Saturday 26 May 2012

Remind Me How We Got Into This Mess (2)

When you've had a property boom like they had in Ireland, boom-type thinking gets under your skin.  With headlines like this from the Irish Independent, will they ever learn ? 

It's a good time to buy house [sic], says report, even though prices could fall further 25pc. ... There is a huge excess supply [of housing] across the country - 68 months worth of excess supply.

Sounds good to me !  I'm sure the report has lots of sophistry to justify its conclusions.

BTW,  Remind Me How We Got Into This Mess (1) was this, from 4 years ago.  Memories are, as ever, short.

ND

12 comments:

Electro-Kevin said...

What of the UK property market ?

I don't know how the trickle-down of Boomer wealth will fare, given longevity and care costs.

Also the influx of 'refugees' from the EZ bolstering the market - countered by the exodus of 500,000 Brits with skills and wealth.

The reduction in earning power, employment and shortage of affordable mortgages for first timers and the strengthening of BTL empires ...

Where is it all going ?

Dick the Prick said...

I genuinely don't get the housing problem. London's got its own vortex which has been unfuckingtouched at all by riots, crashes, recessions, immigration - fuck it, all we need now is smallpox to test if it's inpregnable. But everywhere else in the country young kids can afford houses when they shack up together if their parents lend 'em £20k and they've both got jobs. When did every single person want to buy a house? Fuck 'em. And if immigrants come here and don't have any capital yet drop loads of kids - fuck 'em. And if people on benefits get moved from London to Stoke or Hull - fuck 'em.

They're talking about building 20,000 houses in my Local Authority and it's good for brickies but to increase supply discourages renovation. Urban blight is as much a function of depopulation as it is about out of town shopping centres.I'm not a green belt nazi or owt but there's plenty of empty buildings that could be converted - fuck em. I shit you not but they built a rather posh housing estate round here in a flood valley and then 3 years later wondered why all these middle class fuckwits who'd bought a £200k house suddenly had water up to their windows - fuck them. I'd be quite happy using housing as a immigration supressant. Hmm...not a great argument, more of a rant.

Bill Quango MP said...

DP: Brilliant!

Lord Blagger said...

It's a government debt crisis. Do the simple maths.

Gilts + state pension + state second pension + civil service pension + PFI + nuclear decommissioning, + black holes in funded state schemes + nuclear decomissioning + post office pension + ....

It's all going Pete Tong. It's up the Greek shit Creek in the UK just as much as Greek. You can't be a little bit pregnant.

Anonymous said...

All UK governments who want to keep Ponzi welfarism going will need to tax capital as well as income. The 'mansion tax' will soon become just a tax on wealth, 2% on all capital will ensure the middle classes are pauperised within two generations. As a matter of policy.

Anonymous said...

Re 7;38 Anonymous.
This is in tune with my own thinking.
When I think of Govt and tax I am always reminded of the American bank robber who, when asked by the judge why he kept robbing banks replied, 'well that's where the money is.'
Asset rich , cash poor will quickly become 'cash poor desperate to sell assets.'The thing is how on earth does one plan for this kind of attack?

Budgie said...

Like I have said - a new tax becomes just another tax. Old taxes are not removed: politicians just cannot control themselves. The government spending 50% of GDP throttles any incipient recovery. I have seen government procurement and it is beyond even my views about how useless government is.

Elby the Beserk said...

Not to mention the bunch of clowns claiming to be our "government" putting up sub-prime mortgages guaranteed by the tax payer.

They really do NOT learn form history do they?

Electro-Kevin said...

Dick - I agree with the London vortex. I happen to think that this has a lot to do with the Government subsidy of assisted welfare buy-to-let properties.

We have been alerted to a new policy of London overspill coming to our region. This is doubtless part of the welfare limitations in view of the fact that so many dole recipients are being 'paid' in excess of £35k pa.

I would love to see this policy extend to Newcastle.

Timbo614 said...

"How We Got Into This Mess": P < P+I
that's how.

andrew said...

I blame it all on progress.

Back in the good old days (*), you had enough money for food and lodging and if lucky, clothes.
If the cost of food went up a lot, you starved, or killed the people who you thought were to blame for the problems.

Now, as we come towards the end of days, we take it for granted that we will be fed (**) and clothed and lodged even if we pretty much do nothing and moreover, we have a right to live in a nice house by ourselves where we want to.
As there was money left over after buying food on a mass basis, it looks like we all got together and decided to spend it on houses.
Having money left over is the fault of the capitalist system and progress.
The thing is that (as with gold or tulip bulbs etc) we could all decide to spend this money on something else.

(*) only any god if you were one of the 1% or so
(**) if you are involved in any charities even indirectly, the sudden rise in people looking for food over the last 2y or so does worry me.

Progress - why - things are bad enough as they are already.

Anonymous said...

These people have to be stopped. They are already setting us up to create the whole damn mess again.

Meanwhile we are building less than 250,000 new homes a year, which means it will take over 80 years to replace the 20million homes most of which are already past their sell-by date by 30 years or more.

A proper policy of restoring ad replacing all buildings and keeping them in good order would make a Britain we could all be proud of, employ a lot of people here in the UK and not really cost UK PLC very much at all (given at the moment we are paying people to sit on their backsides).