there doesn't appear to be a paywall.

( Windy Pig I'm naturally quite suspicious about the moon., Mon 29 Jul 2013, 13:56, 2 replies, latest was 12 years ago)

i don't know, as mine logs in automatically
maybe it pops up after you try to view more than one article or something?
( rachelswipe with a fork, Mon 29 Jul 2013, 13:59, Reply)

maybe,
it is a good article though. It goes to show that people ought to get proper financial advice and not just jump on the housing ladder quick as a flash.
( Windy Pig I'm naturally quite suspicious about the moon., Mon 29 Jul 2013, 14:02, Reply)

yes, i was very torn
i think it makes good sense, and it shows that home ownership is not this golden wonka ticket that the governments have tried to make it out to be. add some people's greed and some people's poor advice, and you end up with some people paying a lot more than they can afford, and risking it.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Mon 29 Jul 2013, 14:14, Reply)

it makes sense though really,
if you can afford to buy a house, and still invest in other things, and consume and so forth, then buy a house, but hamstringing yourself by getting a mortgage and barely spending or putting anything back in to the economy in other means is bad economics.
It's society as much as the governments fault for making housing the status symbol it is.
( Windy Pig I'm naturally quite suspicious about the moon., Mon 29 Jul 2013, 14:19, Reply)

yes exactly that. plus they could invest in shares or businesses and perhaps make far more money than relying on the housing market to change over 10 years
the other factor that is driving the SE and driving prices up beyond wages at the moment is foreign investment. i saw someone comment on that article who suggested a residential restriction, ie you can only sell it if someone is going to live in it. hmmmm. is that fair, to tell someone they have to sell their property to the lower bidder, because the higher bidder won't be living in it? but then, who wants ghost developments where the flats are unused? difficult.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Mon 29 Jul 2013, 14:23, Reply)

it is difficult.
you need people to own property to rent to others, and i don't like the idea of every rental property being owned by either the government or huge companies.
( Windy Pig I'm naturally quite suspicious about the moon., Mon 29 Jul 2013, 14:26, Reply)

i also find it a bit guilt-tripping to say that you're lucky if your grandparents had a house. i get the point, but -
my grandparents worked fucking hard for their house (my mum's - my dad's only ever rented as they knew they couldn't afford a mortgage). i don't think they'd call it lucky, and they wanted their grandchildren to benefit from their hard work, as would anyone with relatives, i think. it's a damn sight luckier if you're born looking like naomi campbell or playing football like wayne rooney and make millions out of your grandparents' genes. some things in life ARE about luck!
( rachelswipe with a fork, Mon 29 Jul 2013, 14:34, Reply)

Oh fuck off, your grandparents didn't "work really hard for their house"
affording a house even thirty years ago was a fuck site easier than it is right now, and buying one fifty or sixty years back was easier still.

What don't you get about teh fact that the price of a house has outstripped earnings to a ridiculous degree, simply because people view them, or at least were encouraged to view them, as an investment by a government who created an artificial wealth bubble the effects of which will ripple on for decades to come.
(Bazongaloid, Mon 29 Jul 2013, 14:37, Reply)

hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. your view is partly right, but it's too simplistic to say there is only one reason and one view
for example, prices may have gone up, but if my grandparents hadn't hauled arse out of bed every day from 21-65, they wouldn't have had a house. my other grandparents had seriously hard, physically demanding jobs, and one worked til he dropped dead at 54, and the other until she was 70. i think that counts as hard work.

and there are other factors too. what about overseas investors, for example?
( rachelswipe with a fork, Mon 29 Jul 2013, 15:04, Reply)

Oh my god, your grandparents worked between the ages of 21-65?
That's fucking unbelievable! They must be totally unique amongst people!

And you've also not helped your argument by saying that your other grandparents, who couldn't afford a house, were the ones with physically demanding jobs. This implies that the ones that could afford a house weren't actually working as "hard" as they could otherwise done.

I get up every day and go to work. Until we had the baby, so did my wife. We both put in long hours, and we're both incredibly lucky, we're both university educated (the time at which was paid for by our parents) and have jobs that pay way, way above the national average. And even then, we still needed help from my parents to get a mortgage on a small house on the edge of London.

The reason being that there aren't anything like enough houses in the country, and those that do exist have been treated as an investment which has artificially inflated their costs to unsustainable levels.
(Bazongaloid, Mon 29 Jul 2013, 15:11, Reply)

why should physically demanding jobs be harder than brain demanding jobs?
i do like to wind you up, but i genuinely don't understand that one. grandma a worked in a mill. grandma b was a teacher. both are fucking hard work. have you ever seen how much time teachers spend planning lessons, assemblies, school trips, marking work, exams, government regulations, staff meetings etc? why denigrate that, just because it's not physical labour?

so are you saying there are too many people in the country? that's very DM of you...
( rachelswipe with a fork, Mon 29 Jul 2013, 15:20, Reply)

I'm clearly saying there aren't enough houses.
So build more of them. We don't need less people unless they want to go somewhere else.

And you are having a laugh if you think that teachers 50 years ago spent as much time planning lessons and following government regulations as they do now. Teaching is a rewarding job, but it's harder now than it has ever been in the past.
(Bazongaloid, Mon 29 Jul 2013, 15:29, Reply)

i think you'll find that you MOST DEFINITELY said
go home brown people, you smell.

you should be ashamed of yourself.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Mon 29 Jul 2013, 15:34, Reply)

What a really stupid thing to do would be for the government to act as a gaurentor
to people who cannot afford to buy houses normally thereby allowing the prices of houses to artificially inflate once again.

I mean, you'd have to be a major league spastic cunt of the highest order to think that doing something like that would be a good idea.
(Bazongaloid, Mon 29 Jul 2013, 14:35, Reply)

Or someone with no further thought than the next election.

(localboy purveyor of pisspoor puns, Mon 29 Jul 2013, 14:51, Reply)

On closer inspection it appears that I could view the article for free if I fill in a form first.
I'll stick with the alternative DM link.
( tangledupinblue hairy badge with moving eyes, Mon 29 Jul 2013, 14:04, Reply)