Do people in power benefit greatly from ridiculous house prices?

>>90726

They do if they own property.

>>90726
Lots of politicians are landlords. A lot of donations to the Tory party come from property developers. Fuck knows how much has been lent out via Help to Buy, which has a vested interest in property prices rising.

As long as you aren't in the South East raising the deposit amount isn't that difficult. The fact that most houses cost far more than 4.5x your salary is. This scheme does nothing.

Sub-prime mortgage crisis 2: Conservative boogaloo except this time the government bankrupts itself or the taxpayer? NICE.

As someone looking to buy a home in April-ish, I'm intrigued. Although my understanding is the banks aren't giving mortgages at even 10% deposit at the moment, it would have to be awfully generous.

Oh, and green-top for life. The proper milk to have in your tea, I've noticed that full-fat fans are all not really milk drinkers.

>If I post a link to this website again I will be banned

Not him but this is silly. We get it 2007, the Daily Mail is a rag but this is a thread where we have a cunt-off over the correct milk.

>>90731
As far as I'm aware blue milk is only encouraged for very small children.

>>90732
And yet we reserve blue cheese for adult pallets. Ironic.

I might be an outlier because I'm the kind of decadent bastard who could drink cream out of the pot, but nothing beats blue milk in a coffee or on cereal.

It's not for hydration, it's for flavour. If you want something watery drink water.

I wish the government would just hurry up and build council houses with a view to immediately selling them off. Everyone's happy that way (well, except cunts with investment properties, but if the government would stop culling badgers and start culling them I wouldn't complain.)
The government could actually turn a profit if it manages to build the houses at reasonable rates, since prices are so obscene that selling a house at half it's market value would still leave you with a lot of money to build the house. (And you could either have the government notionally retain ownership of the underlying land, or [ab]use its power to buy up land cheaply.) People would be able to actually afford houses again. Some of the houses could still go into the general social housing stock rather than being sold. It's a win for both Tory and Labour principles. The problem with right to buy was never that people would buy up all the houses: It's that councils weren't allowed to build more. Drop the dogmatic opposition to social housing that Thatcher had and it's actually not a bad way of boosting home ownership.

>>90734

Blue milk in tea is too creamy, it overwhelms the flavour of the brew.

>>90735

The government is willing to do anything to make home ownership more affordable, so long as it doesn't bring down house prices. Baby Boomers have treated housing as an infallible store of value rather than somewhere for people to live and they substantially outnumber the young people who are stuck in shitty buy-to-let rents. At some point in the last couple of decades, being a slum lord became a respectable middle-class pursuit.

>>90737
>At some point in the last couple of decades, being a slum lord became a respectable middle-class pursuit.

Tonty Blair is behind this. Under New Labour it became a lot easier to obtain a buy-to-let mortgage, which led to a campaign to push being a landlord as acceptable and remove the stigma associated with it. The dot.com bubble happened so people became wary of stockmarket investing and pumped their money into property due to the continually rising prices and the reassurance of it being a tangible asset. Whilst this was going on there was continual property porn on the telly thanks to the likes of Kirstie Allsopp, Sarah Beeny and Kevin McCloud. Labour left housebuilding down to the market, but it turned out they'd rather limit supply and push prices up.

This is without even mentioning population growth. What is often overlooked in the housing crisis is that a lot of family homes have been converted into HMOs thanks to both the boom in the student population and the rise in net migration, which has cut the supply even further.

>>90737 The government is willing to do anything to make home ownership more affordable, so long as it doesn't bring down house prices.

Inflation used to do that. Remember inflation? It's been a while...

>The average asking price of homes coming on to the market in Britain has hit a record high, according to figures from the property website Rightmove, and for the first time estate agents are listing more homes as sold than they have for sale.

>The website’s monthly snapshot of new listings showed sellers are asking for an average price of £323,530, an increase of 1.1% since last month, and 5.5%, or £16,818 more than this time last year.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/oct/19/average-asking-price-for-homes-in-britain-hits-record-high

Don’t pay your mortgage, urge climate activists

Extinction Rebellion has called for supporters to stop making mortgage payments and take out loans with no intention of paying them back in an attempt to force the government and banks to take further action towards reducing carbon emissions.

The environmental campaign group, which has urged the government to declare a climate and ecological emergency, called for people to engage in “financial disobedience” by refusing to pay debts including credit cards and payday loans. It even suggests taking out loans or opening bank accounts to run up a “small” overdraft with no intention to pay it back. The lobbyists said that the campaign, which is called “Money rebellion”, would aim to donate the money saved by refusing to pay back loans and mortgage repayments to support those worst hit by the negative impacts of climate change.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dont-pay-your-mortgage-urge-climate-activists-s83bzjwzr

Whatever will those ker-azy krusties think up next?

>>91692
What could possibly go wrong with that?

Other than bankruptcy, homelessness and the worst credit record ever. Seems legit.

>>91692
Well, I suppose it eliminates the problem of middle class hippies if they're all living in debt slavery. Extinction Rebellion gets activists who never grow up, landlords get lifetime renters and I'm sure people under crushing debt are easier for the police to control. Everyone's a winner.

>>91692

It would work if they got a critical mass of people to do it, but I can't imagine that happening.

This is basically the background plot to Fight Club but with tweets instead of bombs.

>>91695
One of the cofounders of XR has said of it:

>I hope that this campaign is embraced by everyone who is a reasonable person who’s willing to have a conversation.

They're like PETA. People agree with the underlying cause but they have a habit of turning people against them with stunts like this - no wonder she's also bemoaning that they're seen as out of touch lefties.

>>91696

>>91695

That;s the crux of the matter isn;t it. If enough people did it it'd be devastatingly effective- the same way we could leave Jeff Bezos penniless within the week if we just all decided one day to stop buying things on Amazon. You could say it about an incredible number of things. If the entire NHS had gone on strike earlier this year, the PPE thing would have been solved within hours and they'd all have a nice payrise- They couldn't afford to sack any of them in March, they could have taken the government fucking hostage.

But people are never collective enough. When was the last time a large enough group of people acted coherently to force something like this? It certainly wasn't within my lifetime, and this set of bloody posturing dickheads think they'll get the whole country to stop paying its mortgage?

Of course, they don't think that at all, they're just doing it for the controversy publicity. I don't know if I hate that even more cynically, but I do feel a bit sorry for the naive student types who'll take out massive loans and bury themselves in debt because Twitter told them to.

>>91695
I don't see how not paying off a secured loan hurts anyone except the one not paying it.

>>91699

If you stop paying your mortgage, it's your problem. If everyone stops paying their mortgage, it's the bank's problem. Which by extension is your problem, because it'd cause a financial crash worse than the great depression.

Related reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_strike

>>91695
>>91700
I think the problem they will immediately run into is that banks will cotton on pretty quickly to a surge of new applications (even if they didn't announce it and possibly before staff suffer a nervous breakdown). Any surge of demand will see tightening of lending requirements and fees which would hurt real people fighting over limited credit thanks to piss-takers.

The proper solution from my mind would be to engage in shareholder activism which already happens under ESG criteria. It wouldn't even be hard to pass a collection plate and use monies to collectively invest to this end as a kind of fund which has the side benefit of educating your membership. Then again, I imagine suggesting that would get you put in the wicker man.

Does taking out an overdraft and not paying it off even hurt the bank that much?
I assume the money is supposed to grow into a giant glob of unpaid debt over time, and then the bank will write that on their balance sheet as money that they expect to receive in future until for one reason or another they've got to recognize they're never getting it. But I can't decide if our banking system is weird enough that such a "loss" is considered an actual loss, considering all that was actually lost was the initial small sum.

I suppose if everyone does it it's supposed to dry up credit or something, but I'm more interested in that narrow effect.

>>91700
But it's a mortgage, not rent. They'll just foreclose to get their money.

>>91702
Hooray! Someone gets it.

