to think thank god the London property bubble is looking like bursting

[lexiepix]

www.property-time.co.uk/news/Featured-News-227/articles/Latest-Index-Shows-London-Housing-Bubble-Has-Burst-111171.aspx

Its been long overdue and the lr figures for the last few months show that pretty much all of inner London is falling. I know some will have pain from this, but its been waiting to happen for ages and the longer it inflates the worse the pop will be.

For what it's worth I don't live in London, but I think when they do pop the whole country will be better off. When I was working in London most of my older workmates were on about the UK average pay (22-30), but living in property worth between 500-800k, and calling a 300k one bed flat "cheap"

Look at any newspaper: you can't read a single article about something without a line like "speaking from their £300,000 Manchester semi" or "benefits family housed in £1.2Million house"

No, not any newspaper. That will be the Mail or the Express.

I know we had riots in those centuries but how we currently are is very different from countries with the Arab Spring and the like. I don't fear riots at all and if they were likely then we'd all make sure we were armed and ready. I doubt it will come to that at all.

I remain of the view that young people should try to buy as young as they can and particularly before they have children.

Get young people to take on as much debt as possible so they are good little slaves working to pay the bank and their taxes. Thanks capitalism.

No one is obliged to do so. It tends to work for most people but anyone who thinks the market will collapse or they'd prefer to rent or live with parents or move abroad or move around camp sites - it's their choice. My advice to the young is buy and also work very hard in work that pays well. Most parents would agree with me.

I think it brings freedom if you buy your own place - freedom from being moved from your campsite or rented housing, freedom eventually to live rent free. I paid off the mortgage on our last house in my 30s and have again on this. Use low interest rate periods to save as much as you can and keep repaying capital whenever there is a chance.

So your advice is also to get a well paid job? Fab.

It brings freedom if you own your own place outright, its quite the opposite if you take on a huge debt for several decades in a world where jobs and interest rates are uncertain. Getting a mortgage is not owning a home.

Most people take on a repayment mortgage so bit by bit they do repay a loan. The average IQ is 100 and lots of people often don't turn up to work. It is not that hard to get ahead of that pack if you want to.

Yes, I doubt there is a mumsnetter who does not want their child to try to get a well paid job and do well at school. I don't think I am exactly being revolutionary by suggesting so.

Therein lies the rub though, JillyR2015
So many of us have been raised with the school - uni - good job path brainwashing.
Jobs = pay ceiling in most cases. So progress is based on longed for pay rises, promotions, bonuses etc. ie. Advancement predicated on other people's decisions. It keeps people in their place a lot more than they realise.
Of all the rich people I know, none of them have jobs. And a lot of them took risk.

I'm not saying that's a good thing, but it's a mindset that is creating so much of the wealth a lot of us find mind boggling.

Well I don't want my child to get a well paid job. I want them to get a job they enjoy, brings satifaction and makes the world a better place as long as it pays enough to have a decent quality of life I couldn't give a fuck about the wage.

I speak as someone that had a well paid city job that I hated, got mental health problems and was sacked after being signed off work

as long as it pays enough to have a decent quality of life

So, actually, you do give a fck about the wage maryjolisalondon.*

jilly I did as you said but it was with the wrong person. That's than screwed me over beyond belief.

The way things are now you can't rebuild things if they go wrong, that could be wrong partner, wrong Uni course, bullied at school, parent dying through exams.

In any society you should be able to start rebuilding your life again at 20/30's without thinking financially 'I'm fucked' and subsequently so are my kids.

As I said, with that caveat.

Of god the return of she who has all the answers

No decline in prices in my part of london. I wanted to view a property but the vendor is only letting people already under offer view. it is still a sellers market and things are going for asking price or a bit over.

But the asking prices are same now as they were in September 2014

Mortgages are being given a bad name here.

If you start with basic economics .....

I need a house now and I don't have the skills, materials or time to build one.

So I do three things:

• I find a plot of land where I want to live
• I pay for a building on that land
• I use my future earnings to pay
• I raise a mortgage with a bank secured on my home

The idea that this is "bad" thing is clearly nonsense. Modern society can't function without borrowing against future earnings .... unless you hand over all housing to the state and we all become council tenants. If that happens, I bagsy a pad in Holland Park .....

Indeed. Mortgages are not bad. For most people they are better than just paying rent. However ideologically I can certainly understand some people's argument that they would rather rent and I can even understand a socialist argument that the state school own everything and just share everything out (not that I agree with it).

I don't think things are uniquely awful today than they have been in many other decades however. Life has always been tough for most people in many decades and generations. My grandfather sharing a boarding house with 26 young men in 1901 was not in a great position and people without central heating and the like in the 1950s did not have some easy wonderful life. life is hard. We all just have to make the best of it. Many of course ancestors moved some even moved countries - mine certainly did and that is sometimes necessary too. Indeed Libya says 500,000 are planning to cross from there to Italy.