Be Excellent To Each Other

Good stuff. but as if they could do anything else. They're stuck between a worsening economy and rising inflation. Anything they do will worsen one of those two, so they're stuck doing fuck all for the foreseeable future.

Aye. I can't say I'm too optimisitic about the next 12 months or so, it's a bit of a pisser that I need work, and also when I get work, Mrs A and I wish to sell Mali Towers and move closer to where she works, if you see what I mean.

Mind you, though, could be worse.

Sell now and rent for a while, as the market's going to keep going down by another 10-20% I reckon (on the basis of what the papers tell me). It'll flatten out by the end of the year or early 2009.

I'll be spending the intervening time making my house as sellable as possible, so when I do eventually leg it it'll hopefully not take *too* long. Either that or I'll just live here forever.

Having bought our lovely place at a bargainous price we're deffo staying here for years. Plus moving house is shit.

I don't really think that's feasible for us right now. There's been 2 houses on this road for sale for ages. Also, not knowing where I might be working is another spanner in the works for that.

That, and I'd have to clean it...

I have no particular compulsion to move, my house is nice enough and fairly convenient for work, amenities, etc. Chances are in another 10 years a £120k mortage will seem like pocket change, even if the housing market goes wonky in the meantime.

I have just had to get a bit angry with my printer

I'm of the same frame of mind as CG - our house is probably worth less than we paid for it, although it was a bit of a wreck at first so the stuff we have done might have helped. However, we plan on being there fore several years at least, and then then it could be worth twice what it is now, half, or we could have abandoned the concept of money entirely, and we'll all be living in a Utopia being waited on by robots.

Invite CG round to get a lot angry with it.

More likely - we'll be waiting on the robots.

I thought he meant interest in the pop music thread...

Haven't seen this, apologies if old news:

Man found in basement covered in BBQ sauce.
Police are grilling him.

"Reggae Reggae Sauce!
Down with Big Brother!
... with Reggae Sauce!"

Mrs A has just bought Wii fit from Game in cheltenham.

Game's website is showing them as 'in stock'.

I could put it on my credit card.... Hmmm...

Ah, it was you. Mrs A now has one and it was 70 quid.

I've already ordered My Health Coach for the DS though which could be here any day now, not sure if it's worth getting both. Hmmm.

ARGH! Tempting!

Anyone wtih Wii Fit care to tell me if it is any good?

More to the point:

Is there anyway I can make it say "One at a time" or "No coach parties, please" when Mrs A steps on it?

Ask a more realistic price for it then.

The market rate is what people will pay, so it clearly isn't

The estate agents in our area have no idea what to pitch properties at at the moment. We've had similar properties nearby go onto the market at prices that vary by 100k. Oddness.

And none of them are shifting, either. There are loads of places that have been on the market since before we moved here 13 months ago, and have been progressively dropping their prices, but are still there.

People just aren't moving at the mo.

I don't think people are even less willing to buy houses at the moment ( or they are a bit, but not vast amounts ) its more like banks are withdrawing all their good deals, so people can't afford it even if you drop the price by 50k. I bet onec this wobble smooths out, and banks start lending again, prices will go back up as people are able to borrow again and start buying houses.

Am I right in saying that banks are being cunts anyway, because various measures intended to make inter-bank lending cheaper and easier have just resulted in the banks keeping the benefit for themselves and not passing it on to the consumer?

Hmmm, yes. I think it's a combination of the funding and the uncertainty about prices.

But whatever the cause, the figures are something like 60% less transactions. Which is fucking huge.



yes.

Well in that case I'd like to complain*.




* use napalm.

The trick is to hook up with a bank, such as HSBC, that self-funds its mortgages. Inter-bank lending rates mean fuck all then.

Two part post here...

Wii Fit
I called my local Game, they had three in stock, I got over there to find the guy in front of me buying one...it wasn't the last luckily! I forgot they did student discount, so got £7 off, and the chap serving me noticed a I had £2.50 on my card, so knocked that off too. I just paid £60.49 for it.

House
I've had to abandon buying my house for now as I can't get a mortgage. I was overpaid housing benefit (not my fault) but it's on my rent records and the lender decided they wanted 6 months worth not twelve. Grrr. Apparently this is a good thing though because if I re-apply in November the house should be cheaper to buy anyway.

O RLY?

Well it's very simple.

You can sell a house for 10p today, bet you.

Therefore there is a price they can sell at. To sell a house you just have to drop the price to what people are willing to pay. If you're still tied to the old insanly inflated values of the last 2 decades you'll be lucky to sell.

Of course it might not be worth it to you to drop the price enough and that's your call but don't say "houses aren't selling".

And if you're selling a house, you have to move anyway most likely, the house you want has dropped just as much. Lower house prices benefit almost all home owners.

Heh, sorry my home phone rang wanting to know why I wasn't answering a text immediatly and I clicked 'submit' by mistake. See above for both parts now though!

I'm not sure it'll benefit us. We took out a 100% mortgage in March for £85k. Negative equity time!

If you got a house for £85k I struggle to have any sympathy at all

But it DOES. So long as you don't want to sell and downgrade. If you upgrade, both houses fall 20%, you're saving huge money in the upgrade. If you don't sell, who cares what meaningless number is currently attached.

The only other problem is if you can't keep up repayments but one presumes you have that insured or are REALLY sure it won't happen.

Well no it wouldn't. Because all other houses have fallen too.

Unless you're selling in order to go into somewhere rented then there's no such thing as a "Stupid loss" same as there isn't really the concept of making a profit on a house.

And even if you go into rent, presumably you have some money in your pocket now from selling and paying off the mortgage, ie - you've made a profit over just renting for that time anyway. If the price you get pays off your mortgage you haven't lost a thing.

I was trying to play devil's advocate, badly. Our mortgage is actually a 2-year tracker, so our mortgage payments have actually gone down about three times since we took it out...

There's also the fact the bank wants their money back, of course.

If you're moving to a bigger house you'd just be extending the mortgage anyway. It's a rare person in negative equity that decides to upgrade and even if you're in 1% equity you're still benefiting from lower house prices if you upgrade.

If you stay in the house then the meaningless number still doesn't matter, yes the bank want the old number back, that's fine you didn't sign up to a mortgage you couldn't afford so who cares what it's currently worth, you're still massively, massively ahead of the poor suckers paying rent (these days, basically anyone single)

Every time I get an email from a government department is says something like this at the bottom of the email:



I always feel like putting this at the bottom of my response:

Froggy purse

Excellent!

True, in reality it's going to need everyone to inch down.

Oh deary me, I will not rest until I get one of them.

I suspect you can buy this one from Mimi

Well I've just been out and voted Tory and I was so confused by the whole matter that I managed to kerb the fuck out of my front left alloy while parking up outside the polling station.

Quite a few people there even at this time though so hopefully a decent turnout to show the government what a bunch of cunts they are.