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Tv.........homes Under The Hammer

norfolk brummie

norfolk brummie

gone but not forgotten
A website on this Forum, is currently referring to the sad sight of homeless people in our big cities, with the focus, naturally, on Birmingham.

The TV media has a show on most days of the week called Homes Under The Hammer. The programme illustrates, quite clearly, the mental approach, the current trend, in house purchasing.

We bought our first home in 1964, and in the 52 years since that wonderful day, we have moved five times. The moves always had a reason. It could be because we had a bit more money to spend, job location, or to end our days in peace. With each move, yes, we made a few extra bob on the property, but, NOT ONCE.....I repeat....NOT ONCE did we ever buy a home to see how much profit we could make out of it. Like most folk, that was the good, normal, old fashioned way of home buying and selling..

We had a home to bring up our family, good times, bad times, but always lots of memories.

It appears to be that all of that is changing.

Now it seems to becoming the 'norm' of "How much can we buy it for?" ..."How much can we rent it for?" and "How much can we sell it for?".

House prices are rocketing, the city streets become the home to sleeping bags. Pretty sad really. TV, and greed, have a lot to answer for.

Eddie
 
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norfolk brummie said:
A website on this Forum, is currently referring to the sad sight of homeless people in our big cities, with the focus, naturally, on Birmingham.

The TV media has a show on most days of the week called Homes Under The Hammer. The programme illustrates, quite clearly, the mental approach, the current trend, in house purchasing.

We bought our first home in 1964, and in the 52 years since that wonderful day, we have moved five times. The moves always had a reason. It could be because we had a bit more money to spend, job location, or to end our days in peace. With each move, yes, we made a few extra bob on the property, but, NOT ONCE.....I repeat....NOT ONCE did we ever buy a home to see how much profit we could make out of it. Like most folk, that was the good, normal, old fashioned way of home buying and selling..

We had a home to bring up our family, good times, bad times, but always lots of memories.

It appears to be that all of that is changing.

Now it seems to becoming the 'norm' of "How much can we buy it for?" and "How much can we sell it for?".

House prices are rocketing, the city streets become the home to sleeping bags. Pretty sad really. TV, and greed, have a lot to answer for.

Eddie
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Common sense as usual from Eddie. Here in my Durham village 3 bed house, it`s probably valued at about £80,000. Move my house to London & it would be worth enough for me to retire to somewhere nice & warm (for my arthritis). But there`s no way i would move to London, far far far too many people & cars. So i`ll just have to hope it`s not a too wet & cold winter here in Durham.
 
Durham is nice - I lived up there for a year just after I retired, but it can also be very cold and I missed the South Coast. Wherever you live there can be disadvantages as well as advantages. I can't see me ever moving again as I approach 80 - far too much stress & hard work - what's more, I have no wish to. But there are disadvantages of living on a Greek island - many things have to be bought on the internet and shipped in and it costs a fortune to ship the car to the mainland or fly and hire a car for several weeks. Nevertheless I like it here and the people are friendly.

Maurice
 
I agree with Norfolk Brummie here. My wife, Gawd bless 'er, watches programmes such as Homes Under The Hammer and Escape To The Country. Frankly, I fail to see what entertainment value there is in progs such as these. It seems to me that they are purely to allow well-off people the opportunity to demonstrate to the rest of us poor b*****s just how well off they are. I never bought a house on the basis that I might one day make some profit out it. I bought my houses to live in, pure and simple.
What these awful progs do highlight is the increasing inability of people setting out in life to buy a home - or even to rent one, I understand. I got married in 1971 and bought a house in Brum for £3900, monthly mortgage payments about £33 a month. My dad said I'd never be able to keep up with these payments - to him, buying a house was for toffs, not the workers. Well, I did keep up with the payments, and we now own a home worth many times that amount, but frankly I couldn't care less. It's where we live, not where we look to make money. One day I might even cut the grass......

In a similar vein, the other day I was stuck behind a bus and the ad on the rear cover was to the effect 'come and drive a bus and earn £375 a week + opportunities for overtime'. Take out tax and NI payments from this figure, and there ain't much left. I do really sometimes think that we of the so-called 'baby boomer' generation are the lucky ones.......I retired in 2011 with a reasonable pension, but it seems that people aged say from 30 - 50 have absolutely no chance of doing that. Sad and bad.

G
 
I totally agree with Eddies post. This renting business should be looked at, I know someone who owns 5 homes including his own, and he is a delivery driver. Come on, hows that work? I own my house, but I will never make any money from it, I have already willed it to my son. He is of the generation that's finding it hard. For every house that a landlord owns, is a house that a young family can't call their own.
 
The problem here in Cornwall is that even though the houses are priced from app £150000 many of the jobs are minimum wage, the carer business is one of the few that is booming due to the amount of elderly retirees but is very poorly paid, which prevents youngsters from obtaining a mortgage. So without rental properties these youngsters would have nowhere to live if they wanted to form any sort of relationship.
 
I read an article recently that suggested we all leave our 'estate' to our grandchildren because that is the only way they will ever own their own home.
 
I lived in married quarters in the Army, & when i came out we moved in with my Wife`s parents & we had our name down for a council house. Luckily, pregnant girls & ex military were given priority, & after a few years we bought our council house for the grand sum of £9,000 ( I got a 33% discount for being ex military ) Back in the day, it was custom to move in with parents till you saved up enough for a deposit for a mortgage. I suppose these days it`s much harder.
 
Smudger, like you, after leaving the RAF after 8 years service in 1956 we moved in with my Wife's parents (a back to back in Aston) in a few years we had save enough for our deposit and a bit over for some basic furniture for a 3 bedroomed semi with garage in Erdington, it was paradise after sharing a back to back. The only property the council offered us was a 2 bedroomed flat in Telford new town !! Ex military were not given priority when I left in '56, it all depended how many children you had (we just had 1 baby daughter - no chance). Eric
 
Alberta, with 17 grandchildren and 1 house, I cannot see that working somehow.

Alberta said:
I read an article recently that suggested we all leave our 'estate' to our grandchildren because that is the only way they will ever own their own home.
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