Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

Think of negative gearing as a tax benefit to members of the public who assist the government to provide housing to those in need. Without private investment in residential property there would be a lot of homeless people as there just ain't enough public housing to go around.

I get sick of the mentality held by some that those who use negative gearing strategies are wealthy investors investing in property with the primary objective to obtain a tax benefit. There are many property investors out there using NG who are not overly wealthy but are Mr and Mrs average trying to provide for their retirement and not be a burden on the government.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

With the economy the way it is..
Nearly everything is slowing down..
Not just real estate...
Back when NG was abolished. Many investors got out of rentals which caused a housing shortage..
One thing you have to keep in mind.. The average family investing in rentals is trying to set themselves up as self funded retires..
If they didn't ?? Chances are they would be drawing a pension..

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

OK, bit of a long post.

At its simplest, real estate as investment is the problem and negative gearing encourages investment in real estate.

What happens is this.

People who already own or are paying for their 1st house realise that they can use the capital in that house and negative gearing to get a loan to purchase another as a viable investment. Then they realise they can get another loan and purchase another house after that. And so on it goes until you have a property portfolio.

Meanwhile, other homeowners are realising that they can do the same thing. So what you end up with is a whole heap of investors buying property. These investors can get larger loans than people who don't already have the benefit of being able to leverage the capital of their 1st house (talking about first home buyers).

So you have a bunch of investors competing with each other with money they got from the bank. House prices skyrocket as a result of this competition (artificial inflation).

These investment houses are then rented out... but in order to be financially viable, rent has to cover most of the interest generated by the large mortgage. Rent then skyrockets to accomodate for that, so you end up with a large number of rental properties available, but with artificially inflated rents.

The argument is that negative gearing makes the investment more viable so less has to be charged in rent to recoup the cash loss. But negative gearing encouraged the investment in the first place, so it's a pointless argument with very little merit.

End result is a housing bubble - very expensive house prices and very expensive rents. Government tries to address this with first homeowner grants... but this just further inflates the bubble.

Banks and real estate agents like housing bubbles because they get insanely rich off them.

Private rentals are important to take the strain off public housing... but if house prices were affordable, there wouldn't be such reliance on public housing or rentals because 1st homeowners would be able to break into the market. You wouldn't somehow end up with a mass of homeless people.

I'm not in any way demonising property developers or people (mum & dad investors) using the current system to better their position. It's just that the current system of negative gearing is bad policy.

However, removing it now would cause significant financial issues for current investors as it would devalue property and these people would have loans that exceed their property value. The best time to remove negative gearing (and it should be removed) is when the housing bubble gets so artificially inflated that it bursts. Unfortunately, investors will lose money when that happens.

The sharemarket remains the best option to invest if one wants to set themselves up for retirement. It is more flexible than real estate, allows for greater long term returns and doesn't cause the same major societal/class issues that investment in real estate does.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

You can negative gear share investments....

You need to acquaint yourself with the concepts of supply and demand. A glut of rental properties puts downward pressure on rents. Owners cant just pass on their costs.

The single biggest issue affecting property prices is credit availability. The most recent housing bubbles worldwide were caused by lax credit standards, and we know how that ended.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

Yes you can. But investment in shares doesn't have the same impact on the cost of housing that investment in property does.

It is not just simply a supply and demand issue. Supply and demand is location specific and is a problem in some areas (and dealt with by local government). Negative gearing applies nationally. You can only negative gear if you run at a cash loss, but in order to make the cash loss bearable, rent has to cover most of the interest generated by the loan, otherwise the investment fails. The supply of rental properties is not pushing down rents because the investment in property is pushing up property prices and negative gearing encourages that investment. Owners/investors can simply just pass on their costs because everyone is in the same boat... thanks to the bubble.

I agree that is a problem (a big one actually) and I might just point out that credit is more readily available to investors because they can use their current property as collateral (equity home loans).

There's a number of issues that affect the market and you can see that very clearly in the cost of property in towns experiencing mining booms.