>>91702

>the bank will write that on their balance sheet as money that they expect to receive in future until for one reason or another they've got to recognize they're never getting it

The process is a little bit more precise than that. The 2008 crisis was triggered by people defaulting on their mortgages, so banks are now required by the Basel Accords to report detailed information on delinquency and defaults to their national regulator. An increase in the default rate triggers a sequence of increasingly stark interventions to prevent another Northern Rock.

The estimated probability of loss and loss given default are baked in to the cost of credit, which is why some people can get 0% on their credit cards and some people pay 399% APR to QuickQuid; the big systemic issues occur when banks have under-estimated the PD and/or LGD for a significant proportion of their lending.

>>91703

It costs money to repossess a house, it costs money to sell it and if a lot of people default at the same time you're selling into a depressed market. Defaults are a cost of doing business for any lender, but the banks would very much prefer that you keep paying your mortgage.

I, for one, welcome our bankster landlords.

>>91703

But if enough people do this, who are they going to sell these houses to?

It looks like they're also advocating tax evasion:

Tax Disobedience

The Government continues to pour our taxes into fossil fuel subsidies, condition-free bailouts for polluting industries, and HS2, an aviation shuttle service that is destroying nature. It continues to judge the success of our economy by growth in GDP, instead of growth in the social and environmental measures that a majority of UK citizens want.

The government isn’t using our taxes to keep us safe. So small business owners are holding some back – and donating it to those that are showing the government how it’s done.

https://extinctionrebellion.uk/act-now/resources/money-rebellion/

>>91708
I'm starting to think they've been compromised by MI5 and this is all a plan to get everyone who follows them bankrupt and/or thrown in jail.

>>91708
Any environmental group opposed to HS2 is well sus. The railway south of Rugby is full. Literally. There's no room to put more services or lay more track. The only way to get more passenger trains on that route is to run fewer freight services, which means moving more cargo by road. A significant length of HS2 is being built along disused alignments, particularly the GCR north of Amersham.

In short, anyone that doesn't want HS2 implicitly accepts more polluting traffic on the roads.

>>91707
Me and probably multinational investors seeing as how property in this country is safe as, well, houses. All those idiots are going to need to rent somewhere so we'll live like feudal lords. I can certainly also see businesses getting quickly snapped up at auction by chains should owners try and pull a fast one on this.

Imagine getting a prime location bakery on the cheap and having a constant stream of cinnamon swirls and hot sausage rolls.

>>91712

Point taken, though you couldn't pay me to run a bakery, what a living nightmare that is.

>>91711
Why don't they just build a normal railway if that's the case, and not one that's a mile wide? If you think we need more travel capacity there and the only answers you give are a false binary of more cars or cutting a mile wide swath through the country then your reasoning is "well sus".

>>91716

U WOT M8?

>>91716
That would approximately double travel times and make the resulting railway far less useful. People commute by time, not distance.
I'm also quite skeptical of the mile wide figure.

>>91718

According to the DfT, it's 22 metres wide fence-to-fence.

https://hs2ltd.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/railway-cross-section.pdf

>>91718
>That would approximately double travel times
How does 20 minutes faster translate to double?
>I'm also quite skeptical of the mile wide figure.
I'm quite sceptical of how well informed you are on the matter.

>>91719

22 metres wide on level ground in open country. The area around it needs levelling and being made "open". Does this look like 22 metres total?

>>91721

Do you think they're just going to leave it like that when they're finished?

>>91721

It certainly doesn't look like a mile.

>>91722

Yes. Or do you think they're going to put the ancient trees they cut down back? I'm guessing that if the people profiting from it say they will, you'll believe them.

>>91724
Alright, pipe down Treebeard.

>>91721
Show us a bit that isn't a tunnel entrance.

>>91724

It's funny that a commercial forestry block becomes a sacred ancient site after a couple of hundred years. I've got furniture older than most of the trees people are bleating about.

Britain is a giant factory farm and has been for nearly a millennium. We don't have any "natural sites" and anyone who says otherwise is sadly misinformed. If you're sentimentally attached to certain remnants of old commercial agriculture then that's your prerogative, but don't pretend it has anything to do with the environment.

>>91726
What about trees planted in memory of dead kiddies?

https://www.bucksherald.co.uk/business/hs2-slammed-grieving-parents-after-destroying-memorial-site-3040675

>>91727
"Don't pretend that the few bits of forest we have left have anything to do with the environment if they aren't as arbitrarily old or natural as I decide. We've been slowly destroying our nature for nearly a millennium, how dare anyone suggest this isn't a good thing?"

>>91720
>How does 20 minutes faster translate to double?
By taking the figure for London-Manchester rather than London-Birmingham

>>91726

>>91731

>>91726

>>91731

Breaking news: building sites look like building sites.

Seeing trees cut down makes me sad. Perhaps we should scrap the whole thing and build something less harmful to the environment. I propose using aeroplanes for our intercity travel needs, which won't involve cutting down any trees or any other forms of environmental damage like ugly, nasty trains.

>>91735
It's not as though people can travel less and work from home more. No! Infinite growth! Progress! I am a cartoon character wearing a top hat and smoking a cigar!

>>91737

Every job is an office job.

I am a different cartoon character, wearing blinkers.

>>91738

Enough are that it's more or less irrelevant. It's okay, though. You just keep reciting HS2 Ltd's lines, I'm sure they're more trustworthy than those sus protesters who know far more about it than you, they must have ulterior motives. Anyone who claims to be doing good must be; you'd know.
It's not as though HS2 Ltd have anything to gain by misleading you.

>>91716
Shit's got to move. People have the option of moving or not moving. Stuff does not - it has to move no matter what. Do you want that moving on rails, hauled by electric engines drawing power from an increasingly decarbonised grid? Or on the roads, hauled by diesel tractor units?

>>91719
The spec is 22m for two tracks with safe access. Here's what 22m for two tracks with an access path looks like.

>>91739

For fuck's sake mate. We're in the midst of a climate crisis that threatens to wipe out most of the East Coast of England by the end of the century and render most of Africa and the Middle East uninhabitable. A bunch of NIMBYs are trying to block a major piece of green infrastructure because they like pretty trees.

Cutting down those trees is carbon-negative, because they're being replaced with a far greater number of faster-growing trees that sequester more carbon. Even if we weren't building a big electrically-powered railway that will prevent millions of tonnes of CO2 emissions, cutting down those trees and replacing them is good for the climate.

They aren't dogooders, they're dobadders. They're actively trying to make the world worse for everyone but themselves, because they prefer pretty trees to human lives. Their proposed alternatives aren't alternatives at all, they're just the environmental equivalent of Qu'ils mangent de la brioche - if everyone just eked out the most meagre existence possible, we could save the climate without cutting down any pretty trees or building any ugly wind turbines and scary nuclear reactors.

I was there at Newbury, I drank Merrydown with the Dongas, I shifted spoil for Disco Dave. I was wrong then and they're wrong now. We can't afford to be parochial or sentimental, we can't leave any option off the table; we need massive infrastructural and technological change to survive this crisis. We need a positive vision for a zero-carbon future, otherwise our species will see our final generations slaughtered in resource wars over the last dregs of drinkable water and the last scraps of arable land.

First XR, now HS2. All we need is someone to bring up trannies and we have the trifecta.

>>91739
Is this Nimbyism? I can't tell any more. The lines are all blurred. Anyway, I'm all for better transport links in this country. I don't think we have it as good as continental Europe or Japan.

Those Nimby twats were protesting outside the council before lockdown, because some houses were being built. Where are you even meant to build if everywhere is protected? We can't all just become forest elves.

I was hoping Boris would make it easier, just to shit on these Nimby twats.

>>91743
Ah, yes, fucking NIMBYs.

>We need more housing, now!
>No, not there, somewhere else!

