The credit crunch is biting or the credit bite is crunching, whatever, and people are losing their homes and first time buyers can't afford mortgages. Of course, it's been coming a long time as house prices have been obscene for a very long time and they've just been getting more and more obscene year by year.
BBC's The Money Programme and Panorama investigate by snooping on a few people's lives.
Except they don't choose people who you may feel sympathy for, people with mortgages at an almost sensible multiple of their salaries (I say "almost sensible" because it has been impossible for some years now for most people to afford a property with a wholly sensible mortgage).
The programme makers choose people like:-
1. The 19 year old boy who lives with his parents. His girlfriend and young child live with her parents. His parents are willing to give him the deposit on a house but mortgage lenders consider him too big a risk. He won't rent because renting is "dead money". This "dead money" bollocks has obviously been drummed into him by his stupid parents who got married at 12, had 16 children and still managed to buy their first home outright at the age of 21!
2. The young couple with a young child who are renting a tiny, damp flat in the very expensive town they grew up in. They deperately want to buy a property. The problem is their combined income is just about enough to keep them in a tiny, damp flat in the very expensive town they grew up in.
3. The family with the 125% mortgage, living in their "dream home" which they bought at the time when house prices peaked.
4. The 23 year old estate agent who has two mortgages. One on a one bedroom house for himself. The other on a one bedroom flat which he can only rent out at a rate which doesn't cover the mortgage he's paying on it.
5. The divorcee mother of one who expects to be able to pay the mortgage on a three bedroom semi all by herself! Is she crazy?
The only thing you can glean from these exposes is that we are living in idiot Britain. Nowhere did they say that house prices are absolutely fucking obscene and that a lot of decent-earning, sensible people are going to lose their homes or cannot afford to buy. No, they choose bleeding idiots for us to feel superior to.
Dumbing down cunts.
******
N.B. Betty's latest post doesn't seem to have been picked up by Bloglines. Has anybody else had this trouble? Is it something to do with her old skool template? Or has she been barred for taking the piss out of Lily Allen?
The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig
9 hours ago
There is an error on bloglines at the moment.
ReplyDeleteI think this must be the dullest comment I have ever made; I come to that conclusion taking into account all of the other dull comments.
No one on an average wage can afford a usual mortgage, it's ludicrous.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I've recently been investing in tents before it becomes a seller's market.
Vicus - Thank you. Though Betty still feels persecuted. It's just her, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteIstvanski - I'd like to know the last time an average wage could buy a two bedroom terrace. Not much to ask for, is it? A three bedroom semi requires two very good salaries so if you want kids you're snookered. It's wise to be in tents. Not too much, though.
I don't think that's Vicus's dullest comment by a long chalk.
ReplyDeleteI am thinking of inventing a chocolate bar called Credit Crunch - you will be able to get one free when you purchase one of Istvanski's special tents. Maybe Damian Hearst will cover one in Swarovski crystals and sell it for millions. How ironic would that be? God - I am a genius!
ReplyDeleteMurph - Yes, but Vicus does make cricket sound almost interesting. Almost.
ReplyDeleteRomo - Great idea. The French already have "le crunch" Golden Delicious apples but then they don't have such ridiculously high mortgages. See, an apple a day keeps the repossesors away.
What's Bloglines?
ReplyDeleteI have ranted about this for some time now as the sheer idiocy of the housing market in North America is finally meeting it's logical conclusion.
These f*cking people need their head examined. Owning a home is not a right that the world owes you and mortgaging 125% of it is a recipe for disaster...
and it should be.
This instant gratification generation has somehow forgotten the lessons of the Great Depression that my Grandparents lived through...it only took two generations to completely forget the spanking.
You can blame offshore money, greedy bankers, souless financiers, whoever you like...if demand were to be suddenly tied in with common sense those bastards would all need to fall in line.
But what the hell do I know? Afterall, Mortgage literally means Death Pledge.
Bloglines is a news aggregator, just like Google Reader except not as discerning as they seem to have lost Betty. She has 26 readers who keep in touch with her blog via Bloglines. So at the moment, 26 people don't know she's posted except for those who speculatively click on her blog in the hope of a new post.
ReplyDeleteThousands of people in Britain have mortgages which will soon be too expensive for them to afford to live. They'll have to sell up and rent. We're heading for meltdown, I tell you, meltdown!
If my parents use the phrase "dead money" one more time I will bludgeon them to death with my rent book. And then I will inherit my own "dead money". And might actually be able to afford a house!
ReplyDeleteIn Zone Q.
Zone Q is lovely this time of year. A heady mix of birdsong and boy racers.
ReplyDeleteMy dad always drummed into me that a house is an investment for the future. The fact someone has to work 18 hour days 7 days a week just to pay off the interest on a mortgage for a starter home means they may not live to see that future. At least with renting, people might not have to work themselves to death (and of course, there are all those folks who got mortgages on buy-to-let properties who can't get enough rent money to cover the mortgage ....).
ReplyDelete