h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Er, yes you did

I'm thinking 100 grand spare change would be enough for that second hand bakers oven, no? If that's the case go for a house with an extra room downstairs that's suitable and Bob's your uncle, bish bash bosh - the 2legs bakery And get a place with a cellar/basement. Very handy for brewing beer

Looking for a new lodger, by the way?

I think I already had William in mind for the new place to move in

If I could find one with enough accomidation with it, I'd just buy a damn bakery! : they rarely have more than a squishned tiny one bed flat though, above them, well, I think... yeh.... my spare change from selling this place, now, would roughtly give me exactly in spare change, what I paid for the house, end of 1999 No justification whatsoever for that kind of rampent inflation in houseprices, its just against so many of my principles.... not leas this house was first bought, by the previous owner, from the council (Thatcher sell off), in the 80's, for I think a bit under 20 grand... I'll feel such a capitalist pig, as a consquence of the unjustified trippling in the house value, over the period I've had it

Buying a place always seemed to be just out of reach for me, although I'm not sure I would have even if I could have got a mortgage. When I was living in a bedsit in Plaistow (1982) some friends bought a flat not a few streets away for around £20,000 I think. Five years later that place would have been worth at least four times that, three times that another year or two later, and after that it was just upwards, ever upwards. The idea of buying a flat in London now for five figures is faintly laughable I would imagine, as it is here in Austin.

Just a few nights ago I was talking about this with a friend and explaining how people of my parents' generation were able to put £5 down on a house that was priced at £500 (semi-detached) or £600 (detached) and have the mortgage paid off well before they retired. Those same houses today would be worth half a million, and the idea of being able to buy one that easily is long gone.

five figures?! for a flat in London?! Depends whereabouts it is... but even in Cambridge, the ghastly new build flats, by the rail station (loverly views over the rail yard, and advetised as being one minutes walk to the mroning train into London), are over half a million, I think, for the one/two bed places; and you just know* they're gona be tiny inside

I've seen flats in London, centralish areas, for over one and a half million (older ones generally in good locations mind)..

I'm in an ex-council late 60's built, house, with no garden, which is sitting on top of teh shops underneath... Quite why somewher elike this should justify such a high price... mind, its larger than the half a million pound tiny Victorian mid-terraces just up the road but location as always seems key I guess.... A cardboard box round here could attract interest if it went on the market

When my Father had a brick garage built onto his house, in the late ish 80s, it was amusing, that at about £3K to build the garage; it was basically the same price he origionally paid (well took out a morgage for), when he bought the house, some time I think in the 60s

Yet, our goverment don't understand the problem Is* the houseprices, and their only solution is to not legistate rental pricing but instead give people who can't afford a loan in the first place, help to get themselves into an unrealistic level of debt in order to support the overpriced housing marekt....

There's something wrong, when interest rates are so* low; yet I could spend £50K (albeit in Lowestoft where prices are lower), and get something like a 10% to 20% yearly return, on renting out such a place money makes money... keep the rich rice and make the poor poorer... sad thing is, like you said; even in 97 when we thought* we'd got a labour gov, we only ended up with a differnt flavoured version of Conservatism... and the Labour party havne't done much to seperate themselves from the Conservatives as both partys seem to like making themselves as unelectible as possible with insane policys, and then just have a goo laugh, when one or the other I guess does* get elected < hmmmm... now... what the were we origionally talking about?

I'm torn between the idea of buying a house or renting a really nice flat.

On the one hand, if I had the money, I'd quite like to live in one of those 1920s/30s mansion blocks that you see around parts of London. The kind of place Rumpole lived in. The problem is that most of them are in parts of London where I wouldn't want to live and the neighbours would be the kind of people I wouldn't want to live next to - upper middle and lower upper class. Rich. Sloane Rangers.

On the other hand, A house would mean a garden, and I would so love to have a garden Somewhere to grow a few veg, have a small greenhouse for cacti, and sit out on a balmy summer evening drinking beer

I heard a story yesterday about a local man who bought a scratchcard and it won him a million dollars. That's really the only way I'm likely to achieve either of those possibilities above, and even that much won't get you far today, especially after you've converted it to pounds sterling. I remember seeing the first person to win £1,000,000 from a newspaper, on breakfast television. Michael Winner happened to be another guest that day. The host asked what advice he had for the lucky winner and Michael said "Spend half of it and invest half of it". That was around the time you could have bought a two or three-bedroom house in a decent area London for maybe £100,000, and five hundred grand would have earned you a comfortable income.

What were we originally talking about... oh yeah. People who don't have these concerns.

true... those 20's 30's flats in London, f which you speak are, from memory, way* over one million pounds thesedays, and leasehold as far as I recall...

Its why I'm tempted to leave Cambridge, for somewhere like Norwich, its not say as cheap as somewhere like Lowestoft, but, well, NOrwich is* a city... and I don't know if I could cope with not* being in a city anymore I could get somewhere with a garden... somewhere detached... I could have a BBQ, grow my own, keep chickens/ducks heck, I could build my own outdoors brick bread oven I'd love somewhere a bit on the older side, 30's or 20s would be nice; with a cellar maybe a three storey style one; the old servents quaters on teh top floor natch hmmm.... actually having a cellar would be so* hard a thing... what to do with it..., so many good options;
dungeon... kinda obvious relaly
A basement kitchen (always kinda liked that idea),
Or, of course, turning it into my music/studeo room Might be pushign it to get all of the 100K loose change, from the move, by the time I get a bit specific about size/age of the house, and locality, but it'd certainly give sufficient change lefover to leave some for the bank, and do any repairs, redecorate, refitting, etc, to the place from the get-go