>>91742
Now you can get tranny action on the web: http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

>>91741
>Cutting down those trees is carbon-negative, because they're being replaced with a far greater number of faster-growing trees that sequester more carbon. Even if we weren't building a big electrically-powered railway that will prevent millions of tonnes of CO2 emissions, cutting down those trees and replacing them is good for the climate.
Are you lying or just thick? Those trees won't sequester anything like that much carbon in time, particularly if they just die and get replaced every year because that's cheaper than watering -
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/hs2-trees-dead-drought-water-woodland-environment-a8925501.html
although at the time of writing they haven't actually even been replaced. Not to mention the equal threat of biodiversity loss which just planting a load of saplings can't replace.
Nothing else in your post warrants a response.

>>91746

“The summer of 2018 was the hottest on record in England, with an average of just 35.4mm of rain falling in June, half the usual amount.

“We estimate it would have cost around £2m to water the trees during the drought, so replacing these plants is a much more cost-effective solution, as well as a more ethical use of resources during unprecedented conditions at the height of summer.”

Jog on m8.

>>91746
Biodiversity? In England? Didn't the sheep-farmers kill everything already? England is just a massive park.

>>91747
Weird, almost as though what they're doing doesn't work.

>Rishi Sunak is preparing to extend the stamp duty holiday by three months until the end of June in an attempt to keep the property market firing as Britain emerges from lockdown.

>In July last year the government exempted most buyers from the levy if they completed their purchase before March 31, 2021. The holiday enables people to save up to £15,000 in tax. The chancellor has faced pressure to extend the deadline amid concerns that it would create a “cliff-edge”, jeopardising hundreds of thousands of sales.

>The Times has been told that Sunak will use his budget on March 3 to move it to the end of June, bringing it into line with the easing of lockdown restrictions. The extension to the policy, which covers sales of properties worth up to £500,000, could cost about £1 billion.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/stamp-duty-holiday-will-be-extended-to-end-of-june-gc0qfrckz

>>92434
I'm sick of this communist government and its efforts to abolish private property ownership. There are many people like me who are now able to buy a first home due to forced saving but have seen house prices rise to prop up the rich shits who can easily afford the 2.5k tax.

>>92435

Heres hoping Sunak cans SDLT permanently and replaces it with a land value tax.

>A new mortgage guarantee scheme to help people with small deposits get on the property ladder is set to be announced at next week's Budget. The government will offer incentives to lenders, bringing back 95% mortgages which have "virtually disappeared" during the pandemic, the Treasury said.

>The coronavirus pandemic has meant there are few low-deposit mortgages available, the Treasury said, with just eight on the market in January. Low-deposit mortgages are often seen as riskier by banks as they are more vulnerable to negative changes in property prices - meaning people hold more debt than their home is worth. Under the new scheme, which will launch across the UK in April, the government will offer to take on some of this risk. It is not restricted to first-time buyers or new-build homes, but there will be a £600,000 limit.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56218952

What we've been crying out for is the government to underwrite mortgages for those with an income of ~£125k so they can get a house worth £600k with a deposit of about £30k.

>>92446

I hate this shit. Deposit is not the issue. I have just under £30k saved but 4.5x my salary gets me nothing.

>>92446

It's almost as if the government are propping up the property market for the benefit of boomer BtL scum.

>>92447
I'm not sure having banks lend more, with the resulting rise in interest, would be a good idea. The 5% mortgage and Help to Buy are mental enough and will no doubt cause problems in a rising interest rate scenario while bumping house prices.

I'm in a similar situation living in London but have found that if you go outside of the South-East it's not so bad. If the government had instead stumped up on making these places viable by encouraging employers to offer a guaranteed option of living in the provinces then it would be much more sustainable.

>>92448
I don't see how this would help BtL. These programmes are for first-time buyers.

>>92449
>It is not restricted to first-time buyers or new-build homes, but there will be a £600,000 limit.

>>92448
Why wouldn't they? Many politicians are landlords, the Tories get a substantial amount of donations from property developers and the higher property prices go up, the more the government will be paid back by people who took out Help to Buy mortgages.

>>92447
I got banned from 4chan (I plan to appeal) and now I'm looking for somewhere else to post. Sorry if this post is awful. Anyway: I just want you to know that I am in the exact same position as you. Like, exactly. It used to be 4.75x your salary that you could borrow, which would net me a comfy 160-grand house in the ghetto right by my work. I could walk home each lunchtime. When I started this job four years ago, houses were £120-£140,000.

Of course, homeowners tend to vote Conservative, so the blue boys don't want us to afford a house because house prices must be high, and the red boys don't want us to afford a house because then we'll stop voting for them. There is a universal consensus against us.

There's also the issue of muh family values. If I had a wife, we could pool our incomes and get the mortgage. But I don't, and therefore I am like Shamima Begum to them.

>>92449
>if you go outside of the South-East it's not so bad
But then your salary goes down accordingly. I looked up my job on job websites a year or two ago, to see what other companies pay. In Andover, my exact job, identical in every way, pays 40-60 grand a year. In Manchester, I get paid 20-30 grand for it. So I could literally double my salary overnight just by moving, but I couldn't buy a house still because the houses are suddenly 400 grand.

I have been advised that I could buy a cheaper house somewhere remote, and just drive 40 miles to work each day. And house prices will of course go up. But they'll go up everywhere, so I won't get any richer By the time I can afford 160 grand, houses closer to my work will be 250 grand. It's some of the worst advice I have ever heard.

>>92563
Buy a house in one place and pay it off while living in another place but renting the house in the first place out to make up the difference?

>>92564
You mean buy-to-let? Boooo, hisss. Get him, lads.

>>92566
No, I mean let-to-buy.

>>92568
I have thought that I could do that, because the profits from being a slum lord would increase my income and qualify me for better mortgages, allowing me to expand my property empire. It's not good and it's not right, and it would of course rob me of my deposit and make me rent for a load more years, but it would technically work.

I'm 33 years old, by the way. If I retire at 65, which I obviously won't but the banks still assume I will, I don't have many years left before it's too late to get another mortgage.

>>92563
>I have been advised that I could buy a cheaper house somewhere remote, and just drive 40 miles to work each day. And house prices will of course go up. But they'll go up everywhere, so I won't get any richer By the time I can afford 160 grand, houses closer to my work will be 250 grand. It's some of the worst advice I have ever heard.

You're missing the real kicker which is that prices will rise unevenly so that your shack on the outskirts of Milton Keynes will hardly appreciate compared to the prices in the cities. Then there is the fact that transportation costs are already ruinously expensive if you need a season ticket and that seems unlikely to change.

Still, I suppose you'd better buy now before property becomes completely unaffordable. It doesn't seem like the bubble will ever be allowed to burst.

>>91692
They're at it again.

>Extinction Rebellion is planning to step up its campaign against the banking system with a series of direct action protests and debt strikes in the coming weeks aimed at highlighting the financial sector’s role in the escalating climate crisis.

>Last week the group targeted Barclays Bank’s headquarters in London and the Bank of England as well as high street branches across the UK as part of its Money Rebellion protest. One of XR’s founders, Gail Bradbrook, broke the windows of the Barclays branch in her home town of Stroud to kickstart the campaign. “This is an escalation in tactics,” she said. “As the suffragettes said, better broken windows than broken promises. What do we need to do to shake the system, to change the system that is killing us … I literally do not know what else to do.”

>XR said more direct action protests were planned for this week as part of a campaign that will also involve debt, tax and mortgage strikes. One group of activists have taken out loans totalling £4,000 from Barclays that they are refusing to repay and have instead donated the money to the human rights group Survival International. Later this month XR is planning to launch a tax strike during which campaigners will withhold a percentage of theirs – about 3.5% from business or income tax. The money, which the group has calculated is the percentage the government spends on “harming the planet”, will be withheld for a year, and if by that time ministers have not met the group’s demands – including telling the truth about the climate emergency and cancelling “destructive projects” – the money will be donated to Wilderlands, a project to support nature in the UK.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/05/extinction-rebellion-to-step-up-campaign-against-banking-system-climate-crisis

>>92808
> £4,000 from Barclays that they are refusing to repay
They won't know what hit 'em!

