Owning your own home

This situation isn't going to change until we persuade business to relocate.

As it is, if you want talent you have your office in London.

Dyn made an interesting choice when they picked Brighton as their UK HQ because they wanted "to be, beyond doubt, the number 1 high-tech company in the city".

But that's a choice that marks them as being unusual.

It also makes them daft. If they want to employ new 'talent' (your wanky word, not mine;) they have to convince them / pay them to relocate. Plenty of people won't want to so they don't get the pick of employees.

Whether it's London or Silicone Valley or wherever these employment centres of industry have too much mass to move them, snot gon happen.

meh. I think my friend is pretty nice. they weren't being a snob. just wanting a posher house than they can afford.

of course it isn't the only problem. there is a real problem with supply of ordinary housing and buy-to-let too. I'm going to stop now before I make myself sound like even more of a twat.

You don't sound like a twat, but your pal kinda does; whining that people in inferior jobs to them are stopping them buying the nice house they deserve for being clever.

How's this for shit government policy:

The next door local authority to me have a budget to spend on building new housing stock. They're struggling to spend it because the planners keep rejecting their plans for affordable housing.

If they don't spend it they lose it, so they decide to just buy open market houses. Its their only option.

Policy makers say they can't overpay, so to be sure they don't policy says they can only buy stuff which has been for sale for over 6 months, which is basically all the overpriced shit no one wants...

They recently bought an ex council maisonette, bought as a right-to-buy from them in the 80s for £18,000 for £200,000.

Brilliant.

Lewisham? Lewisham have been advertising for properties.

You don't sound like a twat, but your pal kinda does; whining that people in inferior jobs to them are stopping them buying the nice house they deserve for being clever.

no. absolutely not.
if anything the other way around - they are stopping people in less well paid jobs buying the properties they should be able to.
isn't it true that each tier of the market is flooded with people who in other towns, and in other decades, just wouldn't be there? hence the astonishingly fast "gentrification" of certain areas. I don't know that acknowledging that is whining. but obviously I've painted my friend in a poor light.

I'm pretty sure I said they liked it there. they really do.

fuck it I'm going to go poke around other people's houses despondently for the day.
penge beckenham catford hither green here I come.

Does anyone have any speculation on the potential of a London house price crash? ...

My speculation is thus (based on observations over the last 9 years in Clapham/Brixton area):

If you are in it for the long haul, it's sensible to buy. You can't opt out of housing, so you may as well invest in it if you are able.

This current period of rampant rises will - has to - cool off, but crash I'm not so sure. London property doesn't attract so much foreign investment for nothing, ya know.

After the last 'bubble' that I recall, in late 2007, prices in my area dropped by 10-15%. They sat there for the last few years not doing a lot, and skyrocketed in the last eighteen months.

You need to be comfortable not only with tucking money away for a while, but that you will not need to pull it out* in a hurry (very subtle difference). Caveat emptor and all that regarding any given property of course.

*of property; if you move house and the market is down, you should get a good deal on your forward purchase

It also makes them daft. If they want to employ new 'talent' (your wanky word, not mine;) they have to convince them / pay them to relocate. Plenty of people won't want to so they don't get the pick of employees.

Whether it's London or Silicone Valley or wherever these employment centres of industry have too much mass to move them, snot gon happen.

All the people they want/wanted to employ live in either London or Brighton.

A mate of mine works for Sapient- a big digital agency, and what seems to happen there is all staff either live in London or Brighton.

If you want to work for a big/credible agency then you will do so in London- apparently. I don't, so am going on what I have been told.

Anyway- that's the problem right there.

Average salary for these places is well above 50k, they don't exist outside of London, their employees need to live somewhere.

It's not going to be the North East of England.

How's this for shit government policy:

The next door local authority to me have a budget to spend on building new housing stock. They're struggling to spend it because the planners keep rejecting their plans for affordable housing.

Their must be a reason why the planners keep on rejecting their proposals. Perhaps they should employ some talented design professionals to design affordable housing rather than get into bed with large developers who have no interest in providing well built, well designed and well proportioned houses.

Their must be a reason why the planners keep on rejecting their proposals. Perhaps they should employ some talented design professionals to design affordable housing rather than get into bed with large developers who have no interest in providing well built, well designed and well proportioned houses.

