Latest Moan From You and Me 2025

I sometimes wonder, regarding house prices if its right that the mortgage lenders keep making it easier, and lending more and more money to people that pushes up prices.

If its a case of supply and demand if less people were able to borrow very large amounts against their income then demand would fall.

I know that sounds crazy but I do think the building societies who keep upping the amount you can borrow against your income goes a long way to fuelling price rises.

In short if nobody can raise the price you are asking then you will have to lower your asking price.

Of course that would go against all government thinking as they are getting stamp duty.

And of course the house builders wouldn't like it and the estate agents percentage would be lower.

 

Most people like the idea that the house they buy will go up in value they can't seem to see that it's costing someone more in interest and you can never benefit from the rise unless you go live in a tent

 

Well you just dont let them, simple.

 

I'm sure the government could come up with a maximum percentage they are allowed to charge.
They seem to regulating most things these days.

I'm referring to the British system, not interested in what goes on in other countries unless we were to copy some of the simpler ways of doing it and cutting out all the blood suckers.

 

When, our my early twenties, I first met my OH he told me he owned a flat. I was very impressed. It was a typical one bedroom Edinburgh tenement flat. A smallish hallway, a kitchen diner, a reasonable sized living room, a bedroom roughly 10’ x12’ and a small bathroom with an ancient cast iron bath. And a full height (12’?) cupboard off the hallway, about the dimensions of a double bed. This cupboard contained a home made built in wardrobe and above the wardrobe was a home made single bed. A child’s climbing frame ladder led to the bed.

It turned out that although he did indeed own the flat the mortgage used up half of his small monthly salary. And to have any money left over for the basics of life he had to let out the bedroom to an old school friend on a cash in hand basis. They shared the kitchen and the living room and bathroom. My OH lived in the cupboard off the hall. All his personal belongings were in the built in wardrobe.

We got on well and I moved in. The school friend had a girlfriend who shared his room with him. Four young people lived in a one bedroom flat and got on very well together. The first two years of my life as a couple were spent in that cupboard off the hall. Being eight feet off the ground, it was a devil to change the sheets on the bed.

 

I think that day might be coming.

 

In your 20s is the best time to have children.That's what nature designed as our best childbearing years, and a society that prevents this is unjust. The rate of teenage pregnancy is low, it has declined greatly since I was a child. The birth rate is falling all over the developed world because it has been made so hard and so expensive to have children. The average age for a first birth in the UK is nearly 30!

 

@pete, you might also need to add in regulation preventing anyone not permanently resident here from buying property, or else any rules about caps on lending would be swopped on by investors.

Just building more does nothing to solve the problem. Restricting ownership is the only way, so residential housing is not seen as an easy financial investment. One person, one home, that they must reside in full-time. No foreign money. No business ownership. That would hugely increase supply. Yes, some of it would be high end oligarchs' mansions, but these could be subdivided. It would hack off the wealthy, of course. Tragic!

Won't happen as those making the rules have multiple homes and their strings are pulled by the mansion owners. In a true democracy, it would happen.

@Tidemark, in my first flat, a studio, the bed folded out of a cupboard ... but you needed to move the sofa out of the way first. Not quite as extreme as your ceiling eyrie, but fairly snug living arrangements.

 

Problem with one person one home is you would lose all the small landlords who only let one or two properties.

 

Ban airbnb. They have made life a misery for people round here. These quaint little villages you see round here - half the houses in them are airbnb. The noise. The rubbish. Pah!

 

@Escarpment It was perfectly normal in the past, before widespread effective birth control, for women to bear children up to their menopause. Women having their first baby in their 30s are no longer rare and it is far from being a health risk to mum or baby. Most of my older women friends here had their babies in their 20s and a significant number have offspring in their late 30s who are not yet ready to produce grandchildren. They're enjoying their busy lives with careers, holidays, hobbies and don't feel ready to give them up.

Living near to major holiday destinations I am aware of how many homes are holiday lets but many are also family homes inherited and now used by younger generations with careers and jobs elsewhere in France but who "come home" for their holidays. Councils are increasingly offering incentives to rent holiday lets by the year to long term residents and charging higher council rates to those who don't. There are also many empty homes here where people have died and French inheritance laws lead to disputes between the heirs. Add to that the preference the French seem to have for new, modern, easy car housing and a lot of old stock goes to rack and ruin.

 

JK Rowling pretty much nailing it here ...

If you believe free speech is for you but not your political opponents, you're illiberal.
If no contrary evidence could change your beliefs, you're a fundamentalist.
If you believe the state should punish those with contrary views, you're a totalitarian.
If you believe political opponents should be punished with violence or death, you're a terrorist.