>>92808
>One of XR’s founders, Gail Bradbrook, broke the windows of the Barclays branch in her home town of Stroud to kickstart the campaign. “This is an escalation in tactics,” she said. “As the suffragettes said, better broken windows than broken promises. What do we need to do to shake the system, to change the system that is killing us … I literally do not know what else to do.”

Why must they be so insufferable? Would though.

>>92825
Why does her armpit look like a fanny?

>>92826
Why does your fanny look like an armpit?

does fanny look like an armpit?
or
does armpit look like a fanny?

>>92825

>>92825

INSUFFRRAGETTES

>>92830
>RR

GOD

>>92825
They had the same attitude about the actual suffragettes. Funny how things repeat.

>>92825
Banks are insufferable too, though. "Ooh, look at me, I make millions just from holding onto money that isn't even mine. Ooh, no, don't come to me on a Saturday when you have free time; I'll be closed then. Look at me, I'm so big, I'm too big to fail." Wankers. Fuck their windows.

>>92835
I know what I said. Don't try and gaslight me on who I would have sexual relations with. And that goes double for insufferable hippy chicks. How I suffer the curse of wanting to bone that which I cannot stand.

>>92839

I'm pretty sure there are photos in circulation of her baps from the Shire Hall protest, but I think you might be disappointed.

Feels weird to have been on .gs/Britchan for the best part of a decade and only now has my quaint home county of Gloucestershire come up because of some angry hippies

>>92829
That looks like a Knog Frog, they're decent enough as "be seen" lights. The more concerning part is:
> Stroud

It's a lovely place where the stink of champagne socialism almost covers up the smell of no-poo soap free natural body care.

They're smashing up HSBC now. Is this some form of middle class female thing? They sat there nicely waiting for the police to arrest them, knowing their position of privilege means they'll get an easy ride.

>>93119
4/5 Barclays and HSBC customers were unaware that their banks invest so heavily in fossil fuels. Barclays is by far the worst and HSBC alone has something like 80 to 81 billion invested in them. What those women did was get that into almost every major mainstream media outlet as well as most of the other channels too - even here.

>>93120

Banks are invested in major industry, fucking hell! what other secrets are they not telling us!

>>93119
>knowing their position of privilege means they'll get an easy ride.
Tends to be the case when you're part of a demographic that's known to be fairly placid.

>>93121

It must take very deliberate effort to be as obtuse as you are.

Corporations go out of their way to "greenwash" themselves and maintain a good public image, regardless of where their investments actually are. Other banks also manage to get by and remain profitable despite investing to a lesser degree in fossil fuels.

The public can be forgiven for not keeping track of which banks are best in this regard, and if we had any real integrity in our press that reported on issues of public interest people might be more informed as to these issues (even though their choices are ultimately quite limited when it comes to more ethical banks).

Bank accounts are a necessity, but our financial system is underpinned by investment in industries which actively work against public interest. In this context, protests are absolutely valid to bring attention to this kind of systemic flaw.

>>93119
You must have been living under a rock to not know that one of XR's primary tactics is to attempt to overwhelm the state by giving themselves up for arrest.

What is so wrong with investing in fossil fuel companies? It reminds me of Monbiot's hissy fit earlier in the week about the Science Museum taking donations from Shell, with most of the commenters giving him a dose of reality.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/21/science-museum-shell-money-exhibition-climate

>>93121

Be as sarcastic as you like, people really don't know.
https://www.energylivenews.com/2021/01/29/almost-80-of-barclays-and-hsbc-customers-unaware-of-their-banks-fossil-fuel-investments/

>>93125

Dare I suggest Monbiot knows what he's talking about better than you or some random commenter do?

>>93127
Sometimes he does but often, as is this case, he talks out of his arse when he strays from his narrow range of specialism.

Like it or not, the likes of BP and Shell are going to involved in the move from fossil fuels to renewables.

>>93121
I always get a smile when I remember the HSBC adverts they did about their close links with China. You'd really think if anyone would be attacking their offices to basically no effect it would be the Chinese.

What if it's all a plot by Big Window. Notice how the vandals smashed an odd number so they couldn't enjoy the BOGOF.

>>93128
>Like it or not, the likes of BP and Shell are going to involved in the move from fossil fuels to renewables.
I don't deny this is probably the case, so don't take this as an argument that they shouldn't be, but there's something grotesque about the sentiment. There is no god given reason for this to be the case. By politics or by market forces that may not have to be the case, but you jump to accepting that it is going to be the case and that there's nothing anyone can do about it.
It is the attitude of the status quo I'd most like to see destroyed. A complete surrender to powerful entities, usually by powerful entities. (Say, the UK government deciding it can't take on BP.)

Now for the jokes:
Yes, of course BP and Shell are going to be involved in the move from fossil fuels to renewables. They've already had extensive involvement in delaying and frustrating it.
My personal view is that BP and Shell's involvement in any transition should be compelled. Legislate their present business models out of existence and let the market decide whether they can use their incumbent position to their advantage or whether they go the way of Britannica. If you consult with them and so on then it's in their interest to bugger it up.

>>93134

>There is no god given reason for this to be the case.

Not god given reason, but a lot of good reasons. They have an insane amount of money, but know that they don't have a long-term future. Unless they invest that money in something with high growth potential (like sustainable energy), the stock market is going to desert them. Converting petrol stations to EV charging stations is an appealing prospect - if you're hanging around for 20 minutes while you're waiting for a rapid charge, you're probably going to buy something from the shop, which drives most of the profit.

Corporations are almost by definition amoral profit-seeking entities; if we expect them to actually have values, we'll be sorely disappointed. It's the job of government and consumers to align the profit-seeking motives of corporations with the ethics of society. The fact that tobacco companies are investing in vaping and oil companies are investing in sustainable energy is utterly cynical, but it's also a sign that we're actually making progress. Tobacco companies spent decades denying that fags cause lung cancer and oil companies spent decades denying the existence of climate change; if they no longer see denial as a viable strategy, then we're doing something right.

We could wish for a world where corporations genuinely care about something other than profit, but it's far more realistic to use regulation and consumer pressure to make unethical behaviour unprofitable.

>>93136
>but it's far more realistic to use regulation and consumer pressure to make unethical behaviour unprofitable.
Guess what's an effective way of doing that?

>>93137

Writing an article in the Guardian?

>>93140
What a facile response. You want the Financial Times.

>>93136
>Converting petrol stations to EV charging stations is an appealing prospect - if you're hanging around for 20 minutes while you're waiting for a rapid charge, you're probably going to buy something from the shop, which drives most of the profit.

I hadn't thought about this predicament. If you were Tesco-Esso you could stick a few EV stations in a supermarket car park on a low-cost and you'll have a captive market to recoup the loss.

>>93143
Why would tesco want Esso's help? It's not as if EV charging is tricky (until you get up to supercharger speeds). A charging station is a big relay , a connector on a cable and a trivial microcontroller, the rest is billing which you can tie to existing clubcards.
Cheapish and slowish charging while you're in the store, to keep you in there a bit longer, hard to see why Tesco wouldn't bite, as long as they can get a few more megawatts pulled to the store.

>>93144

>A charging station is a big relay, a connector on a cable and a trivial microcontroller

An AC charger is, but most EVs can charge at no more than 7kW on AC. Anything even vaguely rapid is DC, which requires rectification and regulation. A current-generation "rapid" charger is 50kW, but they're already bordering on obsolete because they take the best part of an hour to get a long-range EV up to 80% charge. Next-gen rapid chargers are going up to 350kW. A standard three-phase installation will only deliver 70kVA (70kW at unity power factor), so in the vast majority of cases you'll need a dedicated substation.

Rapid EV charging is complex and you really need a partner organisation with specialist expertise. There are a lot of potential candidates to provide that expertise, but oil companies are well placed to offer a complete turn-key solution; they also have the capital to finance this sort of infrastructure.

