I've seen some confused right-wingers on here in my time, but Injera takes the biscuit!

Dr C - or it's about reacting to the current shambles of excessive rents, caused by a housing bubble that was never addrressed.

The private rental sector needs competition if our kids and grandkids are ever going to have a prayer.

Some nationalisation works. Roads for example....

We haven't got excessive rents outside of London.

You can't fix London because there are too many people there chasing too few houses.

We're in a low wage economy and people can't afford to buy new properties where they want to live. So they're not getting build.

Everybody will have to get used to it.

I's one of the drawbacks of importing cheap labour for fifteen years which they don't tell us about.

That's my fear Dr C...

Spiralling immigration has led to excessive demand for land and therefore high prices.

Excessive supply of labour from abroad leads to lower wages. It's basic economics.

Reduce supply of labour for starters, Make employers fight for staff. Wages go up.

Reduce demand for land in built up areas. National town planning to focus on new towns/cities in underpopulated parts of the UK. A national strategy.

I live in Sussex which is basically a suburb of London....We're obsessed with the Capital...

Thatcher's right to buy was appropriate at the time, but events have overtaken it.

We had a population of 50-55 million with plenty of houses to go around.
It was all nicely balanced.

She didn't know that we would be expanding the population at the rate that we did.
Now we've got too many people, and no hope of changing things without wrecking the economy.

Houses couyld be made easier to buy though - there are enough houses right ? it's just that too many are second homes,owned by landlords or under occupied .



why not have interest only  ? and also segment the payments so you pay much more later on if at all ,so ypure like owing interest on the interest - it's not necessary to own your house outright at any time of your life.

I see a time  when most houses will be owned by big companies  and not private landlords - there will be healthy competition  -

,so ypure like owing interest on the interest

In about 1987/8 we had deferred interest mortgages where borrowers paid a low rate in the first few years after which the interest which han't been paid was added onto the capital borrowed and the rate went up to the true rate. This may have been ok except just when a lot of borrowers came off the low rate interest rates went up to 15% very quickly so they were now asked to pay 15% on the original capital borrowed plus the interest owing from early years.  The big hike in monthly payments resulted in a lot of reposessions.

Bix: 'The big hike in monthly payments resulted in a lot of reposessions.'

Coach:  I understand , 15% is a huge amount to pay back , but  repossesion should be a real last resort  , the aim should be just be to furnish the interest ,as long as the debt never overtakes the value of the house  -  in 1987 that may have even been the case .

I seem to recall that those deferred interest mortgages were quite high loan to value when property prices were very high, and a means of allowing people to buy when their income didn't allow them to borrow enough at normal rates. The theory was that wages would rise to allow the borrower to afford the extra payments. I think shortly afterwards property prices fell and many borrowers were now in a negative equity position so after reposession and the property sold by the lender, the borrower still was in debt to the lender. In most cases the borrower had taken out an insurance policy (mortgage indemnity)to pay off such debt but although the lender got their money back this way the insurance companies still pursued the borrower aggresively for the amount which the insurance company had paid out.