Abolishment of negative gearing in property is not a silver bullet to solve all the issues, but it is certainly a big part of the issue.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

not quite. you can negative gear cashflow positive properties if the depreciation deductions are large enough to offset the the positive income.

i would argue a better way to approach this would be to treat rental properties similarly to non-rental properties. IOW, only allow deductions of a capital nature at the time of sale rather than year to year. this would have a significant impact on the tax saving which is what a lot of investors chase with negatively geared properties.

i dont agree with scrapping negative gearing on properties unless you do it for ALL investments. favouring one investment almost always results in a bubble in that asset class. remember the run on the sharemarket immediately prior the GFC when the government made superannuation changes favouring big deposits tax free? the super funds flooded the sharemarkets with billions in cash, driving up share prices.

negative gearing is only beneficial if price growth is likely. few investors believe there will be significant gains in house values.. you dont negative gear unless price growth ahead of the interest cost is likely over the long term. noone believes it is.

the bubble was years ago now. prices have been all but stagnant in most areas (other than a few always in demand trendy locations). if owners can pass on costs, its because people are willing to pay them. fewer people are sharing than ever, people are renting bigger houses than they need, people are putting immediate lifestyle ahead of future savings.

History says otherwise. Last time a government played with removing negative gearing, rents soared.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

To push up the amount of housing you need to either move the supply curve or the demand curve.

I think there is general consensus that supply side economic policy (such as Negative gearing) is more effective than demand side (such as first home owners grant)

The First Home owners grant was almost immediately reflected in house prices = completely ineffective policy

I think the most important thing for policy makers is just a steady steady approach. Nothing dramatic like abolishing tax incentives on housing investment (a revision maybe though)

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

I'm just not sure that would have an overall effect of making house prices more affordable, although it may.

That's a fair point. Although I would suggest that the negative gearing in this country is set up to favor investment in property by middle class Australians, and that resulted in the housing bubble.

True that prices have been stagnant, but they haven't plumeted dramatically. My concern is that once things pick up in the global economy and confidence is restored domestically, then things will pick up again and the bubble will re-inflate beyond what is was a few years back. Some think it's over for good, but I'm not so sure about that.

Not necessarily. In many cases I would argue that people have no choice but to pay these increased costs, because there is little alternative.

That is also a fair point, but household savings have always been low in this country. Apparently in the wake of the GFC people are saving more.

An analysis of the statistics shows that rent only rose in Sydney and Perth when Hawke/Keating abolished negative gearing. If the abolishment of negative gearing caused rent to soar, that trend would have been echoed throughout the entire country, not just 2 capital cities. The reason they had to reinstate it was because in the lead up to the 87 election, the REIA stepped up their campaign against the abolishment of negative gearing and it was causing too much 'politcial' damage. History shows that rents didn't soar when negative gearing was abolished.

I'm not the only person who believes negative gearing has contributed to unaffordable housing. It's a sentiment that has been expressed by the RBA at different times as well as other economists.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

One part often not bought up..
Is everyone wants to live near CBD...
Especially first home buyers..

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

I don't, I wouldnt live near the CBD if you paid me :)

Which is why we're looking at places 20klm out but with easy access to a railway line.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

in some major cities, people would consider 20km close to the CBD lol.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

The man who lived his life while he could before death took him

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

The brother who bought the $13mil winning lotto ticket

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

House prices will always go up. Maybe not to the extent we have seen over the past decade but 5% pa growth (1 or 2% after CPI) adds up after 10-15 years.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

Plus your FAR better off controlling your own money than investing in shares etc.. How often do they go broke and find they have $10m mansion somewhere!!!We lost enough in Hanover finance thank you...

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

not sure there will be many that can afford them at that rate.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

Well, they'll just have to work hard and give up some luxuries to get into the market, nothing different there from 30-40 years ago, owning your own house has never been 'cheap'. I do not believe 5 % growth per annum is beyond anyone's reach.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

unfortunatly its beyond alot of peoples reach and if you take away someones ability to own there own home or have anything to aspire to the generation will decend into no hopers who are already on the rise in this country the greatest trick the rich ever pulled was tricking people into think they could be just like them with enough hard work while deliberately pushing them back down the ladder

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

What a load of crap.
Back then the avergae house was 4.3 times the average wage, now its 9.6 times the average wage.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

You are right. Owning your own home has never been cheap.