I'm a green nerd and a massive EV fanboy, I have no interest whatsoever in perpetuating the oil industry, but I'd rather see them become part of the solution than die off as part of the problem.

>>93145
That's why I said I expected Tesco to offer lots of slow slots. They'll want you to top up and take your time in the store, mooching round for an extra 20 minutes loading random crap into the trolley.
They may have a couple of fast slots, but my money is much more on a few rows, or scattered, leading to saturation, of slow.
Not everyone is in the middle of a dash to Scotland with a completely empty battery, a few hour-long topups a week will do a fair amount for a car that's only used to pop to the shops.
Tesco won't be trying to save the world, they'll be trying to maximise profit and maybe do some PR good with greenwashed bollocks.

Relevant video:

>>93146

>Tesco won't be trying to save the world, they'll be trying to maximise profit and maybe do some PR good with greenwashed bollocks.

Bag for Lifes will be a full quid by 2025, screenshot this.

>>93152
Meh. Loads of petrol stations have turned into hand car washes (with a side order of money laundering), porno huts and outdoor urinals. I can't see this changing much. Perhaps robot brothels in a few years. Drop in for a 20 minute charge and a Kenwood handjob. Get blackmailed by russian / chinese mob.
The future will be glorious.

Thinking further, cube hotels / hostels for the zero hour underclass to grab some shuteye waiting for the next gig. Put partition walls in the underground tanks and pack them in. Pay extra for aboveground luxury hovel with genuine air.

>>93153
They're already getting smaller, and have been for some time. And flimsier. I could have sworn the original law said the money from charging for bags had to go to green charities, but the supermarkets are clearly all profiteering from it.

>>93155

Alright Dom, the leaks about Bozzer and Daveycambles were spicy enough. You don't have to post George Osbourne's personal literotica too.

They bois

>>93638
ITZ COMING

>>93638

is triple alarmist code for it went from 1 to 3? Or should I actually care?

>>93641
It's low yet focused in some communities which might mean they're going to target those areas for a surge with vaccines to stop it's spread. The mystery is that it's seemingly popping up in places far away from each other with no way to account for the travel. I have no evidence but a bloke in a pub garden told me that a girl's school on Rotherham must have an outbreak. That or a perfectly non-racist explanation.

Polite sage because this is the 'I'm never going to own a home' anger thread.

>>93641
520 to 1313.

How have we even managed to get the Indian one, hasn't travel to India been barred for ages?

>>93646
Foreigners travelling from India were banned from entering the UK on 23rd April but people have been circumnavigating this by travelling to somewhere like Turkey instead. British nationals and those with the right to reside in the UK can still travel to and from India but they should quarantine on their return. I have a colleague who has travelled freely to laplanderstan and back throughout the pandemic.

>>93646

We left it too late by about three weeks. We also gave advanced notice of the travel restrictions, giving people plenty of time to fly home before the quarantine rules came into effect.

Throughout the pandemic, the government has habitually closed the stable door after the horse has bolted. Doing the right thing doesn't help if you do it too late.

>>93688
I've said on multiple occasions that quarantine restrictions should have been imposed on zero notice where possible, especially after the first quarantine with France given with several days' notice resulted in a mad dash for the Channel ports.

People going on holiday knew there was a fucking pandemic and knew there was a risk that quarantine could be called but went anyway.

>>93690
>People going on holiday knew there was a fucking pandemic and knew there was a risk that quarantine could be called but went anyway.

I would literally lock up all the people travelling to/returning from non-green countries right now. It's a fucking scandal.

>>93688
Banning Indian travel has no meaningful impact. You cannot stop it getting in, we are talking about a week or two delay realistically, not prevention.

>>93646
Because countries other than India exist.

The same reason why we could never keep covid out, once it's here it's here, that's all there is to it.

>>93695

Yeah nah mate.

>>93696
>Because countries other than India exist.

Countries are Indian!

Think about yah. Millions of people under one name, working to benefit overweight men sitting around in antiquated clothing - Indian family. Spend centuries living under the guardianship of another and once you get an independent place of their own nothing has changed - Indian. The flowers of a generation conscripted into a senseless struggle? Indian shopkeepers.

>House prices rose at the fastest annual rate in nearly 14 years in March, official data showed on Thursday, after a tax cut and a mortgage guarantee scheme for first-time buyers further stoked a sharp surge in activity. Prices will rise 5.0% this year, the May 11-21 poll of 21 property market experts found, a sharp increase from a February poll which predicted they would flatline. Next year and in 2023 they will rise 3.0%.

>Many Britons have sought to buy larger houses with gardens in less urban locations as they work more from home, the Office for National Statistics said. But demand is returning fast for apartments and other city-centre property, which buyers had avoided during the coronavirus pandemic, a survey by online property portal Rightmove showed on Thursday. "People starting to venture into their local high streets and once again experiencing the buzz of their city centres, along with greater mortgage availability for first-time buyers, means city centres are staging a much-needed comeback," Rightmove's director of property data, Tim Bannister, said.

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-property-boom-set-roll-savings-unlocked-2021-05-21/

Well that's that then, if you've not already been priced out then you surely will be soon. Thank god the government threw billions at the housing market otherwise those investors might've lost out on a few percentage points of growth. My taxes were well spent.

Wouldn't it make more sense if HM government charged a per acre tax and mortgage tax to reduce speculation and price bubbles? Considering all mortgage lenders seem to borrow, at least indirectly, from central bank lending facilities? Because there is limited room in Britain.

>>93755

But then how would our impoverished MPs make money on the side?

There is no problem with the housing market or rental market. The system is working as intended.

I'm pretty sure it'd all be fine if it wasn't for BTL owners on interest only mortgages.

Slap a big fat tax on those and a great deal of the problem would go away, I think. In fact, isn't there some kind of tax relief on them how it is right now? Get rid of that and watch it instantly loose all appeal, and suddenly millennials can buy the houses their parents have been hoarding.

>>93755

>Because there is limited room in Britain.

94% of land in Britain is undeveloped. There is limited room, but we're very far from even approaching the limit; Britain feels crowded because of artificial constraints on where we're allowed to build.

>>93763

How much of it is farmland, though? Just zooming in on google maps shows the entire fucking place is a patchwork of fields.

I say fuck farmers. It's 2021 for fuck's sake. Why are we still an agrarian society. They had politicians on the radio yammering on about protecting British farmers when we get a trade deal with Australia the other day, but fuck them frankly, why shouldn't we just outsource all the cows to places that actually have the space?

It's not as if the people who are currently farmers are particularly happy with their lot in life. They'd make more money selling their land than milk and eggs.

>>93763

Therr is limited room if we are to live in decent homes; not flats and tiny semis.

>>93766
We already live in flats and tiny semis.

>>93766

Even nice, expensive newbuilds are fucking tiny compared to even the starter homes of 30 years ago.

>>93767
>>93768

The bad news for you lads is that it really ought to stay that way, for the sake of the environment.

We've accidentally done quite well in this country to limit urban sprawl, even if it was largely thanks to nimby-ism rather than environmental concern. Regardless, the America style model of sprawling suburbs is a nightmare for efficient transportation, it costs far more to maintain the infrastructure, and people are even starting to suggest that it has been a big factor in the atomisation and break down of social groups that has left the modern world so polarised.

Don't be scared of urban living. The point is you should own the roof over your head (for reasons of financial independence) and have accessible green space. Low rise flats and let's call them... Cozy semis or terraces are the way of the future if we want to keep things sustainable.

But still fuck the farms either way, they're horrible for wildlife.

>>93769
>Low rise flats and let's call them

I think we should copy the Swiss and have chalets dotted about.

>>93769
I don't especially hate small homes and flats, but the ones in this country are usually complete shit. Bad layouts, poorly insulated and increasingly built in the armpit of nowhere because the land's cheap so the developers are turning an even bigger profit.

