Mr Flibble, comment number 7 on a thread at HousepriceCrash:
... I'm not Scottish, I'm English, but I'm not blinkered as to what goes on or how people interact with each other.
You cannot drive anywhere without some Muppet on your bumper, you cannot buy anything without some clown outbidding you using borrowed money, you cannot do anything without someone jumping down your throat or being abusive. The 6 x income house ownership racket has made society into a cesspit where nobody has any time for anyone but themselves. No time, no patience, no morals, no scruples.
We have become a nation of people who work jobs we don't enjoy, commute monumental distances each day, all so we can live in cramped little houses that cost more than virtually anywhere in the world. When a nation sacrifices everything it ever stood for to obtain one thing then that nation is indeed lost.
25 years ago you could sit on a till down the local supermarket and buy an average house with your average single wage, now that same house requires a couple of university educated people working careers to afford it.
If this isn't a case of eating your young then I'm not sure what is. I'd love to say England is a great place but it simply isn't, the constant competing and fvcking over the next guy has been a price too much.
The result of all this house-owner-ism and the associated greed that goes with it is a wrecked currency, an eye-watering debt pile, a £3bn a week deficit, near zero international confidence in us, and the cherry on the cake, houses still at 6 x income and the powers that be doing all they can to keep them there. Some may say we are a bunch of fvcktards and it would be hard to argue with them...
And you wonder why I occasional take a pop at the English *lol*
I think he has has summed it all up quite succinctly. Nothing to add, except technically it's "Home-Owner-Ism" and not "House-Owner-Ism".
A return to the good old days? Impossible!
1 hour ago
14 comments:
I was pretty impressed by this too.
Perhaps a professional ranter like
Charlie Brooker should get hold of this and expand the core rant to about four times the length in the style of Howl by whathisname the Beat poet.Then it could be set to music by Phil Spector, released from gaol for the occasion and given a new syrup.
The remark "25 years ago you could sit on a till down the local supermarket and buy an average house with your average single wage" is rather weak - once women routinely go to work, few single people can afford the houses they'd like because they'll be competing with couples - as one of my middle-aged spinster friends keeps complaining.
Like I have always said, being a mortgage slave is a mugs game.
Where I live, in the mid-1990s, you could buy a one bedroomed flat for 20 - 25,000.
People kept saying to me - you should buy. The mortgage payments are cheaper than the rent you pay.
But I wasn't ready to take on the debt. I thought - it will be OK.
I was so wrong. I did the right thing and stayed out of debt, now having bailed out the banks with my tax money, I am facing spending the rest of life in rented accommodation.
I am absolutely furious. But as Norman Tebbit apparently said, don't get mad, don't get even, get mad and even...
Top rant. Much truth there.
Therein lie our woes and it is not accidental.
Look at europe
You expect to buy your first house aged 45, having saved for years and with the help of an inheritance.
Owning a property at 18 is not a right.
@dearieme
This is the kind of thing he's referring to:(from John Redwood's blog 19 Oct 09)Brian E "When I took
out my first mortgage some 45 years ago I had to save regularly with the building society for at least a year before they would consider me. The I had to produce two years'salary slips and bank statements to explain where my income was going.My wife's earnings were not taken into account and I was offered a maximum of two and a half times my salary,subject to my putting down at least 25% of the purchase price."
I am not as old as this but I can remember working in pre-supermarket Sainsburys where the older steadier porters ,the most menial grade (which I was on), had mortgages along these lines.
D, see what DBC says later on.
RR, you'll have to keep saying it though, I doubt that many agree with you (yet).
TM, indeed, but we're now in the 'bust' phase of the time-honoured boom-bust cycle, maybe flats will be 'affordable' again in a couple of years?
OH, I never said anything about "rights", and certainly not at age 18. But the point is that the whole system in the UK is geared up to making housing as expensive as possible. We do not do the same with anything else. And other Europeans have got it badly wrong as well in many respects.
@Techno Mystic: There would only be a profit for you if you sell up and move down market. Do the sums. Work out how much in total you will pay in rent over the next say 50 years. Then compare that to what you would have to pay in total for a £250,000 mortgage over 25 years. I think you will find there is not really that much of a difference in cash terms - and you can't take it with you when you go..
Sum ware over the reignbow said...
Then compare that to what you would have to pay in total for a £250,000 mortgage over 25 years. I think you will find there is not really that much of a difference in cash terms - and you can't take it with you when you go..
Simple fact: there are people borrowing money on buy-to-let mortgages (which cost more than standard mortgages) and letting those properties out.
Now I don't know the sums, but even if the rent only covers the mortgage in year 1, you're laughing. Long-term inflation means that the mortgage remains static while rent remains the same. Plus the person renting is slowly paying off the capital part of the mortgage.
The part that the buy-to-letters didn't bet onwas a government coming out with 40% CGT on 2nd homes (pity about it also affecting shares).
The part that the buy-to-letters didn't bet onwas a government coming out with 40% CGT on 2nd homes
Unfortunately, the lesson everyone's learned from our noble MPs is that CGT on second homes is entirely optional. Time to block that get-out right now. No more designations of "principal residence for tax purposes".
FT, MPs have spent years bodging the CGT rules in order to benefit themselves. You don't think they're going to give up that easily, do you?
Joseph: To a point I agree with you. However, much depends on the tenants. A few years ago I was offered, and accepted, a 2 year contract overseas. As I did not want to leave my flat empty for that length of time, I decided to let it via local estate agents. The rent did indeed cover the (not very large) monthly mortgage payment, but not by much - and even less when the tax due was later deducted by the Inland Revenue. What really caught me by surprise was the state of the place on my return. It was a tip and cost me nearly £4000, far more than the "profit" I had made, to replace appliances, furniture and redecorate from top to bottom. So renting is not always the gold mine many people on this blog seem to think it is. I still maintain that over the course of a lifetime the costs of renting and buying an average price house work out at more or less the same. The positive difference is that renters have mobility to up sticks at the drop of a hat, something not enjoyed by those lumbered with a mortgage who cannot take their house with them when they move; while the downside is the risk of eviction at fairly short notice.
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