It has however been cheaper, say at 3x the average income as late as the mid 90s. This is in contrast to the 6-7x required now. 5% annual growth is just going to push ownership further out of peoples reaches.

Suggesting that all that is required is harder work is a cop-out.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

That is true if you want to live in Carlton/Richmond etc. Plenty of affordable houses in Melbourne at least, problem is people on average wage do not want to live in average areas so they whinge and complain that Toorak is too expensive for them.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

No, people on average wages complain that the CUB's have overpriced the average areas by only wanting the biggest and fanciest things possible without considering their actual location.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

CUB's?

Edit: For those who claim housing is not affordable...some of those suburbs are above average and some are less than 15 kms to the CBD...

http://www.realestate.com.au/propert...hine-110466925
http://www.realestate.com.au/propert...hine-110522037
http://www.realestate.com.au/propert...park-110794191
http://www.realestate.com.au/propert...ibee-110811695
http://www.realestate.com.au/propert...akes-110880483

That was after a 5 minute search...plenty of others...

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

CUB = Cashed Up Bogan

I'd go further to say it's overseas investors and non citizens who've been given increasingly free access to the residential property market (buying) which they should never be entitled to.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

I was reading an article online today about the housing market in Australia and it reminded me of this thread.


http://www.zerohedge.com/news/ultima...housing-bubble

The numbers on this chart look worse (maybe its just unfolding differently)than those from the US housing bubble .

Here is a chart of our housing prices In the greater Boston area of the US where i live . The chart goes back to 1987 and you can see 2 bubbles bursting in that time:doh

http://www.jparsons.net/housingbubble/boston.html

Judging by the charts on my first link your prices are going up faster than ours that would make me very nervous if I was contemplating buying at these prices .

You might have a few years to go yet but things are souring over in china it looks like lately with talk of a hard landing in their economy .

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

Anyone who has been to the US or Europe recently knows exactly what you refer to.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

As long as we have an under supply of housing it will never be over.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

I hope that was tongue in cheek, because the national census showed a swing of about 600k homes from a speculated ~230k under supply to an actual ~340k over supply.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

One of the biggest lies of the last decade!

Just look at who sold this lie, TV and print media, the HIA and the banks.
Now...who got real rich off the housing boom?

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

Learn from it.. The future is pretty much what the past has been..
Try and do something.. Esp something that appreciates ..

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

Are you saying your brother won $13mil in the lotto?


If so, get your brother to hook a brother (me) up!!

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

No, our house in Berwick more than doubled and it's the basically the same everywhere. Even bloody koo wee rup and the likes went up.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

Over the last ten years, yes houses doubled as every man and his dog got on the negative gear band wagon. But as Asia dominates the economy with cheap labour, we will see a change of fundimentals. House prices will NOT double in the next ten years. House prices are falling.
To anyone doubting this I'm happy to sell you my house for an over inflated price if your keen to prove me wrong and put your money up?

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

I was in the building trade all through the bubble here in the US and it was pretty obvious by 2004 that something was wrong . We kept working and making good money but we started to wonder why a man and his wife and their 2 cats needed 5 bedrooms 2 baths a 3 car garages. Mom and dad are out of the house working 50 hour weeks to pay the mortgage they don't have time to fill all those bedrooms with kids.

2 streets over from me are rows of massive cookie cutter houses with for sale signs out front. They are all ugly houses and they all look the same. Here in New England houses had a certain style that I remember growing up , these houses don't fit in. They are too large on the lots , the trees are all cut off so they jut up awkwardly out of nothing . They all have over complicated roof lines that will be costly to maintain 20 years out , bland neutral colors there is no charm or comfort to them.

They are all the same house every job was a flip or a rotate , in one development we might have 3 different plans with a few mods. Flip a garage to left or right , add a screen porch left or right , farmers porch or no farmers porch , entryway left or right :doh


The worst trend as a home buyer was the phased or 2 stage rollout. A parcel of land would be divided into 60 or 100 lots or whatever and they would build up every other or every third lot and people would be so excited . Big wooded areas between them and the neighbors far away it all seemed so cozy and secluded.
3 years down the road phase 2 kicks in and they clear cut the wooded lots and literally plop an exact twin of your house on either side of you. All those lovely shaded lots suddenly turn to desert. You could say the people should have seen it coming but first time buyers had no clue how that worked. If you wanted to get out at that point how could you sell when the layout of the place had no appeal compared to when you moved in? If the guy across the street decides to sell how do you distinguish your house from his besides price? If you price yours at 400 he just goes 390 then what do you go 380? Thats how the prices come back down.

