last crash (90-91) was due to massive redundancies across the board. This will not happen this time as companies have very little fat to trim. When the new pensions law comes in allowing investment in property, this will boost the market a little and the slack will be taken up when people start spending again sometimes in 2007. From there we will see rises of 1%-3% a year - the days of massive price rises are over. However over the long term property is still a good investment - think of it as a forced savings vehicle rather than a get-rich quick scheme.