It just seems so utterly bonkers, that thanks* to house price rises, I've got basically quarter a million pounds, which, of course, I haven't; as all prices of propertys have gone up, I'd still need somewher to live, so the money isn't relaly* real*

Still toying with the idea of looking about for commercial propertys with sufficent living accomidation; something like a bakery, a cafe, that kinda thing, and actually do the running it as a bakery/cafe, thing, along with having it to live in that I think I'd kinda like and if it made a bit of dosh too, all the good Or maybe something like a small B&
B... hmm... not sure really I'd still need to do some more doing this place up, stuff, before it could be sold really; the decorations are pretty old and grotty now

I've always quite fancied the idea of living above the shop, or living above *a* shop. There was a row of shops near where I grew up which had two-storey flats above them (which I guess makes them maisonettes), and because the shops on the ground floor went back further than the flats above there was a pretty spacious flat area at the back - the roof of the back half of the shop - which the people in the flats used for a sort of garden, with planters, chairs, tables and suchlike.

I had an uncle and aunt who owned a corner shop (it really was on a corner) and lived behind and above it, sort of like Arkwright in Open All Hours. In fact it was the same kind of shop as Arkwright's but without the hardware and newspapers. A food shop - bread, cakes, meat, tinned goods, dried goods, sweeties, that sort of thing. No fags and booze, or fruit and veg as far as I remember. It was always fun to visit there. I used to go through the change looking for old pennies. Pre-decimalisation pennies. I managed to dig out one or two with Queen Victoria's bonce on them

The thing I'd like most about living above the shop is the commute to work And nipping in there in the evening to grab something off the shelf for dinner. You know, I can still remember the wonderful smell of that shop

That's basically what my house, here in Cambridge is; a two storey masonette above the shop below; sadly not any large outdoors bit, though, as you described; just a tiny little bacony... ; on the ground floor, I've my own private door, and a decent enough sized hallway to put several bikes in it, if that was the sort of thing I watned to put there, plus a decent sized cupbaord under the stairs, down there... then up to the first floor, I've got the living room, kitchen, utility room, and my 'studeo' (a glorified largeish clokeroom really), and another landing (with a couple of never quite but always dieing houseplants on it), then up again, to the top floor, and I've the three bedrooms and tiny little bathroom

Oh, the overhang bit at the back; where basically the flat I'm in is less depe back than the shop below; that is my walk-in loft space... massive area, but sloping roof, but holds an aweful lot of junk unfortunately Its leasehold, but ages and ages on it (about or over 100 years still I think)

I'm above an afro carab hairdressers, and the nextdoor shop, to the other side of my front door is a Chinese (indian lext to that and then, what used* to be the guitar shop <grovel), past the afro carab hairdressers is my 'corner shop', though its not on the corner, fags, booze, very good fresh fruit and veg (he buys em in London every day), a lot of tined and packet stuff (including 5 KG bags of the basmati rice I like, and weird tins of strange beans, and jars of unpronounceible hot chilli sauce ) Just a pity the one pub, actually on this road, is, basically a flat-roofed council estate pub, and exactly as one would imagine such a pub to be, I.E., dredful and no beer worth drinking (actually it hasn't got a flat roof, but it oughta* have a flat roof)
Mind, the 'posh' road, jsut a few meters away has a couple of very* good real ale pubs, whcih makes up for it I guess

Its just a bit too much of a main road soemtimes... traffic, loud shouty students and chavs, and then all the drug dealers, alcos and homless who seem to like hanging about this area in particular (it is one* road,outside of the official 'town center', as defined by the Police; Police prioity is to keep the scum, alcos, drug dealers, out of th town center, so this is like as close as the scum can get to the town center, and be left alone to deal coke openly on the street in view of the police station round teh corner...)

I thought they did away with leasehold in the 90s... or perhaps it was that they gave house owners the right to buy the leasehold and become a freeholder? I know a few of my friends did that.

There are still a lot of leaseholds about, plus these new stupid part-ownership things, which means you buy half a house, rent the other half, and at some point in the future, due to occupants not realising how inflation works, you then have the ten zillion pounds, handily laying about, to buy the other half, or something...

Leasehold is a very sensible option, for places like where I live,; the council own the shops underneath (not sure if they're just rented out or what), so, the council needs as the owner of the shops, to ensure the shops can continue opperating; therefore the stuructural integrity of the flats upstairs, is kinda important to them... plus access to the fronts of the shops, and the rear, etc... I guess... This place was bought, from the Council some time in the 80's by the previous owner, who rented it, before of course, until Thatcher sold it to her
The leasehold thing works at about 8 or 9 quid a month; and that includes building insurance in the leasehold fee, plus theoretically they've got to repair and/or maintain the walls and roof of the building and suchlike (though strangely enough the windows are my responsibility) Mind, I' still like and prefer to have a freehold as my next place, which it would be, if its in Norwich, I think there might be a few leasehol places, flats, in the very town center, but asides that I doubt there are many leasehold propertys there...

A little follow-up to post 33 http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-287744/

It remains to be seen how effective this will be, and I'm sure Ms Masters will do just fine thank you.

Well that's surprising.

I guess when a tiny handful of informed members of the public shout about something this nothing happens, but when big corporations start complaining it becomes a problem, all of a sudden, when it wasn't before. It's often the case that when it costs the consumer more it's not an issue, but when it start cutting into the costs, and therefore profit, of powerful businesses something gets done, because we can't have corporations spending more, can we.

Senator Elizabeth Warren was coming down on them hard, especially Goldman Sachs.

Good. I'd like to think that there'll be some changes in the law and the regulations, but that might be optimistic.