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there would be significant interest from foreign investment if we remained in a strongly devalued state
I do wonder how strong this effect is these days. Obviously in days gone by overseas buyers loved the opportunity to snap something up cheaply in London, but maybe the attraction is weaker now? Particularly when the Euro is almost as significantly devalued in USD terms.
NickCJ-
I'm no expert but we've got huge building works locally that are basically pension funds building flats. Without getting all Matrix about what that means the snake is eating it's tail in a very real way and humans are the power source. So keeping them in hutches to pay for someone else's retirement is par for the course.
That is what I mean by attractive to foreign investment. It's not so much that individual chinese or indian investors might like to hold a bit of the UK property market although there is a fair bit of that because so far at least our legal system protects your investment in a way that's not so clearly guaranteed under some other regimes.
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Ang on ang on.
Is sterling weak, or is the dollar like crazy strong?
1 euro < 1 dollar ATM.
Airhead
Howard
As we've seen with the currency today. As soon as something looks cheap someone will buy/rent it. Because of human nature we're more likely to have a big collapse of values than a slow erosion it's just that the circumstances have not been right just yet.
It was only a few years ago that discussions were being had on here about borrowing money to buy classic cars. Expect that kind of borrowing to figure in the first wave of defaults and asset devaluation. House prices are little more stable and there would be significant interest from foreign investment if we remained in a strongly devalued state.
Also wise to remember that every other first world economy has the same problems. We each have different infrastructures and the solutions will vary because of that but the underlying problems are the same.