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Housing market

stevec67 said:
Of course. I lived in a tough bit of Leeds for 5 years because I had little choice. Even so, "tough" didn't involve junkies for neighbours and walking past a body on the way to work. I didn't have to pay a fortune for the privilege either. In addition, when funds permitted, I moved out to a pleasant suburb. Nobody short of an oil sheik can do that in London. They're welcome to it.
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And plenty of Londoners would laugh at anyone suggesting they should move oop north. I don’t like the place, but it has a lot to offer that you’d struggle to find anywhere else. And a body under a bush isn’t an every day thing, any more than a northerner walking around with a flat cap, whippet and a lump of coal is. :)
 
Tony Lockhart said:
And plenty of Londoners would laugh at anyone suggesting they should move oop north. I don’t like the place, but it has a lot to offer that you’d struggle to find anywhere else. And a body under a bush isn’t an every day thing, any more than a northerner walking around with a flat cap, whippet and a lump of coal is. :)
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Nonsense. A flat cap is the solution to a great many of the world's problems, and it makes none of them worse.
 
paulfromcamden said:
Our first flat in Camden was an ex-local authority Right To Buy job. The building at that time had a problem with junkies and small time dealers. Two of the ground floor flats used by them were basically derelict. The nice old lady that lived opposite us moved because she became so scared of them screaming and banging at all hours. We moved out when they left the body of someone who'd overdosed under a bush in the street.
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yes i remember queuing up with dozens of others to buy flats , well one room with a kitchen in crazy condition under that scheme in london . We were never successful
 
Tony Lockhart said:
Well, I’m sure there are similar areas up and down this country.
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There are indeed. My wife worked for a drug and alcohol charity for a while and can reel them off.

FWIW we're now happily ensconced in a reassuringly boring, leafy and middle class patch of South London. Bliss if you can live with the eye watering property prices.

edit: P.S. I had a good decade plus of going out every Friday and Saturday in Camden and drinking too much, making some brilliant friends, seeing bands and meeting weird random people. It was a great place to be in my 20s.
 
many years ago a chap bought a house off me , he had been given a grant by his housing association to encourage him to get out and buy to release a social housing property .

This guy was a great friend and was one of the Vietnamese boat people and i think he fought in Veitnam if memory serves right . his children are now at uni and one is training to be a nurse
 
hifinutt said:
many years ago a chap bought a house off me , he had been given a grant by his housing association to encourage him to get out and buy to release a social housing property .

This guy was a great friend and was one of the Vietnamese boat people and i think he fought in Veitnam if memory serves right . his children are now at uni and one is training to be a nurse
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Great story. If we listened to the naysayers, there would be little joy in the world. Throughout time, optimists generally win.
 
Joe Hutch said:
Of course these days they’d be put on a flight to Rwanda.
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Comin in here and gettin free airline tickets to a sunshine destination , free accommodation and free food. Back in the day Butlins was all we had but unremitting positive thinking and the occasional portion of Angel Delight saw us through.
 
paulfromcamden said:
We moved out when they left the body of someone who'd overdosed under a bush in the street.
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When I first saw this I wondered if he was a shepherd but it turns out it was only a crook.

I began my second London living interval in Camden Town (1962?) living in an attic room with a tap on the wall and a portable bowl under; nothing else. at the end of a market cul-de-sac opp. the tube station. Really primitive! Soon moved to more illustrious premises above Chalk Farm, being two large top storey rooms with capacious kitchens owned by two gays living on the ground floor (there were 4 of us; me and 3 Hornsey art students). Halcyon days, walking up Haverstock Hill to Hampstead Borough Council, my then place of work. That was the big freeze-up winter when I bought my first car.
 
Mike Reed said:
When I first saw this I wondered if he was a shepherd but it turns out it was only a crook.

I began my second London living interval in Camden Town (1962?) living in an attic room with a tap on the wall and a portable bowl under; nothing else. at the end of a market cul-de-sac opp. the tube station. Really primitive! Soon moved to more illustrious premises above Chalk Farm, being two large top storey rooms with capacious kitchens owned by two gays living on the ground floor (there were 4 of us; me and 3 Hornsey art students). Halcyon days, walking up Haverstock Hill to Hampstead Borough Council, my then place of work. That was the big freeze-up winter when I bought my first car.
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I misread the art students descriptor. I think because of the bohemian setting.
 
stevec67 said:
Nonsense. A flat cap is the solution to a great many of the world's problems,
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Peak humour, Steve.

Things may have changed since the Andy Cap days as even in 1971 when I started visiting all northern retail conurbations, I was never aware of any sartorial (or any?) differences in the shopping diaspora. The only signs of differences which were apparent were the bombed out suburbs of L'pool and to a lesser extent, Manchester. The north had its Arndales, which were really the only established chain shopping malls at that time, so ahead of its time. Ten years later shopping malls were taking off across the country.
 
The problem with housing type threads on PFM is that nobody ever really acknowledges that much of the PFM demographic is broadly the lottery ticket winning generations (boomers and first half of gen x) and we all lived through the most beneficial demographic and financial changes. It's all about how hard everyone worked and how brilliantly they managed to invest in the most sustained major asset class growth period in history just by getting somewhere to live.

I did pretty much everything I could to **** up the advantages of being born at the right time (1967) and still ended up ok. Mid-60s is in fact the sweet spot as it means both me and my parents had an order of magnitude advantage over people born after about 1980. We also got to live though the peak carbon burning years and now can avoid paying for it as we pass it on to our children.

This is fascinating on how demographics have changed and effected both wealth and earnings. Also interesting that someone like Willets who was in government as recently as 2014 but would probably now be viewed as come kind of communist and sent to the back benches.

 
So, if you can save £15,999 of your benefits (you lose them after saving any more) and try to find out if it's enough for a deposit on a house, as soon as you have a mortgage your benefits are stopped. Another headlining policy that has not been thought out!
 
The neighbours just sold their house. It was on the market for 5 days.
Easy enough to sell but not much choice when you're looking to buy.
 
A house went for sale at bottom of our road, as is the norm the former occupant is either in a home or deceased.

Not a bad house, 3 double bedrooms, mess of a garden & probably ex corporation. Sold in a week. Went for 4 times what we paid for our house 20 odd years ago & ours is in a nicer position plus a bit bigger.

I’ve been lucky with property, no getting away from it. I think my kids have been far luckier than me in other ways.
 
we offered on a place this week ... been stagnating on the market for 2 years ... the sellers bit our hand off at under the asking price . wish it was always like that !!!
 
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