Gringo

"I Believe" Blessid Union of Souls

House prices unchanged in January

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See You - depeche mode

OK fairy muff, but it wasn't an official compromise, it appears to be a behind the doors agreement with nothing documented and with the legal situation in limbo, thereby justifying some confustion over how it came about. It's still crap though and still hampers small clubs and gives another advantage to the richer clubs.

from the observer It was nothing to do with freedom of movement, or resignation from contracts, which were driven by the EU - I guess the observer have phrased this poorly, and misconstrued the timing of the agreement.

The window was nothing to do with any sort of compromise with the EU with regards to player registrations or contracts. It was a completely different matter and impsed by UEFA. Big clubs can build big squads, and have plan A on the pitch, plan B on the bench and plan C playing the cup matches. Small clubs' only means of competing with this would be to switch from plan A to B in october and onto plan C in February. Many managers made their reputation on skilfull forays into the transfer market. The window has essentially robbed this tool from a managers toolkit.

No. then they are not managers they are coaches. It reduces the ability for a manger to manage changes in his team. For example, if the transfer window had been around 15 years ago, fergie couldn't have signed cantona, and bfr would leading us to our 12 the title in 15 years. Damn, an argument for the window.

It's a f***** stupid idea, and removes the ability of mangers to manage.

I think he has to cut 25 points this month, the markets are already expecting that as a minimum and hoping for a 50 pts cut - so if it did not materialise there would be blood on the trading floor.

Yes and no, and no. In actual money (ignoring inflation) prices on average double every nine years, but that doesn't mean no matter what. If you had bought in 1989 you'd have been in negative equity for the next 8 years. Some properties will have made a loss between 1989 and 1999 in some of the worse hit areas, though the average price had just about recovered. Buy at the wrong time, and you won't become a property millionaire. The graph below (adjusted for inflation) shows how a property bought in 89 was worth less in real terms up until 2002.

Utterly ridiculous, markets haemhorraging.

The main argument against house price falls appears to be that demand will keep prices up. Demand Supply Of course you might think that reducing supply would help support prices,but this isn't thumbtacks we are selling here - the reduced choice will mean people take longer to find the right house, leading to long completion times and the chains weaken as the people at the head of the chain can't find anywhere to buy.

Newsnight reporting that the govt are going to impose an extended deposit guarantee scheme on banks, which will reduce available savings interest rates and downardly impact available liquidity in banks. And in a period of tightened lending this will make the mortgage market even more restricted, Going down, going down. Going down, going down, going down.

As I said - "the appearance of independence". No election til April 2010 - July 2008 a very outside chance - but 2009 a no no - it's the economy stupid - why go to the polls with recession all around you - you either go before it bites, or when there are some shoots of recovery to grasp at. Selections (5)Back (105.6%)Lay (96.5%) Jan - Jun 2008 26.0 (£4) 38.0 (£2)Jul - Dec 2008 26.0 (£3) 32.0 (£2)Jan - Jun 2009 3.05 (£9) 3.4 (£8 )Jul - Dec 2009 5.3 (£17) 5.5 (£11)Jan 2010 or Later 2.16 (£10) 2.32 (£57)

Unless the chancellor changes the remit of the MPC then they can't really vote an interest rate cut. Their primary focus is dictated to be keeping inflation at 2%. Any external pressure to vote for a cut in face of rising inflation would surely damage the appearance of an independent BoE.

Collapse or crash, too difficult to quantitatively define, and would have ended up arguing over people's definition - so much easier to say up or down (in real terms) Also used the term average - so not just the leafy suburbs in surrey, but implying nationally. Really? They didn't cut the rates at the last meeting.

But if people can't get the same mortgages, then people can't afford the same houses so demand is pushed down the price range and so utimately prices would have to fall. But also most of the demand that you claim will keep the market buoyant is down there.

From the house price cash website who have been predicting a house price crash since 2002 and are all rather bitter as they sold up and moved to renting thinking they'd buy back cheaper when the market crashed. But an interesting graphic nonetheless.

So why bother selling - if it's profitable, and if you're bullish about the market, it's now an investment. As long as it's in a good renting area, why worry. Over an average 20 year period, it should quadruple in value, so the mortgage reduces in terms of LTV without you having to pay a penny. Once prices start falling, people will delay their entry into the market (why buy now when it will be cheaper in 6 months), and demand will slacken.