>>93752
Some banks have started doing mortgages that are 5.5x your annual income instead of the previous 4.5x. That means I could buy a shitty ghetto house at last, in theory. And the market didn't collapse completely in 2008 until it reached 7x or thereabouts. So honestly, things are looking better, for me at least. If wages increase too, there shouldn't be a problem (although why would wages increase? Fuck you, peasants).

Every report on the news about the housing market is that it's completely crazy right now, however. It really does feel like this is a foolish time to try to buy a house. I've asked about a couple of houses and been told to eat shit because they already have so many people queuing up to buy that they don't need me too.

>>93763
I think the idea that we're constrained is complete bullshit. If owning a home was all that mattered then it's easily in reach of anyone that wants one. The problem is that people need homes that are actually located in areas of economic prosperity and that can provide decent services.

Land hoarding and waste no doubt exist but I think the biggest problem is honestly how we as a society have changed. Lots of singletons wanting their own patch when before it was family homes which is exacerbated by the fact that leasehold ownership is so Broken in England and Wales that owning a flat (where single people should live) is a ridiculous proposition.

>>93765
>>93769
We need farms to live, lads. That's where food comes from. You might want to argue that we can just import this but such a dependence leaves us critically vulnerable to any disruption whether that be because of global food shortage, a weakening pound or any interruption to the flow of goods.

There's also the obvious fact that from an environmental and animal welfare perspective things are better grown here where proper regulation still exists.

>>93776

>>93777

Wish we had a government with the balls to look at significant population production, destroy the terraces and let us have big, proper houses. Our houses are such an embarassment to the country.

>>93780
>a government with the balls to look at significant population production
Just how many children do you want Boris to have???

>>93781

Reduction.

Fucking phone.

>>93780
This is a real problem for the 'just build loads of flats in the most expensive real estate on the planet!' shit for me - it's basically just promoting a continuation of our current terrible quality of housing.

We seem totally averse to building houses people might actually want to live in.

>>93783
The UK has a love hate relationship with blocks of flats and its based on the leasehold system. Anywhere else you can buy a flat and that means buying into the building commune so that you have a voice in how the building is maintained. Here, you get a leashold and unless the owners get organised some freeholder skims you.

>>93787

Leasehold is finally being reformed to prohibit exploitative practices and make it easier for a group of leaseholders to buy the freehold.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-reforms-make-it-easier-and-cheaper-for-leaseholders-to-buy-their-homes

>>93783

Flats are a really important part of the British housing mix, because the number of households is growing much faster than the overall population. Houses are a really inefficient use of land in dense urban areas with a high proportion of single-person households. We do need more houses, but we also need good-quality flats and maisonettes.

People tend to underestimate the impact of just building shitloads of stock, because most British people have only ever experienced life during a severe housing shortage. Building sub-standard housing is only profitable because buyers and tenants are desperate; the functioning of a market with any level of shortage is radically different to the functioning of a market with any level of surplus.

>>93780
Population isn't the problem though, it's the move of everyone to the cities. You could afford a very nice house indeed in the North on the prices people pay in the around London's commuter belt.

Scotland now has a lower birth than 1855 but it's not meant that everyone around Edinburgh lives in their villas with mature women abusing the stable-boys. It's meant a rural die-off.

>>93790
Personally I'm still quite sceptical of this. I don't see England and Wales adopting the freehold system that Scotland manages because of the money that is being made shafting people 'owing' a home that effectively isn't theirs and doesn't share the benefit of accumulating wealth while everyone who owns a home gets richer and richer.

And that get's to the point really, we're at the end of the line as far as owning property goes and the shift in the balance of power between the have and have nots in such a world scares me. Truly a world where you will own nothing (unless you had the fortune in owning what everyone else has to rent).

>>93790
I agree but I think you understand. A block of flats gets built, the flats get sold off, elsewhere the legal construct means that there's an ownership commune the recompenses the investors and builders but that's where they're involvement ends. Here, thanks to the lease hold none-sense, we're back in the feudal system. You built it or paid for it? Well, your lord owns the ground so you better pay for the privilege.

I quite like the notion of squatting rights, given the limited space we have on this island, but the system really needs a rework. Freehold or communal ownership should be the norm. There's space for short term homes, "hostels" as they exists now etc. But for long term living, owning your space is made artificially more difficult by toffs.

>>93755
House prices go up less poor immigrants can afford them.
Housing shortage now!

>>93763
If they loosen the constrains and let anyone develop anywhere Britain will turn into a shit hole

There was an advert on the radio earlier for shared ownership of houses. I was scandalised. It wasn't even an estate agent; the government used my own taxes to pay a radio station to tell me to get scammed in the name of World King Boris the Great.

>>93795

>Britain will turn into more of a shit hole

>>93800
A lot of people don't seem to realise Help to Buy was also a form of shared ownership. I had a colleague who was incredulous that the amount he had to pay back to the government had gone up in line with the value of his house.

>>93794
Don't worry, the government recently signed a new visa agreement with India and we have Hong Kongers already moving over. I'm sure some of them won't just be our new landlords.

>>93800
Is there actually any conceivable situation where shared ownership is a good thing? Or even a leasehold for that matter?

>>93806
>any conceivable situation where shared ownership is a good thing?
According to the advert, you can own your own home, and it's yours, and you own all of it, and that's great, and then when you have saved up more money, you can just cheerfully rock up to whoever owns the rest and just buy it off them for a couple of quid. They'll be just aching to offload it, of course, you see.

If any of that was how it really worked, it would be fantastic. The only downside is reality. But maybe someone has got lucky and encountered such a charitable and altruistic slum lord, and it was such a delight that the entire housing market should be based on this.

Leaseholds, on the other hand, no. They're bollocks.

>>93808

>But maybe someone has got lucky and encountered such a charitable and altruistic slum lord

Most Shared Ownership properties are sold by housing associations, which are literally charitable and altruistic slum lords.

>>93809
It's almost funny to think about that. Most shared ownership schemes are themselves on leasehold so imagine being the owner and watching peasants below you divvying up the land and bankrupting themselves on staircasing a lease while being unable to ever escape because there's nobody to willing to buy the shares.

And I suppose if things get too settled you can just whack them with an extortionate service charge and watch them tear into each other.

>First-time buyers in England will be able to apply for a discount of up to 50% on a new-build home under a government scheme.

>The First Homes initiative could save buyers £100,000 or more. But some experts say that with demand for these cut-price homes likely to exceed supply, it could spark a scramble for properties and add more fuel to the house price boom.

>The government says the scheme is aimed at first-time buyers in the area where the homes are built, many of whom will be keyworkers such as NHS staff and those on the pandemic frontline such as delivery drivers and supermarket staff. It is aimed at helping them on to the property ladder by offering homes at a discount of at least 30% compared with the market price. However, local authorities will be able to offer a bigger discount – either 40% or 50% – “if they can demonstrate a need for this”.

>Crucially, the discount will be passed on with the sale of the property to future first-time buyers, meaning homes will always be sold below market value, thereby “benefiting local communities, keyworkers, and families for generations to come”, the government said. “The scheme will support local people who struggle to afford market prices in their area, but want to stay in the communities where they live and work,” the housing ministry said.

>First Homes is the latest initiative aimed at tackling the challenges of getting on the property ladder and follows a government guarantee scheme for 95% mortgages. The scheme is for first-time buyers only; households with a combined annual income of more than £80,000 – or £90,000 in Greater London – cannot apply. Local councils will be able to bring in their own requirements such as prioritising keyworkers or local people. There are also price caps: after the discount has been applied, the purchaser cannot be required to pay more than £250,000, or £420,000 in Greater London. However, councils will be able to make the case for imposing lower price caps.

>The initial First Homes properties went on the market on Friday as part of the opening phase of an early delivery project in Bolsover, Derbyshire.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/jun/04/first-time-buyers-in-england-offered-new-homes-at-up-to-50-off

>>93822

... Alright, what's the catch? Other than the fact it's a new build so it'll be held together with string and papier-mâché.

About time I got something good for being part of Are NHS though.