I agree, but the stumbling block isn't usually design. It's absurd stuff like 'loss of farmland' - we have fuckloads of the stuff and farmers have to get subsidies to make a living, sacrificing a bit for houses means more places to live and less subsidies.

The other one is size. Government policy is for a max of 20 units on one site, even if surveys show there is a need for many times that amount. It's unnecessarily obstructive.

Design is way down the list. In fact, social housing is often bigger and less dense than commercial housing.

Yahoo just relocated it's headquarters from Switzerland to Ireland in order to take advantage of the taxation situation.

What would happen if we changed from UK wide taxation levels to regional?

i.e. currently NE England is very beautiiful (countryside), housing is very cheap, and unemployment is very high- so if we set taxation on (say) an inverse scale to house prices vs. the UK average to try to remove the gravitational pull of London?

I agree, but the stumbling block isn't usually design. It's absurd stuff like 'loss of farmland' - we have fuckloads of the stuff and farmers have to get subsidies to make a living, sacrificing a bit for houses means more places to live and less subsidies.

The other one is size. Government policy is for a max of 20 units on one site, even if surveys show there is a need for many times that amount. It's unnecessarily obstructive.

Design is way down the list. In fact, social housing is often bigger and less dense than commercial housing.

That's because government policy obviously favours protecting greenbelt land. There is also often a great deal of local opposition to building on green field sites, for example the eco-towns initiative. Perhaps this should be relaxed in certain areas of the country, i.e. the south east, the localism bill probably makes provision for this for any brave local council willing to try?

Besides which, I was referring to London, and given the need for greater densities then good design is an absolute must.

i.e. currently NE England is very beautiiful (countryside), housing is very cheap, and unemployment is very high- so if we set taxation on (say) an inverse scale to house prices vs. the UK average to try to remove the gravitational pull of London?

There's still no jobs so people buy cheap house in nice place but can't work there? What happens? Rich people buy cheap houses and use them as holiday homes or rent them to people who do actually work there.

I was talking about taxation paid by companies- i,e, try to get the employers to move there in order to attract people to work for them, with the things that people need and want, such as decent places to eat etc etc.

But that doesn't work either as evidenced by Ireland, Caymans, etc. where a single building has 30,000 registered companies in it... they only need one bloke in a room forwarding all their post.

Actually, Obama's quote was 12,000 companies.

If everything was cheaper you might get data centres setting up there, like AWS in Ireland. I'm sure there was massive incentives for them to do so - would England do the same? Do they have the gumption to lay the optic back to London for it?

That's a good question, and going on the current government the answer is no.

However the question I would ask is how sustainable is it to ignore the rest of the UK and keep focussing on using London to run practically the whole economy.

If we could see (say) enough network capacity in Nottingham, with the same latency etc as Canary Wharf sees plus a reason (which is going to have to be £$£$£ based) for the financial services sector to move then we'd see a massive hike in income in the middle of the country, with the knock on effect on housing, service sector etc.

People come to London because the jobs are here.

Create new, or move existing jobs to somewhere else, and they'd go there- if overall quality if life could be maintained or increased.

I'd love to move to the Meon Valley, but cycling to W1 every day would be a bit too much.

If I had to work anywhere else in the UK I would leave the country and move somewhere nice.

wtf Catford... Was about to suggest a couple looking check out this one for sale on our road, as it's ratty and I assumed it would be (relatively) affordable...
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-42377656.html
ouch.

Create new, or move existing jobs to somewhere else, and they'd go there- if overall quality if life could be maintained or increased.

So much this. I'd love to be able to do my job up North somewhere and live like a medieval baron on half the income.

^^ that's now cheap for your patch :(
most are 375 up. I can't handle realtime.

I see estate agents are making sure they don't miss out gouging a bit of an extra chunk of profit http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/feb/10/house-buyers-beware-estate-agents-double-charge

Fuck - some will be looking at 5% fees. Thats £25K for a shitty, £500k, 2 bed flat in clapham that sells after 1 open day.

If this is any more than click bate or speculation I hope it signals the rise of cheaper alternatives. There must be some great opportunities to undercut estate agents and still make a good profit.