Reply to: The Economist - Houseprices

Re: Swindon

It's got an interesting roundabout

Re: Swindon

(Swindon) the dullest town of its size in the UK

That's a hollow boast. Are there any other towns exactly the same size as Swindon? Probably not.

There's that place in the Hamptons, supposedly Robert Weil is buying it for $90 million, but that's probably just a rumour.

Re: How low can you go?

Get on that property ladder NOW, prices are going to skyrocket over the next few yrs. You'll thank me later.

Ever thought of living in Swindon? I've got a great house for £235K if you are interested. It's a bargain and set to double in value within 2 yrs. Honest.

Oh, and before you think Swindon is a tulipehole, here's a wider view on this great town.

www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/content/articles/2005/05/24/swindohemingway_feature.shtml

It's "the arse of the world" according to Mark Haddon's best seller; it's "the dullest town of its size in the UK" says an on-line guide and to comedian Eddie Izzard it's a "knackered, kind of Fresno Town"…

The latest to hurl abuse, at the much maligned Swindon, is fashion designer Wayne Hemingway the founder of the fashion label Red or Dead.

According to the man who ingeniously replaced shoe straps with ticking watches, for such design icons as the pop group Bros, south Swindon's newest housing development is the worst in the UK.

The estate is so "jaw droppingly bad", in fact, that the earnest Mr. Hemingway has promoted the Swindon Barratt homes to the very top of his "Crap Housing Estates" league table.

With its "prison style housing" Wayne claims that he'd rather move his inordinately large collection of kitch 70's prints into Strangeways, the notoriously bleak prison in Manchester, than contemplate a move to Swindon.

And he believes that most of the inmates at Strangeways would probably agree:

"…felons do actually have room to exercise and play sport," writes Hemingway in the latest edition of Building Design, the architectural journal. "The 'inmates' of new housing developments like this only chance of exercise, within the development, is a 10 metre walk from car to their front door."


Swindon in Wayne's world

And just to bring the comparison well and truly home, so to speak, the designer has even gone as far as Photo-shopping shots of the Barratt homes with the add on benefits of barbed wire fences, a prison watch tower and some desultory looking 'inmates'.

But according to Swindon's Mayor, Ray Fisher, claiming the new development is worse than a prison isn't as bad as it sounds:

"I had a look at the Strangeways building and I thought it was quite a nice construction. It looked quite modern and it had some shape to it. :rollin

"And why would Her Majesty's Services' structure be an awful structure?"

With one bedroom flats on sale, for up to £150,000, Swindon's Mayor says "it's all a matter of taste" and that there are "an awful lot of people who don't agree" with Mr Hemingham.

Any takers?

Re: How low can you go?

I'm renting by choice

:rollin :rollin :rollin :rollin

No, you are renting because you are a short-sighted tightwad that has missed the boat. Keep the flimsy justifications for your lack of vision coming gaylard, they crack us all up!
:lol :lol :lol

Re: How low can you go?

Only one life??? No, I don't know. What a load of old bullwarks. Speak for yourself.

PS I have read your post 4236 times and not sure I understand the rest of it, but if I can hazard a geuss, and I sincerely hope I am not barking up the wrong tree here, I would say that you should not be ashamed of buying a house boat at all, those mooring fees are rising all the time and it will seem a good investment in 30 years.

The best houses of the future will be airborne tho. A small deposit on a little bit of an Airbus A380 may seem expensive now but everyone will be wanting them in ten years. I have already claimed squatter's rights on the rear toilet of the BA2896 to San Francisco.

How low can you go?

Property to drop by 35% - over 15 years. You know what? I am quite happy with that!

My bet is that those who are homeless now will have to buy before the market bottoms out anyway ( in the next tene years) as they will get married or something.
When they do, they will look back at the missed chances to get on the property ladder around the year 2002 - only 3 years ago!

Funnily enough, the new property owners will be in the same "boat" as those who bought around that time and still worse off than those who bought before then..

Now which would I prefer - living and owning the individual house of my dreams for the rest of my life or renting a crappy boring "Barretts" house and then buying it after 10 years .

You have only one life you know.

.

Ah, that great fraud, Krugman.

A liberal idealogue who makes his living by outrageous theories and speculation.
I wouldn't take anything he says seriously.

Re: China is the financial nexus

This is from an article in the telegraph from Paul Krugman a US economist.

"America is very dependent on its housing market right now. Almost everything moving the economy forward relates, directly or indirectly, to our housing boom." That sounds familiar, but how does it link to China?

Krugman then spells out the jaw--dropping extent of China's T-bill purchases: $200bn in 2004 and possibly as much as $300bn this year. Beijing, he says, is "bankrolling America's huge budget deficit", now almost 5 per cent of national income, to the tune of $1bn per day.

"At some point," he says, excited by the power of his logic, "China could well decide to stop this. If so, the dollar falls sharply, US interest rates rise and our housing bubble bursts."

A pause. "Quite simply," he concludes, "that would stop the American economy, the locomotive for the whole world, in its tracks. So, in this weird way, China is now the financial nexus keeping the global recovery going."

Blimey - a communist totalitarian state keeping the capitalist system going.

Re: House prices

My guess is houses will fall by up to 20% in the next 2 years. Bargain hunters and 1st time buyers will re-enter the market causing another mini boom toward 2008 this one will be fairly short lived. We won't see big gains gain until the next decade.

House prices

Another point is that there won't be any rises either for at leat 5 years till earnings have caught up a bit. But I doubt that people are going to suddenly start panic selling, although there is likely to be a rise in repossesions

OK I'll play

I read both articles carefully. If I remember rightly they quoted research on 16 house price booms over the last century, only 6 of which changed to busts. The jury is very much out on this.

My opinion is that if the US economy manages to keep growing then a bust is not on the cards. All the economic data in the past few years show we effectively behave like an American state economically.

All the indicators point to a correction ( sounds better than a crash).

As they did 5 years, when alot of people were giving the same advice. Since then loads of people of made fortunes in property while others have looked on.

I'm sitting on a similar cash pile and looking to upgrade from a semi to a bigger pad. I think you might have to be very patient, it won't just crash overnight, the last 'correction' took years to become nasty and this one won't get nasty until we have a proper recession. When that will be is anybody's guess !?

Ouch!

>> The statistically insignificant one would class this as another pointless CUK post as opposed to his inane ramblings on willies

Touche, mon ami!:lol