>>93823

The catch is there isn't enough houses, so you won't be able to get one, and prices will go even higher. 100k discount is meaningless if shite one bed new builds are selling for 200k more than they should be already.

>>93824

It says they're capping the value to £250,000 in England and £420,000 in St Londonsburg, though, so there's a limit to how much they can hyper-inflate it. Why would anyone go round the houses with some fancy scheme to get fleeced on a 3'x3' one up one down when you can do that in the normal property market without the middle man?

I'm sure supply will b a constant issue though. Does sound to me like one of those schemes they make a lot of noise about to look good, but never seems to materialise in reality.

>>93823
They're only going to offer this to a limited number of properties, estimated at 1,500 this year and 10,000 in future years, so don't be surprised if high demand leads to a bidding war.

The house would also have to be sold on to a first time buyer at a 30-50% discount so it'll help people onto the property ladder but then they'll get stuck there and struggle to buy another house in the future. I can envisage people paying over the odds as they get into a bidding war thinking they're getting a good deal because of the discount but without really comprehending they have to pass the discount on to the next buyer.

>>93822
Actually said out loud: "Jesus fucking Christ, just build more council houses"
The bit about giving discounts to nurses, supermarket workers, etc, seems completely nonsensical from a local labour supply perspective. If you've got a shortage of nurses how about giving them affordable rental accommodation so they can afford to live in the area rather than playing around with a stupid lottery where 50 people in your area of 500,000 can get a house to own for half the market rate while there remains a chronic shortage of housing.

I hate each and every one of our policymakers personally, even the ones who've had good ideas. (Because they haven't gone over and slapped their less competent colleagues.)

>>93826

So how does that work, have they given any details on it? Does it mean the owner has to sell it for half the price they paid? They can only sell it to another first time buyer?

It really doesn't help anyone onto the property ladder if that's the case, just funnels all the millennials into bizarre aspirational council estates they'll never be able to move out of.

>>93828
Say a house is worth £180k, you'd get a discount of 30% and pay £126k for it. If the house value rises to £200k when you sell it then you'd receive £140k for it, i.e. 70% of the growth, and the new buyer has to also be a first time buyer. If you needed a bigger house, say you had kids or got sick of living in a new build estate, then it'd take you a lot of time to afford a comparable £200k plus property outright.

https://www.ownyourhome.gov.uk/scheme/first-homes/

>>93829

You can always get a mortgage on a bigger house once you've cleared the hurdle of being a home-owner in the first place though, right?

The problem most first time buyers face today isn't being able to afford the repayments, it's just getting the deposit together in the first place when you're already paying some BTL parasite's mortgage for them, and the fact banks are craven bastards who are too "risk averse" to give people mortgages for the same value as extortionate monthly rents they have proven they can already afford.

It's not the final value of the house that's really the problem (although obviously it's the root cause), it's the barriers to entry.

>>93830
Let's say you have a couple of "key workers" on minimum wage, which works out as a combined income of ~£32,400 if they're both doing 35 hours per week. A mortgage multiplier of 4.5 means the maximum they could borrow is £145,800, so they should be able to save up the 5% deposit needed on a house discounted from £200k to £140k of £7,000. If they wanted to buy a comparable home for £200k outright then, assuming the maximum amount they can borrow stays the same, they'd need to find a deposit of c. £54,200 through either saving up or increased equity in the home. There's no way this scheme isn't going to "trap" people.

>>93831

Exactly, the discount is effectively just creating a shortfall they've got to overcome if they ever want to trade up. Which goes back to what I was saying with:

>banks are craven bastards who are too "risk averse" to give people mortgages

Our hypothetical couple are making more than enough, even as minimum wage skivvies, to afford the monthly payments on a £200,000 mortgage, even if we assume only a 5% deposit. The banks just won't let them do it, even though the reality for many young people is that they're already paying comparable rents.

Like others have said, this will trap a lot of people. They will try to move in a few years time and realise that they are worse off than when they started.

>>93827
>If you've got a shortage of nurses how about giving them affordable rental accommodation so they can afford to live in the area rather than playing around with a stupid lottery where 50 people in your area of 500,000 can get a house to own for half the market rate while there remains a chronic shortage of housing.

Because money.

>>93832
>Our hypothetical couple are making more than enough, even as minimum wage skivvies, to afford the monthly payments on a £200,000 mortgage, even if we assume only a 5% deposit. The banks just won't let them do it, even though the reality for many young people is that they're already paying comparable rents.

I think we've had quite enough of banks lending sums to people can't afford to pay it back for one century.

Right now there's too many people getting into an overinflated property market who will be absolutely shafted by an inevitable rise in the interest rate with banks then ending up on the hook for underwater mortgages. I'm not normally one to ever bet against property but we're getting into a 10% annual rise in costs - it'll all end in tears, although for the rich it will be tears of laughter.

Why don't you two just pool your resources and buy your own block of flats to live in.

>>93832

>Our hypothetical couple are making more than enough, even as minimum wage skivvies, to afford the monthly payments on a £200,000 mortgage

At the current record low interest rate of 0.1%. The banks have to account for the risk of an increased interest rate causing an affordability crisis. The cycle of negative equity -> repossession -> falling prices -> negative equity is what initially triggered the 2008 financial crisis.

>>93834
Surely if money's a concern we shouldn't be throwing it down the drain on buying people houses they can't actually afford.
(Sure, it's not a lot of money, but even if you only spent the money allocated for this scheme on building new council houses instead you'd be better off. Well, you wouldn't get the headlines I suppose...)

>>93834

>people can't afford to pay it back

But they can afford it, see:

>the reality for many young people is that they're already paying comparable rents

Obviously it's not good that the prices are so inflated, but the inability of first time buyers to enter the market is causing an artificial scarcity which is only further exacerbating the constant inflation. The only people buying are developers, BTL wankers and ladder-climbers. The market has no bottom floor any more.

>>93835

Fuck the interest rates, the money is magicked out of nothing on a computer anyway, it's not like anybody is actually harmed if a few people miss a payment. It's all a mass delusion. We are a cargo cult worshipping the nonsensical whims of instant stock trading algorithms. None of it needed to happen.

>>93837

The problem isn't the financial system, it's the simple fact that we aren't building enough houses. In countries that do build enough houses, it doesn't really matter whether you buy or rent - house prices aren't steeply rising and landlords aren't in a position to take the piss because they're in a competitive market.

>>93838
I'd imagine those countries have also had fairly low population growth.

>>93838
It seems plausible to me that the financial system is one part of the reason we don't build enough houses. I'm not familiar enough with the situation to comment on whether our land use laws, NIMBYism, or what have you are a bigger contributor, but it seems sensible to assume that if the state was more willing to interfere with bank lending we would have less of an issue.
Have the state set a minimum interest rate for mortgages on existing properties above the market rate while leaving mortgages for new builds alone so that the economics of lending to builders are forcibly made superior to those of lending to buyers. Do it gently enough and you should be able to cool the housing market without crashing the real economy as would happen if you raised the base interest rate. A few people will be artificially priced out of the market, sure, but swathes of people are being priced out of the market each year the present merry-go-round is allowed to continue.

I can't help but feel central banks and governments are slightly mad for not doing something like this. Having a single base rate and then leaving the rest up to the market seems mad when the result is to trap you in a situation where you either raise rates and strangle the stagnant economy, or leave them be and watch as housing and shares go to the moon because money is cheap and those offer much better returns than more productive investments. I'm sympathetically unsympathetic to the bankers' dilemma - everything is so interconnected that you can't crash house prices without crashing everything else too. Still, you'd think they'd be making some moves to set things right rather than just trying to keep everything ticking over like a Gosplan employee c. Easter 1991.

>>93839

Population isn't a particularly important factor - what matters most is the ratio of homes to households. The demand for housing has been increasing in Britain at a far greater rate than the growth of our population, because more people are staying single for longer. Ageing is a critical factor in this; we have a generation of young families living in small flats, while elderly people hold on to large family homes. Older people have a financial interest in constraining the supply of housing to increase the value of their "investment" and they dramatically outnumber the young people who are living with the consequences of our dysfunctional market.

