Bring on the repossessions

What are these things called mortgages of which you speak?[/QUOTE]

Exactly what I was wondering

 

I have £4k or so of unsecured debt. I have over £4k on a credit card.
But, as with our Chantelle-loving offroader here, I have the inverse of
the card balance sitting in various accounts accruing interest like
there's no tomorrow, and all for nothing, so I don't include that in my
debt figure. If it's interest-free, and I can afford to pay it off from
liquid funds tomorrow, then who cares what's "owed"?

To take one example, at one point I had about 6 grand of "debt" on a
Halifax credit card, and a similar amount in a Halifax ISA. They were
paying me around 5% per annum, tax free, to keep an eye on their own
money. Is that "owed"? So long as the minimum monthly payment is
maintained (not exactly going to break the bank at 2% or so of the
balance, if you'll excuse the pun) then everyone's a winner, baby,
that's no lie.

 

You see, that kind of risk-averse approach to financial management is
the reason you only have a decent-sized house in a London suburb, a
garage full of bikes, and regular holidays aboard, whereas those of us
who have embraced electronic banking opportunities are...

....oh. Bugger.

 

No, I object to the social inequality of it all.

I've had landlords in the past from people who've bought properties from
councils or housing associations, rented the place out until the "you
cannot sell the property for x years" agreement has expired, and then
flogged the place on. Buying up public affordable housing stock,
flogging it at a profit, and pocketing the proceeds.

I see a huge difference between private landlords pocketing profits, and
councils or housing associations taking rent and reinvesting it in
affordable housing. Don't get me wrong, in the grand scheme of things
I'm not exactly pecuniarily challenged, but I object to being shat on as
much as the next person.

Don't suppose you caught that thing with the two weegie fruits trying to
do up a housing estate the other night. That's the extreme end of the
kind of thing I'm on about. Private landlords have their own interests
at heart, not that of the wider community. So bollocks to 'em.
(Howard/Jane, if you're reading this, I don't mean you, you're lovely,
but can I have the kitchen door fixed at some point, there's a love.)

Catch me in full flow and you might find me blaming you old buggers for
the problem. By the time I (or my generation) get their parental
inheritance, we'll be old enough that we should have things like this
sorted out by now. My only real hope, in the absence of a recession-free
price correction, is finding somewhere fucked in a probate sale (hurry
up and die, you bastards) and turning it around for a profit. Added
value. I feel like a bloody ready meal.

 

And the housing situation hardly helps. One reason people are having
kids later is they're unwilling to pop a sprog until they're financially
secure enough to cover it, which (these days) includes owning a gaff.

 

The grauniad was stuffed (in the loosest possible sense) with ads from
banks announcing base rate changes. Buggered if I'm putting my money
into an iffy Indian outfit looking to improve their credit rating.

 

Champ says...

More than my fair share I'd say[1].

[1] With a huge smile

 

But Germans rent until they can buy / build their "house for life"

When I worked in Nuernberg we used to have a couple of people who would
commute on a weekly basis from Hamburg. Safe long term permie jobs, but
neither of them had any intention of actually moving house

 

One's enough. Trust me.

 

Around £350,000, apparently.

Scotland went bankrupt following the "New Caledonia" experiment in the
Mosquito Coast, and the Bank of England bailed them out ... on one
condition.

The United Kingdom.
--
| ___ Salad Dodger
|/ \
_/_____\_ GL1500SEV/CBR1100XXX/CBX1000Z
|_\_____/_| ..87918../..23274.../..31893.
(>|_|_|<) TPPFATUICG#7 DIAABTCOD#9 WG*
|__|_|__| BOTAFOT #70 BOTAFOF #09 PM#5
\ |^| / IbW#0 & KotIbW# BotTOS#6 GP#4
\|^|/ ANORAK#17 IbB#4 YTC#4 two#11
'^' RBR Clues: 00 Pts:0000 Miles:0000

 

Just looked for round here( 1 mile from my front door) - 3 properties
<£100k.

All studio flats. and all under the margin by fifty quid.

Conversely, 78 properties at half a million and up.
--
| ___ Salad Dodger
|/ \
_/_____\_ GL1500SEV/CBR1100XXX/CBX1000Z
|_\_____/_| ..87918../..23274.../..31893.
(>|_|_|<) TPPFATUICG#7 DIAABTCOD#9 WG*
|__|_|__| BOTAFOT #70 BOTAFOF #09 PM#5
\ |^| / IbW#0 & KotIbW# BotTOS#6 GP#4
\|^|/ ANORAK#17 IbB#4 YTC#4 two#11
'^' RBR Clues: 00 Pts:0000 Miles:0000

 

Typo corrected.

 

SD says...

We was fucking robbed.

 

Paul email me: Ninja at Molly dot org dot uk and I will give you the
details.

No, I don't get commission.

 

<Nods>

Certainly true in our case. I'm still too comfortable with toys and gadgets
to sacrifice them for a few years yet...

 

OTOH my maternal grandfather paid cash for the farm where I grew up.

 

SD wrote

We paid for it, we actually paid good money for a cold wet treeless
landscape filled to overflowing with work shy piss heads in skirts? No
wonder the empire is in such a mess.

 

A lot of them never buy or build, actually. And the rental market is
geared towards long-term rentals.

That's actually very unusual, even these days.

 

Beav coughed up:

Hewn from a solid chunk of northern granite by the effects of centuries
of driving rain

--
Dan L

http://thebikeshed.spaces.live.com/
1996 Kawasaki ZR1100 Zephyr

BOTAFOT #140 (KotL 2005/6)
X-FOT#000
DIAABTCOD #26
BOMB#18 (slow)
OMF#11

 

SD coughed up:

Bugger, I knew there was part of the plan I'd missed.

--
Dan L

http://thebikeshed.spaces.live.com/
1996 Kawasaki ZR1100 Zephyr

BOTAFOT #140 (KotL 2005/6)
X-FOT#000
DIAABTCOD #26
BOMB#18 (slow)
OMF#11