I suppose how do you define a crash. My rule of thumb would be 20% decline in real terms over a two year period. This would be enough to lock many households into negative equity and cause the market to lock up for the next few years as happened in the 80s. From today's gruaniad House prices dip for fourth month as it takes longer to sell homes So the CEBR are predicting an actual fall of 4% or 6% in real terms. Nowhere near a crash, but not overly opimistic either.

Agreed - the banks have driven the markets in both the US and the UK - the US through the sub prime lending and the UK through ever increasing salary multiples.

I don't think my final paragrah implies that at all. "Somethings going to give, it isn't going to unwind in a soft landing as we saw 5 years ago." It's not analysis, it's a prediction. However, now you've raised the point, housing markets are by nature local, but constrained by national or international factors. The housing market in sheffield is very different to that in london, and the london market is very different from berlin. Also the fact I list two global factors (credit crunch, global recession) and one that is massively influenced by other global movements (inflation) would indicate that I don't think it's a UK Only issue. Again however - the Spanish housing market is distinct from the UK market and is distinct from the US market. The spanish market has been on it's arse for nearly 12 months, caused by massive over supply and generous valuations - loads of people who bought off plan are having to default and lose their property as the growth they were promised hasn't appeared and the banks are beginning to tighten up on valuations. The funny thing is, wherever you look they are still building, and they are still pushing up prices, just not selling anything. They are lucky that their demand is driven internally and from other countries further north, so if the german housing market picks up, people will use their newly found equity to buy second homes in the sun, just as many brits have been doing in recent years. The US housing market is on it's arse because of mortgage misselling (some of it fraudulent) leading to overvaluations and an inevitable crash when the market tries to right itself. The UK market is going to be brought to it's knees by global factors, but it doesn't make it a global phenomenon. Different markets have different cycles, and may parts of europe will see house price growth this year, but even in those countries there will be areas where prices fall. The fundamentals that LR points to (house price vs salary) are wrongly balanced, and that is more of a typical UK problem - I can only think of dublin where banks lend on such multiples. It is - or it wasn't - inevitable that this would lead to a crash, a soft landing could have been experienced, as I said, with three years of zero or RPI level growth, but now that the four economic horsemen of the housing market apocalypse are saddling up, I can't see that happening. So in conclusion, there are global problems that will cause weak and over extended markets to collapse.

Ripping these posts from the energy behemoths thread, I thought it might benefit from it's own little home. OT but never gonna happen .. only thing that will bring on a collapse is us adopting the Euro as houses prices will soar initially before going imploding on themself OT but never gonna happen .. You've just given me all the encouragement that I've called it right. Running, not walking, to the exits when more than a tiny minority of market participants say that a given investment will never collapse ranks up there on the list of successful investment strategies. 8 months ago, I thought property prices were as safe as houses, now I'm not so sure. I was quite happy that a 2-3 year period of stagnation would be required before the growth picked up again, with the exposed areas being the cheaper areas around london that had gone up 30% in the last couple of years whilst the rest of the UK had already moved towards stagnation. The BTL market would pick up any slack, as rents were still strong, boosted by the lovely immigration that keeps the economy going. I was convinced it was going to take more than a change in sentiment for the market to change direction. Well we've got more. * Credit crunch, upping available interest rates and application fees, * HIPS reducing the availability of speculative sellers (in a booming market the reduced supply would have helped boost prices, but in a struggling market it just reduces choice and lowers the transaction rate, meaning other sellers drop their prices) * the threat of recession going from a 1 in 4 chance to a better than 1 in 2 - any recession will see the repos go up, which again flattens the market, * and the threat of inflation which restricts what sterling mervyn can do with interest rates, if he cuts rates to help homeowners, inflation will bubble, if he raises rates, repos will bubble. Somethings going to give, it isn't going to unwind in a soft landing as we saw 5 years ago.

Scientists close to creating life after piecing together giant DNA jigsaw The title of the article is a bit misleading as they are nowhere near creating life, but are indeed close to creating or developing an alternative species. So today's pseudo-philosophical ponderance is: Will frankenstein techniques help develop new species for the good of mankind; or Will frankenstein techniques create new dangers that will harm mankind.