Owning your own home

I just spent a couple of days in Crewe. Any superiority complex held by the English should really be tempered.

That's not England, that's the North.

Er no. That's Cheshire.

South Coast - Thames: England
Thames - Watford Gap: Midlands
Watford Gap - Hadrians Wall: North
Hadrians Wall - North Coast: Scotland

Some of Cheshire counts as the North.

The Midlands can have Crewe though.

The north officially begins when go north of Stoke. So Crewe is in the north. Just.

This photo is taken by someone standing in the Midlands, on the other side of the Eleanor Cross they'd be in England:

I definitely see where you're coming from - it totally makes no sense to keep your savings in bank accounts given current interest rates.

But I think your emotional head is conflicting with your rational head here.

Your rational head (rightly) thinks property is a better investment than bank accounts. But if you want your property to go up in price London would be a much better option. It has the added advantage of being where you currently live, not somewhere far away.

Your emotional head wants to buy somewhere in Scotland because Scotland and it's not London, but buying it then not renting it out would mean you'd stymie it as an investment. It's not going to go up in value that much, so the logical way to get a return from it would be renting it out. Airbnb isn't a terrible idea but who would be on hand to deal with anything that came up? Your emotional head wants to be able to go and live in it because it's disillusioned with London.

You would (probably) make more by buying somewhere in London now, then, when you're actually ready to move, selling it and buying somewhere in Scotland. Your theoretical London property would (probably) have gone up in value sufficiently that you'd be able to buy a bigger place in Scotland, or have more cash reserves. Houses in Scotland aren't going anywhere, so I don't really see the downside of delaying that purchase. It would actually (probably) be cheaper to do holiday lets in Scotland while owning a place in London, but that might not please your emotional head.

Your emotional head should probably think about this:

But what could they get with their money?

That depends on their budget and I don't know what it is.

The tl;dr of this is that if I'm going to have to live in London I might as well benefit from owning a flat here so I can benefit from the stupid property prices. Living in London and renting is the worst of both worlds: a c. 10 mile ride out to anything resembling countryside and zero property-based economic uplift.

This is why I will own until the day comes that I can leave this place, then sell and live like a king.

LIKE A KING!! Mwahahaha. Etc.

^ also my plan.

Bought our first property in Walthamstow in 1997. Everyone was like "why the f*ck do you want to live there?".

Time changes things.

Mortgage free we can afford a parking space or two. But the point was, I'm not comfortable getting a mortgage right now. There are a number of reasons why, but one of them is made quite explicit with that graph you've provided.

This is why the question was expressed as one about moving savings, rather than investing.

His emotional head should look at that graph and think 'Is this a good time to be getting involved in london property'?

If you are prepared for the risk of property investment then there are lots of investment vehicles that would probably provide more return than a bank account. A simple emerging markets fund from a reputable company has risks but a good track record. Unless you are determined to own some bricks and mortar which I can understand.

I think we're talking ourselves into being determined. The idea that there's always a place, mortgage free, which we can live in. Pretty sweet.

You need to be careful it doesn't become a money pit though with council tax, maintenance, etc.

Given that the property price increases swept out from the super prime central London property market and that market has seen 10-15% price reductions which have reached Fulham properties in the last 6 months there's a strong argument that it will continue and reach the rest of the country over the next 18 months.

That would be worrying me if I was looking to buy as an investment outside of London right now.

This is savage.

My seller pulled out last week and it just fried my noodle totally. I did quite a bit of soul searching this weekend and I'd finally begun to come to peace with it, so I called the lawyers to find out how much money I could recoup.

Turns out the seller changed his mind AGAIN on Friday and wants to proceed.

So my question is: who should I kill first?

Easy, James Corden.

Thanks everyone. We're going to go up next month to take a look at the areas we're interested in and see if we would be happy to a) have a holiday home there and b) live there at some point if we wanted/had to.

Out of interest why did you rule out Lille?

What was their excuse?

Why not? Am I missing something with that graph? Pretty much constant upward trajectory since 1995 and prices only fell between 2008 and 2009?

Uh huh. I'd say it is investing though really, no? The value of your property can go down as well as up which isn't the case with money in the bank.

If you're worried about what house prices are going to do in London I'd be worried about house prices might do in Scotland too. But if you just want to buy it as somewhere to live in one day and won't plan to sell I guess that doesn't matter.