Rates. Are they higher than a decade ago!

[milanbenes]

get into .Net lads, that's how you get the good rates

get the qualifications, go for the full MSDN certification and you will
be sorteeeeeeeed

all the best

Milan.

[Julius Caesar]

House prices have quadrupled over the last 12 years.

I know a contractor in 1997 who bought a 400K place in london, on his almost 100K a year contactor rate.

That place is worth around £1.8 million today.

He currently bills 130K.. no way he could afford to buy that place today.. not even close..


Contracting in the UK is way past its heyday.. people coming in now have no idea how good it was..

Actually I think that says more about the twisted UK housing market that about the contract market.

[TimberWolf]

Totally. It's still a very good living when you consider a contractor earning 100k pa or more is in the TOP 1% of earners in the country, and yet it still takes ages to pay off a mortgage on a fairly modest house in London or the south east (or the south west for that matter).
The generation of potential FTBers in their 20s and early 30s now are in for a real struggle, a shift in living standards through wage stagnation is only going to continue through globalisation.

Inflating house prices is a great way of making people poorer while making them as happy as pigs in tulip about it.

[the_duderama]

Inflating house prices is a great way of making people poorer while making them as happy as pigs in tulip about it.

Quite - i was looking to buy a house during this recession, but i don't think it's going to happen anytime soon, given that i'll need a 60k deposit minimum.

As for rates 10 years ago, it was a bubble. Jesus.

[AlfredJPruffock]

Then one Day you Find
Ten Years have gone behind you
No-one told you when to Run
You missed the starting gun

[sasguru]

Inflating house prices is a great way of making people poorer while making them as happy as pigs in tulip about it.

You're wrong about most things aren't you?
Managed properly, inflating house prices make you rich. They did me anyhoo.

[sasguru]

As for rates 10 years ago, it was a bubble. Jesus.

Bliss was it in those days to be in your 20s. £350 per day (not much by todays standards) but decent flats in London for <100K.

Sorted.

[Platypus]

Ten years ago I was on my highest rate ever, £80 per day more than I am on now.

Sort of ditto - I'm now earning 70% of what I was 10 years ago. In real terms, that's probably more like 50%

[TimberWolf]

You're wrong about most things aren't you?
Managed properly, inflating house prices make you rich. They did me anyhoo.

It has probably escaped your attention that better houses that you own now have also increased in price and are further out of your reach than before prices rose.

[Julius Caesar]

You're wrong about most things aren't you?
Managed properly, inflating house prices make you rich. They did me anyhoo.

That's what's wrong with the housing market

No really, congratulations.... but it is not sensible to have large quasi-random transfers of wealth between citizens, no matter how happy it makes the recipients. Because it made you rich at other people's expense. Not a criticism of you personally, but the contributors perhaps didn't deserve it.