Comments

1. Will

   Tuesday 8 April 2008 at 15:09

   I hope house prices do plummet.

   The whole ‘market’ for houses in this country is a load of fucking shite.

2. Jura Watchmaker

   Tuesday 8 April 2008 at 15:18

   If the housing market crashes, Will, the entire economy will go belly up, and that means we’re all up shit creek. And millions of “home owners” in negative equity does not bear thinking about. Fucked up markets have a tendency to make people go a bit funny in the head. And that.

3. dirigible

   Tuesday 8 April 2008 at 15:32

   His eyes aren’t smiling. They are dead. This picture could illustrate William Burrough’s story of the man who taught his backside to speak. I’ve seen sharks display more feeling ocularly.

   The British economy is now based on mortgages and credit cards. Oh, and off-balance-sheet government payments to the private sector. Brown’s Britain is ENRON’s economics applied to a nation state.

4. Will

   Tuesday 8 April 2008 at 15:34

   “If the housing market crashes, Will, the entire economy will go belly up”

   No - it doesn’t. The economy will go belly up if it is allowed to - there are mechanisms that can be used to counter any forces arising from falling house prices. It doesn’t follow such a deterministically fashioned path as you seem to think (burn the Daily Mail’s offices down). The advantages of falling house prices far outweigh the supposed benefits of the current, utter madness.

5. Jura Watchmaker

   Tuesday 8 April 2008 at 15:41

   The Burroughs’ reference came to me too, but I can’t remember the details, so long has it been since I read any of his work. Which book, dirigible?

   If there is a big house price crash, and this is combined with a recession due to other factors (e.g., currency collapse), then from what I understand it would take a massive amount of state micro-management of the economy to stabilise things.

6. dirigible

   Tuesday 8 April 2008 at 16:10

   It’s part of “Naked Lunch” and can be found online in various places, e.g.: http://www.greylodge.org/occultreview/glor_009/WSBspecial/asshole.htm

7. Mustafa

   Tuesday 8 April 2008 at 16:44

   House prices need to fall by at least 30% even to begin to approach sensible levels. In 1980 mean house prices were 3x average salary; now they are 10x. An entire generation has got fat on capital from housing hyperinflation, while the youngest generation, and I’m thinking of those without middle-class parents, are facing the prospect of enslavement to banks or unscrupulous landlords for the rest of their lives. And a house price correction will damage the middle classes and the property speculators the most.

   If we are to change the economic structure of society, towards co-operative holding of land and capital, then the sooner this correction happens, the better.

8. Jura Watchmaker

   Tuesday 8 April 2008 at 17:00

   Given that I fell off the “property ladder” when I left Denmark, and cannot now afford even a garden shed in the UK, I would also welcome a house price correction. But still I feel that those calling for a rapid fall are deluding themselves if they think that the property market will change in isolation to the rest of the economy.

   A crash will certainly hurt property speculators, but it will also wreak havoc in the lives of ordinary folk whose budgets are already stretched to beyond a sensible limit.

9. Jura Watchmaker

   Tuesday 8 April 2008 at 17:46

   As for a 30% price drop before the market begins to approach “sensible levels”, let’s just remember that the peak-to-trough fall during the early 1990s “crash” was just 13%. And that was accompanied by recession and high unemployment.

   One likely consequence of even a modest fall in house prices now is a significant drying up of supply as those who have borrowed to the limit decide to stay put. That brings with it a number of problems, especially when demand is increasing as it is.

   But hey, look on the bright side; it’ll get Kirsty, Phil, Sarah, Kevin and all the rest of the property slebs off our TV screens.

10. Eric

    Tuesday 8 April 2008 at 19:01

    Out by a couple (and a bit) of years:

    “Many people have suggested to me that I do something “sensible” with it like buy (a large chunk of) a house. One glance at the state of the bubblicious UK property market is enough to tell me that I might as well withdraw the cash in bundles of crisp tens, nail it to the outside of a garden shed, and set fire to the whole blummin’ thing.”

    http://www.pootergeek.com/?p=1706

11. hakmao

    Tuesday 8 April 2008 at 19:56

    I like Kevin — Grand Designs is in a different league to the tarting up to cash-in shows.

12. hakmao

    Tuesday 8 April 2008 at 22:27

    Anyway, I watch Kirsty & Phil and Sarah as something of a blood sport — spitting abuse at the procession of the greedy, the venal and the stupid … the childless couples who desperately need 6 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms in Chelsea, those with a mania that their children must grow up ‘in the country’, idiots who won’t buy a house if it has a bathroom downstairs, idiots who won’t buy a house *unless* it *has* stairs, yadda, yadda, yadda.

13. Jura Watchmaker

    Wednesday 9 April 2008 at 0:12

    Hak, dear, I think you need to get out more. :-)