The Planning Bill announced in the Queen's Speech is a massive step forward, because it'll hugely reduce the ability of NIMBYs to block development. Critics of the bill say that it risks creating a "free for all for development", which I see as a huge improvement over the status quo - the wrong home in the wrong place is far better than no home at all.

>>93838

>n countries that do build enough houses

Which ones are those then?

As far as I can tell, the shite situation on housing is reflected across basically every western country.

>>93841
>we have a generation of young families living in small flats, while elderly people hold on to large family homes.

One of the main reasons the amount of suitable housing stock for families has reduced over the past couple of decades is because of landlords buying them up to convert into HMOs for migrants and students.

>>93841

I would be prepared to argue that you have the cart before the horse there, and our declining population growth and the fact people are staying single longer is entirely because of the difficulty getting your own place. Very few people want to start a family living in a flat if they can help it.

That said population growth is bad, we've already got enough problems that aren't getting solved, so I'm not particularly interested in exploring solutions from that avenue. Eh.

>>93842

Situation is pretty similar in Asia too tbf. Can't afford property in major metropolitan area because housing costs to high, can't live in affordable area because no jobs. Luxury apartments built and lie empty in the heart of every city but affordable housing is either non-existent or shoddy af.

>>93837
I think you're missing that it's not just the mortgage your paying - banks are businesses so they're not holding away your custom for no reason. You have not only an interest rate rise to worry about but it's on you now if anything goes wrong which it can and will. That's not to say burning money on rent is good but home ownership is expensive.

>Fuck the interest rates, the money is magicked out of nothing on a computer anyway, it's not like anybody is actually harmed if a few people miss a payment.

The bank forecloses on your home. The mortgage is underwater so everyone loses. Well done and clearly the system is working if people like you can't get a mortgage.

>>93844
>Very few people want to start a family living in a flat if they can help it.

Starting a family doesn't have anything to do with it, this is about cohabitation. People live alone where previously the norm would be two people to a bedroom in their early 20s (or even multi-generational houses), it's certainly not everyone but enough singletons to seriously constrain supply. To make matters worse we're much more urbanised now which means that empty houses do exist but they're in the wrong places while everyone fights over land in the commuter belt - and being responsible by getting a flat is a poor financial decision due to the leasehold system.

Some people need to get a fucking girlfriend already. Others need to be get taxed harshly for spare rooms while the rest (pensioners) need to be told in no uncertain fashion that they can't hang on to their 4-bedroom house to pass on to the kids.

High house prices are good for the economy. All these idiots that want prices to crash don't seem to realise that it would wipe out the wealth of many middle class families.

>>93847

Fuck, he's turning into an iPhone facemorph App result of that US Lawyer who made it his life's work to oppose the Grand Theft Auto series, and someone from Fairport Convention.

>>93847
>All these idiots that want prices to crash don't seem to realise that it would wipe out the wealth of many middle class families.

Isn't that what you people want anyway. You destroy the middle class and you destroy the liberal political order with a resultant economic dislocation and polarisation between have and have-nots allowing a radical to get in.

I hear commieblocks aren't actually too bad come to think of it.

>>93850
The middle class no longer owns their home, they rent. Crashing "the housing market" at this point does affect the odd retiree who was banking on owning a house or two to top up their retirement, though rent and sale price aren't an elastic relationship. But it doesn't affect people who bought to live all that much. Remember the howling and gnashing of teeth when the tax reform for landlords who fancied themselves private investors came in in regards to their mortgage payments? A crash is the same thing, people who want to buy a place to live in win, people who treat it as an investment (even if they live in it) draw the short straw.

>>93846

You know, lad, I'm sorry, but I don't care all that much for your opinions. You sound like a particularly unimaginative broadsheet journalist, or that lad who insists the FT is the most impartial source of news.

I don't know how many people in their early 20s you hang about with, but I can assure you they don't bloody well live alone. You have genuinely pulled that out of their arse; when I was in my early 20s ten years ago I was sharing a three bed house with five mates. All the people I know in their early 20s today are sharing their parents house with their parents because moving out is a pipe dream they've all but given up on.

>>93846
>The bank forecloses on your home.
Have they considered not foreclosing and making people homeless? Radical idea, I know.

>>93852

There's a huge north/south, towns/cities divide that gives people very different perceptions of the British housing market.

In my home town, it's still perfectly normal for people in their early-to-mid twenties to be married and have a mortgage. You can buy a slightly tatty mid-terrace for about £80k or a fairly nice semi for £120k, so getting a mortgage isn't really a major issue; people are much more concerned about youth unemployment, insecure working conditions, wage stagnation and the cost of childcare.

>>93853

Banks have huge assets but relatively tight profit margins. They absolutely cannot afford to just let people off if they stop paying their mortgage. It's worth remembering that most of the money in the financial system ultimately belongs to pension funds. The people managing that money get paid either way, but if their investments go tits-up then a lot of people will find that their pension has disappeared.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%932008

>>93855
>Banks have huge assets but relatively tight profit margins.

Is that just for big banks, or does it scale? So they have staff, facilities, presumably a lot of insurance and a few other similar things. But then they have all that money.

I'm quite curious about bank balance sheets now, I don't think I'd be able to understand one, but how can they have such tight margins when people are literally handing them money?

>>93855

I'm from the Northern half of that divide and its certainly not the promised land of free houses Southerners seem to think it is. Sure I could by a relatively nice end terrace for about 60 grand if I wanted to go and live in South Elmsall, but that means going to live in fucking South Elmsall. These cheap houses are all in shitholes, and all the jobs are still in the big cities like Leeds and Manchester.

From a Southern perspective that might not even seem like a problem because the whole south of England commutes to London, but the North doesn't have the infrastructure London does. Buses are absolute dogshit and a lot of places just don't have train stations, so moving out to where these cheap houses are means you'll be driving an hour every morning to get to work.

Beyond that there's just the fact jobs are scarcer and wages shittier. The people in your hometown getting married and having mortgages will still have had help from mum and dad, where it's at least still reasonably possible for that to happen, which would be unthinkable in the south. But in relative terms the housing market is just as fucked in the North as it is in the South.

>>93857

>all the jobs are still in the big cities

For a very middle-class definition of "all the jobs". Working-class jobs overwhelmingly aren't in big cities. There's a terrible snobbery in this country about what it means to live a decent life; a blindness to the wants, needs and beliefs of the majority of people who don't commute to an office in a city centre.

A lot of the people who live in towns like South Elmsall don't think they live in a shithole and have no inclination to move. Millions of skilled, well-paid people work on industrial estates or out of their van and have absolutely no desire to spend all day behind a desk.

I don't mean to suggest that the north is a paradise, there are plenty of problems that need addressing, but I reject the notion that the only solution to those problems is to make the north more like the south and towns more like cities. A large proportion of the electorate also reject that notion, which explains why Labour are currently unelectable.

>>93856

>how can they have such tight margins when people are literally handing them money?

Because people want that money back, preferably with interest. Banks manage colossal amounts of money, but they operate in a highly competitive environment that requires them to mostly act in the interests of their customers.

To give an example, Barclays manage assets totalling £1.35 trillion - it's not their money, they're just looking after it for their customers. Their gross profit was £3.2bn last year and £6.2bn in 2019.

Those are colossal numbers that are hard to get your head around, but it means that in a good year Barclays expect to pocket less than 0.5% of the money they're looking after. It doesn't take a particularly big economic shock to push a bank from profit to loss and a shock like we saw in 2008 was enough to push many into bankruptcy.

On a broader point, a lot of people like to imagine that all of the world's problems could be solved if we just took all of the money from rich people, but those people don't realise that they're rich. The total global GDP is about £61 trillion, but divided by the total global population it works out to a little under £9,000 each. That would be great news for people in sub-Saharan Africa, but you and I wouldn't be best pleased about it.