You know what else is funny? You always have a property tax bill to pay based on the value and as prices climb you keep getting reappraised upwards but when prices fall your taxes never seem to go down. You pay taxes on 400,000 and you couldn't get 280,000 on the open market

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

Plenty of talk about the mining boom slowing down In Australia now.

Dunno what affect that will have to housing..

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

Eventually that person will own that 5 bedroom house in the nice part of town and it will be worth heaps.
Better then buying a tiny house in the **** part of town and drinking the rest of their money away.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

Must have been like trying to tell everybody that the world was round for the first time.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

[QUOTE=Yellow_Festiva]
I can't remember the exact statistic... 4-6 decades ago the average house cost 3.? times the average wage.

Now the average house costs 8-9 times the average wage.

QUOTE]
People whinging about these statistics cracks me up laughing. 4-6 decades, or even 2 decades, ago a bank wouldn't give you a loan for more than 3 or 4 times your annual income. That has now changed so they will give you a loan for 8 times (or even more) than your annual income. Its because we have easier access to money that house prices are up. Because more of us are in the market. Its the low interest rate that is the cause. Ultimately its your ability to repay the loan over your life (30years) Higher interest rates lessen your ability. If the banks started charging the interest they did in the 80s the multiple of annual income would go down by default. High interest rates = less players in the market, less players = more risk to banks so they take less risk by reducing the amount they will lend

If you want house prices to go down, you have to have less buyers, the only way to have that is by having high interest rates. What in this country pushes up interest rates better than anything? High unemployment!

Everyone wants a manison in the city or by the beach, my olds bought a fibro house in Mt Druitt, we moved up market to Campelltown in the early eighties (yes compared to Mt Druitt it was upmarket at the time). They now live in Cairns retired and are kickin back in thier eighties. When they hear people complain how hard it is to get into the market for young people they laugh. They worked thier ***** off and bought thier first house in thier forties.

It has never been easier. you may not get the suburb you want or the 4 x 2 with pool but its not so hard as most make out.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

[QUOTE=IDT]The lending standards of today would have caused the old bankers to fall off their chair in laughter. Old days , 20% deposit , this was needed for several reasons , 20% deposit of actual savings shows that the borrower can save and is disciplined in his living standards and not living behond his means. It shows he is of good character and a much safer candidate for the bank . It also gives the bank as well as the owner a buffer and shows that they wont run at the first sign of trouble . You would be less inclined to walk away or go bankrupt if you had actually put in 20% from your hard earned savings. Today or not long back you need no deposit at all , and as if this was not bad enough some would let get away without having the stamp duty or legals fees. I can still hear the old bankers laughing from their grave.

Question is how and why did we go from very safe and stable lending practices to very unsafe and unstable lending practices. In the old days you actually needed a real job that could actually be proved , you also needed to have been working there for a number of years , not like now whete you can work for a few weeks or months then get a loan , and in some cases have no job and get a low doc loan and state whatever you want as income, no questions asked, yes this was happening.

The other thing is when your loan is ten gimes your wage, people have no money left over to spend on or grow the economy , cause its all going in interest payments. This spare money could be used to invest in your future as wlll as grow the economy though actual spending of real money. To have all your eggs in one basket is not a clever way to position yourself .An economy is grown through hard work , savings and investing in growing buisinesses. I still cant understand how we lost the plot and decided that borrowing more money was the way to go when growth and savings and investing is actually hows things are done and work.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

[QUOTE=DANNO178]Times certainly have changed, even in my short time here, and I'm 33.

Some things have changed for the better, some for the worse.

I got my first place with the help of my parents in 99. Without them, I wouldn't have got my foot into the market.

