council tax band G & H to double

[StrawberryThief1930]

has anyone seen the rumours that the council tax rates for bands G and H are going to double?

I know everything is just rumours at the moment but im worried this one might stick. easy to implement in an existing system and doesn't require the revaluation of thousands of houses etc.

I'm about to buy a G band house. Seriously questioning whether we can afford it. The current council tax is £4k a year. so £8k a year. Over £300 a month more than we had budgeted. we have spreadsheets coming out of our ears trying to check we can afford this house. Buying with a 40% deposit. im sweating...

anyone have the same worries? or further thoughts?

Rumours, rumours and more rumours, why worry about them, wait until the budget, then you will know what to actually worry about

There are jobs out there and UC financial support for low earners
which is especially helpful for rent.

I have a cousin with 3 kids who is a mental health worker in the care industry ( north London suburbs) and she has bought a house and has holidays etc.

Her time renting was supported. She enjoyed the flexible hours whilst her kids were young.

All jobs have worth and working full time is in itself good for ones mental health and independence

Typical I'm okay and fuck everyone else attitude.

Isn't that the normal attitude of someone living in a big house ?

There seems to be a pretty strong correlation with living in a big expensive house and being a NIMBY round where I am.

How much did she buy her London house for? Does she only the entire thing or is it shared ownership?

Not shared ownership
Terraced

Bought about 6 years ago for £200k ( this was an average price so not a run down mess at all or undervalued )
Approx 15min train journey into central London

You’ll forgive me if I find that quite remarkable
Given that I bought in a similar timeframe an hour from London that would cost me £70 each way for an absolute wreck that is barely being held up by anything other than Goodwill and prayers.
For more than £200,000

Equally amazed that somebody in the mental health care industry is earning £50,000 a year
Minus the deductions that they would make for her being a parent to 3 children. I think they take £7000 off for each kid, Reducing her borrowing capacity by at least 21,000 so she must’ve had a hell of a deposit.
as a single parent and I was told the absolute maximum they would be prepared to risk would be three times my salary.
Then of course, age comes into it as well. Reducing the time you can spread the mortgage over and increasing the monthly payment.

Would love to know how she saved Let’s take an educated guess at £71,000 whilst earning 50 K.

Seems like you don’t know my home town then that she still lives in

I have no idea how much she earns . I wouldn’t ask.
She gets £800 a month from the father of her kids that’s all I know as she told me

She had a deposit and I know she was offered 4x salary

Again they don’t include the £800 unless it’s court ordered Maintainence which it hasn’t been for the last 20 years since the CSM was set up
Lots and lots of holes in this story just saying

He just gives her £800.
They didn’t go to court or anything

Just to completely blow your mind as you clearly don’t believe me anyway so what the hell. The town is also on The Met line
Two railway stations and the Met plus restaurants galore, shopping etc etc

it’s no wonder they’re building so many high rises now.

Meanwhile I bought a four bed town house on the NE Kent border for £107,000 in 2000. (I’m not a care worker tho, I’m an Architect, clearly she could still afford more than me.

We were both early / mid 30s when we bought. Although she started earning far earlier than me. ( 5 yrs undergrad plus masters )

What on earth time warp town 15 minutes from central London had houses for £200k in 2019? 😆

Deptford is my guess.

Actually, there are less jobs out there, although it depends on the sector, of course.
I'm struggling to believe that a MH worker in the care industry with 3 children has bought a house in N London unless she has a high earning husband/family money/inheritance or perhaps she just has a huge mortgage rather than being an actual home owner. Ah, I see that you have now commented that the house cost £200K. That seems pretty unlikely for a family home in North London! You can barely get a tiny flat for double that.
Anyway, the point of my comment was to point out that younger are not building wealth and they certainly won't be doing so in the care industry.
Meanwhile we have wealthy boomers trying to compare themselves to mainly impoverished French revolutionaries!

Exactly. It sounds as if @DrPrunesqualer is mistaken.

Watford !
Take a look and stop calling posters liars when you have no clue

After doing a check myself in case I was mistaken.
Nope
All accurate

Attached not the property itself as I’m not outing myself. Just a basic Google for examples

one of those is a 4 bed

@rainingsnoring
@Yamamm

"you cannot have somebody living in a £2 million house that’s on a state pension receiving top ups from the government whilst refusing to move selling their biggest asset that would fund their comfortable lives"

You can, that is the basis of property law, one of the most important principles underpinning civilised society. During the 2008 banking crisis there were people screaming for Fred The Shred to have all of his pension cancelled but Alistair Darling said in a TV interview "You can"t just rip up contract law", basically it underpins too much that we take for granted as rights available to all citizens in a modern society.

State pension, pension top ups and property/ownership rights are totally separate issues, you can"t just muddle them all together and start throwing people out of their homes because some young people might be feeling a bit jealous, the fact that hiouses are too expensive is the fault of cheap debt and how the public chose to use that debt, not the fault of someone who bought a property before most people had credit cards. A lot of the "2 million Pound Houses" are no longer worth anywhere near that anyway now that rates have gone up.

The media storm that has been created is entirely due to Reeves' economic incompetence. She's utterly clueless about how to fix the huge mess she's created and is throwing out increasingly ridiculous ideas while she wobbles around like a weeble desperately wondering what to do to save her job.

not quite a weeble because

‘weebles wobble but they DON’T fall down’

😂

I agree that you can't just rip up the law but there is a huge grey area between confiscating assets (they have already tried that wrt Russia recently), which hardly anyone agrees with, and continuing to deliberately and consistently favour the elderly when the young are clearly struggling. It's not a question of young people 'feeling a bit jealous'. It's a question of the system having completely clipped their wings before they have even started, massively disadvantaged them by decades of policy. No wonder some of them have just given up! Older people in huge houses can certainly be encouraged to downsize by the tax system and they can encourage a slow deflation of the housing bubble. I agree with you that this is already happening. The politicians should be focusing on what is to the overall benefit of the majority, not just one group who tend to vote. Of course, their real intent and actions are far from focusing on what is best for the population, and often all playing politics and feathering their nests.

Yes, the leaking is ridiculous. The last Tory government did the same thing.
The problem is that no one knows how to 'fix the economy' at this stage. It's too far down the pan!

Fair points, I think things will unravel quickly though with the right (or wrong) trigger, it could be job losses along with the AI bubble bursting that creates a credit crunch or something that triggers debt markets to freeze up.