Investments

[Lloyd90]

3 minutes ago, RockySpears said:

  I'm not upset, just saying that maybe the reason that prices are so high is the Banks givng out mortgages too easily.  What dramatic change has there been to peoples outgoings to justify the new multipliers?  Seems to me youngsters have even more bills (mobiles, Internet etc etc, new cars being de rigeur these days) than we did, so I might even venture that multiples should be lower, not higher.

 

 

Maybe not if the Banks had been as sensible as their previous incarnations.

 

RS

 

Supply and demand surely plays a part? 

The population grows and grows and need to be housed. 

[stumfelter]

On 02/07/2019 at 16:25, Lloyd90 said:

 

Bang on Vince, but also I think affordability will start to come into it more and more over the foreseeable future. 

Peoples wages have remained relatively stable over years, yet house prices continued to shoot up. People are getting less and less for their money these days. 

 

It gets to a point that two young professionals earning £60k between them, can’t afford to put down £30,000 in cash as a deposit and have a £300k mortgage. 

 

 

Whereabouts in the country do these two young professionals live?

[Agriv8]

Your own bricks and mortar and enjoy what you can while you can. I know at least three people who lived like misers scrimping and saving investing here and there and did not make 65.

All investments are risk vers reward so spread your money across various risks.

all investments go up and down but if you look at the graphs of 1week 1month 1 year 5 years 10 years the % gains or losses can be very different.

[Lloyd90]

56 minutes ago, stumfelter said:

Whereabouts in the country do these two young professionals live?

 

They’re  all moving to cheap areas. 

 

Half the professionals I know in Bristol with decent jobs either rent or have bought in Wales and have to commute. 

 

Couple of friends of ours have sold up in Bristol, all they could afford here was a small 2 bed semi with partial ownership. 

Sold up and moved up North where they were able to buy a 4 bed semi in a nice area. 

 

There are a growing number of complains from people who have lived here for generations and are living in mobile homes around the city in make shift campsites because they can’t get anywhere near the funds needed to buy a place. 

[oowee]

Blame green belt policy, lack of government building and our nimby selfishness for house prices. 

Soon we will have lifetime and then intergenerational mortgages. 

[Pistol p]

Sticking with gold seems good, it’s easy to manage.

[eddoakley]

1 hour ago, oowee said:

Blame green belt policy, lack of government building and our nimby selfishness for house prices. 

Soon we will have lifetime and then intergenerational mortgages. 

I don't think those mortgage options are too far off.  5-10 years and I think the availability will be commonplace but I don't think the uptake will be so quick.

Who would want to put a lump sum down and still pay a lifetime mortgage when they can keep (or more likely spend) that lump sum and just pay rent.

I have several friends who think I'm crazy for firstly owning my own home and secondly for being a landlord.

They think they are better off renting and never intend to buy. Whether that's just how they choose to justify that fact that they are so bad with their money that they can't possibly buy I don't know.

I've only ever invested in property. Some good and some not so good investments but I'm pretty confident that they will all pay off eventually.

I've never sold much, just buy when I can and rent it out, repayment instead of the popular interest only options. I could draw a wage from rental income but I figure that while I can make money I will and when I can't then I can fall back on the property, whether that be to take the rental income or to sell and use the cash. If I took proffit out now and went for interest only then there wouldn't be the same benefit later.

I know people who have done well with crypto. Others who have gold etc but that seems to me to be somewhere to put your money for small, safe long term gain rather than big gain? Most people I know who have gold are older and bought in a ling time ago and invested (saved) very slowly.

I'm too old and uninformed to do anything other than property.

 

Edd

[NoBodyImportant]

I was living in a huge house with a huge mortgage.  I drove a 45k dollar car. I was in debt up to my neck.  I paid that mortgage for 8 years.  I sold that huge house and moved into a camper. Sold anything I had to make payments on.  After one year we put a huge down payment on a small place in the country.  Paid the mortgage off in two years.  That camper saved my wife and I a lifetime of debt. Now everything I own is bought with cash.  Everyone thought we were poor living in that camper but it was the best investment I ever made. 

Edited July 7, 2019 by NoBodyImportant

[eddoakley]

That's the way I would like to do things. 

Apart from mortgages (that pay for themselves) I own everything I have.

I don't like bills. My friends have huge amounts of debt and worry each month about paying for their stuff. It's nice stuff but I couldn't stand living like that. I just couldn't justify those bills for "nice stuff" thanks.

I'll make do with the things I have, which are nice enough and upgrade as and when I can or have to.

 

Edd

[Mungler]

I have lots of different clients all doing different things and so I get to look over a few fences.

A retired surveyor told me that from the 90’s he read the RICS stats about housing demand vs housing supply and since then he’s just bought property whenever he could. He’s a very unassuming double digit millionaire now.

The housing bandwagon has come and gone because everyone and their dog is now looking to do a cheap development.

That being said, inside the M25 demand is out stripping supply and with each year another generation wants to buy their own home. Short of Spanish flu, a world war or Corbyn re-introducing something like the Rent Acts, starter home property (catching people on the way up the ladder as well as coming back down) still makes sense and it’s what I know and understand. People will always need somewhere to live, and with net immigration still way into the positive and people living longer, you just can’t argue with supply and demand.

My best chance ‘‘investment’ was a Gold Submariner Watch I bought in Italy (when there was still an exchange rate between the euro and the pound) and I paid £8k. That was 3 years ago and I wore the watch every day like any old watch and I’ve just sold it for £15k because someone made me an offer I couldn’t refuse and I wasn’t prepared to leave that kind of money in a watch on my wrist. That’s nearly a 100% return in 3 years for something I liked and enjoyed everyday and that’s the blue print now for me.

I was ‘sensible’ and booked into a pension as soon as I started working and that has woefully under-performed. 

Lastly, I know someone who had a £1m pension pot and he said he wouldn’t bother doing it that way again - he needed £350k in a hurry for something serious and for him to get that out of his pension pot in one go he had to pull £600k out and pay £250k in tax.

[39TDS]

On 03/07/2019 at 11:15, rimfire4969 said:

no inheritance tax on woodland

Not much value either.

A quick way to devalue land is to plant trees on it. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do it but don't expect a return and don't expect to ever be able to turn it back into farmland because you can't.

[buze]

Crypo: don't touch it. Only people who ever have made money were short term investors, or people spending their day on it, and who have way more pocket money that we'll ever earn. I was *born* in computers, I forgot more about 'crypto' (the science) than most people will ever know about, and I stay clear of that dross.

Pensions: Yeah, 'pension raid', so it's also a bad idea. not just the ACTIVE raid, the passive one by raising the age of retirement so you can't touch your pension until basically, you're dead. There is a reason the pension funds are run by very rich people, they are using your money NOW to buy their next range rover.

Land: Liking it. No taxes (yet), very little jitter, very little gain, but at least you can on it and shoot stuff! 😉

 

[rimfire4969]

8 hours ago, 39TDS said:

Not much value either.

A quick way to devalue land is to plant trees on it. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do it but don't expect a return and don't expect to ever be able to turn it back into farmland because you can't.

Small plots of woodland sell for more than I paid for the field I am doing. They are normally marketed as a getaway or nature area. A place for friends and family to hangout and unwind. With a nice small barn (already there) for storage, a bit of decking over the pond and a few nice paths through it and a couple of benches in the right place it’s more than just a woodland. A similar area last year went for close to 50k not far from me well over any woodland or grass field price.