Fast forward 2 years to 2002. Working 3 jobs, paying cash for Uni, and knocked down my 30 year loan to 5 years. Found a 1br unit in Sydney for 71k and thought I would go for it.

Didn't get approved for a 50k loan caus I 'wasn't working full time'... don't worry that I had just finished 5 years of Uni, paying my way through, drove a new car, worked 7 days and had the support of good parents.... It seems I was a gamble to lend on....

"Come back when you have been working 3 years full time as a teacher"....

Yup, no worries......

This peeved me off to no end. The amount of times I had full blown arguments with bank managers was a joke. But hey, thats was the way the system worked.

I did get that unit, only by totally refinancing my house and buying it with cash... Thats right, I also needed to pay .75% higher interest as I was more of a 'risk'.... So I couldn't borrow on it, but I could pay cash if I used the equity of my first place... and lets face it, most of that bloody equity was my extra repayments... amounted to squat.

I think bankers / mortgage people need to be exprienced in thir profession as well... some had NO BLOODY CLUE about finance....

"Excuse me mr Yellow Festiva... I see you have a bank balance of $17".

YF "Yeah.... thats because I'm getting paid tomorrow. I guess it's also because the $2500 I transfered into my loan last week works better for me there then in my savings account"...

Some still were scratching their heads on that one. I needed to transfer out my re-draw to show 'savings' only to put it back in the following day...

Credit cards are the best. The same bank was happy to always increase my limit, after all, I was an outstanding customer! Come loan time, that would bite me in the but.

"No worries Mr Yellow Festiva. What we can do is reduce your credit limit to 2k, apply for the loan, then jack it right back up to 45k".. same bank..

Lost count of the times I had to do that. Didn't matter that I had not paid a cent of interest in the whole time I had my card...

Ohhh the FULL TIME JOB line........ the bloody crock line of the year!

Tell me this my friends. What job is 100% secure??? NONE!

In life 2 things are CERTAIN. Death and Taxes. What difference does it make if I work 'Full time', or if I work 3 temp jobs @ 60hrs a week??? If the money comes in you pay your loan....

Who has ever got a call from the bank? "Excuse me Mr. XYZ, we are just confirming that you are maintaining your FULL TIME job so that we know you are able to maintain your repayments"

So why be so @nal about working FULL TIME on application. It means SQUAT. Work is not what it was 20-30 years ago. You don't stay in the same industry for decades then retire. I wonder what the average work stint is these days? 2-3 years?? 5 MAX????

So how does that work on a 30 year loan??? Oh diddums...

Banks must keep who your employer is on the application right?? With all these large 'established' companies going bust, did they then scan all loans, cross reference people who worked for those companies then call them to cancel their loans??? Of course not. Anyone can quit their full time job at any time, and the banks would never know.

You know what's funny now.... I went to the bank to get approval to buy a house. I wanted to borrow no more than 750k. I got a call from my broker to say I'm approved for 1.2 Million.....

I aslo submitted the paperwork on the brokers dining room table at his house at 7pm on a Sunday... First time I went to the bank to beg for 50k I wore my Sundays best in the hope it made me 'look better'...

Go bloody figure...

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

Just an interesting anecdote, I have no interest (no pun intended!), in trying to predict the movement of house prices.

A mate that lived two doors down from me put his house on the market two years ago. It passed in at auction for $720 000. He wanted more so decided to hang on to it and rent it out.

Yesterday the house across the road went to auction; it’s a similar house on a block 50 meters bigger, deceased estate. The house across the road sold for $535 000.

Some of my neighbours were shocked and believed they personally had just lost a lot of money.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

And that is the stupidity of it all.

If I paid $500k for my house and it is now worth $2.50 the I have lost nothing unless I sell it and then of course I can buy another one for $2.50.

If I sold it for $1,000,000,000,000,000,000 the situation is the same.

The biggest whingers in these threads have almost always been renters who cannot afford to buy a house and so therefore are deriding those who have.

Bottom line:
If you are paying $500 a week rent waiting for the market to drop all of that money is gone and you have nothing.
If you pay $500 a week off a mortgage and the value drops you still have the house.

If the economy completely collapses (as the doomers keep rabbiting about) then money will be worth nothing so it does not matter how much you have AND there will be no rental properties as they will all be sold or repossessed so the clever renters will be the ones in the tents.......

