by judge roy bean » Tue Dec 19, 2006 12:47 pm
young people being priced out of the home market is nothing new locally, before the advent of ex council houses being sold on it would have been nearly impossible for a young couple to become first time buyers due to the lack of available houses for sale (they would more than likely buy a flat if anything) and of course the interest rates which i think play a bigger part in the housing market than ex cooncil houses.
i remember when i bought my first home (a flat) i wouldn't have been able to even consider buying a house and with interest rates of 15% any young couple would have been hard pressed to repay a mortgage. you must remember that when interest was at that level the average take home pay was about a fifth of present levels (certain greedy b*****d's excepted of course!!!) and i'm only talking about early eigthies which might seem like a thousand years ago to some but are fresh in the minds of others.
house prices locally are way below the national average, although my house has more than tripled in values in the 15yrs since i bought it, the same house would go for more than three times that amount elsewhere in the country, so although there may well be places where locals are being priced out of the market by weekend and holiday home buyers, i don't believe that campbeltown is one of these places, tho a hike in the interest rate would certainly take care of that.
my advice is buy now, prices will never go down and interest will only go up, i remember back in 1982 a house on low askomil going for £25,000 which we thought was a fortune, now that same house is worth close on £300,000, it wasn't the price that put us off, it was the interest rates, and what would you have paid a month? not much more than i do at present, attitudes change and now people wouldn't sell a house in one of the schemes for less than three times that amount (no offence to scheme dwellers, i live in a residential area)
oh and play nice now, i see young trapper saying he's never insulted anyone, it's obvious he learnt at the knee of a master, telling a mistruth while keeping a straight face is obviously inherited.
interest rates, you sons of bitches!!!