Bear Stearns - anyone else worried? Any thoughts or predictions?

[Callisto]

I must admit that this has got me quite worried and the effects are being felt globally as the Asian stock markets have fallen. What does everyone else think?

Oh shite. We bought last year in an expensive area, could only afford a flat. how much are prices going to fall? We'd love to move to a house but guess no chance now.

We are part of a generation that have never had to wait for anything and we are going to pay for that now.

well we had to wait until our thirties to afford to buy our first home, so don't quite agree with that. Probably shouldn't have posted here.

Ha, noddyholder, many in my generation have had to wait to buy because of the BTL boom. Or content ourselves with cramped, substandard accomodation whether bought or rented.

Ruty, in the long run, if you want to trade up, you are probably better off if house prices go down so you can get more house for your money. The trick is keeping out of negative equity.

London sneezes and the country catches cold. If finance jobs start disappearing in London and banks stop lending, then at first a lot of people will say "good riddance to fatcats" but it is not as simple as that. Bankers losing jobs mean that they can't buy houses, have less money to spend in shops and gradually the whole thing unravels. Finance jobs in the City are the canary in the cage - when they die everyone has to watch out.

Well, yes. But I've lived through (in the sense of been employed in the City during, and been a home-owner during) two quite significant recessions now. It happens, but it won't last forever.

worried yes it is serious

as far as i can make out our system is based on confidence and that has gone

batten down the hatches

and also i'll dig for victory..

beans on toast all round.Yum!

er in what way is britain more indebted than the united states dinny?

ssb

and I have lived (in the sense of being UNemployed and a home owner) through one recession in the City. It won't last forever, but it ain't much fun when it's happening.

Ruty, of course there will be winners as well as losers - if property prices do fall a lot, that will give many people a chance to get on the housing ladder who have been excluded from it for years now. I don't think there's anything wrong with acknowledging that.

Yes - i too have been very angry at the attitude of estate agents in the past.

They always seem to transfer their unrealistic price expectations onto us.

I have been burnt by this before a couple of times.

They set your hopes high for a disappointment. I fail to understand why they do this as they are the one set of people who should be experts on what a house is worth.

I have also been treated shabbily form the other side when purchasing as well. Put in a low first offer for a house, hear nothing, we call them and they tell us they have sold it for a larger offer.

If they practised some common business sense and called us to say a higher offer was in we would have trumped it easily.

This has happened twice now - so the seller could have acieved a much better offer if the estate agents did a bit of 'work'.

I fail to see what they actually do. Would consider other options next time to circumvent these idiots...........

start planting your veg seeds now girls!!

maybe it'll be sort of fun, like the war (eek! grim stiff upper lip emoticon)

DH is a cash fund manager and his take on this is it is as bad as it is going to get. Hedge Funds may fail but that is because they have no leveredge (think this means they have little assets against the stupid amounts they are allowed to borrow) but he thinks that all our big names - in banking terms are safe.

As for the housing markets - as soon as prices start to come down all the people who are waiting for that to happen to buy will then starting buying and the prices will go up again.

He really doesn't think it is all doom and gloom.

And if any of our main banks fail the Government will have to bail them out like they have done with Northern Rock, I for one wouldn't be holding banking shares at the moment though!

I really am just regurgitating what DH has told me though as I am clueless about all things financial!

anyone seen pics of the tent city outside LA...people who have lost their properties have set up camp!

re. debts in UK, meant in relative terms

I don't think most agents know anything about economics at all they are shop assistants mainly although you do get exceptions, like my friend who says everything is overpriced and the last time he saw this sort of thing was when prices crashed.

Hard times might do some good. It would stop people boasting about how much their home has increased in value and perhaps generally make conspicuous consumption considered vulgar.

All this navel-gazing and fretting about our style and posessions is probably not good for us...

disclaimer: am financially illiterate too

but

went to dinner with someone who works for Bear Stearns on Sat night (so before sale) and he reckoned they did have plenty of assets. think it's maybe the twitchiness or markets in general - but at least it's been handled quicker than the Northern Rock stuff.

agree Upwind

I just worry about the effects of increasing poverty on the already poor in particular. Have vague memories of rioting etc during the last recession. People more likely to turn on immigrants 'taking our jobs' etc.

+agree allegra. I think it's the poor that suffer most in a recession. My abiding memory of the last one was a lot of boarded up properties and an awful lot of people living on the streets.

I don't think people will be buying and pushing prices back up as mortagges will be harder to get and the banks and the govt will be wary of this ever happening again.In the last crash property took from 1989 to 2000 to recover back to the same price.

(that "+" was from dd)

Presumably there will be less money for public services too as tax revenues are likely to go down (not to mention what effects there might be on PFI projects).

what relative terms would those be?
twinkie1 you mean hedge funds have high leverage, not no leverage