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

Unfortunatly this is what happens when you replace safe and stable lending practices with unsafe and unstable lending practices. Rememer these safe and stable lending practices from the old days were put there for the very reason of KEEPING things safe and stable.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

If you were paying 500 per week in rent then you can only lose 500 perweek. If shown in the example earlier where the value had dropped from the 700s to the 500s then you would lose more. If the property drops 50 k a year then you are down 1500 per week. And from the example earlier it was closer to a loss of 100k per year so with your repayment of 500 of week you would be out of pocket by closer to 2500 per week.

As for your bottom line , You mention renting and waiting would leave you with nothing and if you had bought you would still have something . I would be inclined to think that if one does rent and wait and if the market does collapse as you mention then they would have the opportunaty to have a mortgage od what what they would have if they purchased earlier , yes the earlier owner would have something and that would be double the mortgage for the same property .

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

No it isn't.

You are born, you work, you die.

If you spend $500 per week regardless of on what that money is gone.

In the case of renting after spending $500/wk for 20 years you have $ZERO

In the case of buying after spending $500/kw for 20 years you have a house that may have cost $300k and is now worth $2.50 which means you have $2.50 more than the renter.

If you own the house outright and sell it you have a bucket of money and nowhere to live. You could then rent and over a period of time you would use up your money and HAVE NOWHERE TO LIVE.

If you are paying off the house you can't sell it without finalising the loan so unless you sell it at a loss, which would be stupid as you then have nowhere to live unless you rent or buy another house, you are getting nowhere.

I really shouldn't complain though. People who think like you are giving me money every week to pay the mortgages on my rentals which, regardless of how much less they may be worth in the future, they are costing me nothing.....

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

People who think like you are going to make people like me so rich its not funny:notworthy

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

What you mean you are not already so rich it is not funny?

Now just keep paying your rent......

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

Rich , well I guess that depends on who you are and how you look at things. I have sold my house for close to 1 mil last year , debt free. I did have it all in the bank getting interest of 6% . Rates have now dropped and are dropping. So I have diversified my money. In july I purchased 60 oz gold at 1565, it was 1565 at the time but I paid 1580 per ounce from the perth mint with theirvadd on cost. I also purchased just over 8000 ounces silver n august at just under 30 dollars an ounce. Over the last two weeks I have purchased just on 150 k in gold stocks and the rest is in the bank. So you are quite welcome to follow what I have done and see how I go . I'll then let you decide weather I am rich or not.:notworthy

And don't worry , I will keep paying my rent in the meantime:yummy:

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

Sometimes I wonder if its even worth having a nice house and property, or even renting. you end up a slave to the bank and your employer.

When you've got big responsibility to a bank you cant just wake up one morning and decide to do something else for work, take a pay cut and start out new.

Then when you have your mortgage paid off, you're "too old" to get another job, no one wants to hire people in their 40s/50s it seems even though you have a good 15 years left in you maybe even more.

Part of me says living in a caravan in a park wouldn't be too bad, you own your caravan, your car, pay your money for a powered site and stack shelves 2 days a week and spend the next 5 doing what ever you want.

Sure you might not have the house with 50 bedrooms, the obligatory 5 60" TVs, 4 car garage but I bet you'd still be happy. Plus you can move around easier than if you wanted to sell your house/property and move.

Re: Compound growth in house prices over ?
 

The stark reality Damo is that by holding a modern overlevereged mortgage of today you are ineffect just renting your house from the bank as they own it , not you. But you end up paying more than the average renter for the privalage of rentning from the bank. This is a situation that should never have been allowed to happen , just another way the banks worked out how to suck more money out of everybody to their benefit but at the cost of just about evrything else. Mainly the economy and your living standards will now be sacrificed as a result of the banks and their greed. In effect they have now pulled the plug on themselves , and this is exactly what happens to greedy people. Oh well as they say , all good things come to an end eventually, unfortunately the banks greed and lack lending practices will now be at many peoples expense. Don't worry Damo , with things going the way they are , I might find some spare change I can sling you for a house deposit. You think I'm kidding , no I'm not :notworthy