Teetering on the brink of the new Depression

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nigelswift N
nigelswift Sep 20, 2008 11:13:27
Replying to stray

"Its a chicken/egg relationship, and now the egg doesnt exist anymore."

Well in the fifties, when you wanted a mortgage, you'd have to beg, then go on a six month waiting list, prove you and your parents and grandparents were respectable and then maybe they'd give you a 75% loan. In the past decade, mortgage intermediaries package applications having fictionalised the status of the applicants and the property and next day decisions could be given for 13O% loans! It was an open secret that for a period the largest UK building society asked for the names of references but rarely followed them up! As a young valuer a local agent offered me £1,000 per "good" valuation. Not bad for an hours work, for someone with a young family earning less than 8K a year! And really, proving someone is crooked is quite hard, it's only a "judgement" after all.

H handofdave
handofdave Sep 20, 2008 15:52:46
Replying to nigelswift

Property ownership also used to be seen as a multigenerational investment. The population is more restless and transient than it used to be, which means homes are treated more as a commodity and less as a place to put down roots for the long haul.

The damn house flippers of the last decade, who treated homes as a vehicle for making ridiculous fortunes, were a big part of what inflated the market to those preposterous, shaky heights.

What's needed is for all of this to swing back not to the fifties model or the hypervalued model, but somewhere in between... I don't think the migration of land ownership back into the hands of the few is a good sign at all.