There’s a big Arsenal feature in this month’s FourFourTwo if anyone is interested. Interview with Laca and Auba and 23 reasons why it’s still good to be a Gooner (some are reaching, but hey, they tried)
There’s also a page on “hipster” Bellerin in the style section 
It’s true. There was a rundown 3-bedroom house on my street, with no Drive, no garage, no nothing. It looked like a fucking trap house and that went for 400k.
The range was between 790-870 for the property, often buds start below the range, I made that first bid 813 though, he then came in at 825, followed by me at 835 etc, at some point I had to walk away. Was about 60 people at the Auction but my agressive early bid was have scared most off from bidding…
Cheers @JakeyBoy more places will come up, I currently have my 2 bedroom apartment but was looking for that upsize.
Not that you should take anything I say for too granted, given that I’m some fat kid who talks Arsenal via a community board - but the parent company to the subsidiary I work for is a huge asset management firm (Brookfield Asset Management, a good chance you may have heard of them).
I was at a corporate drop-in event last week where I got to talk to a few of them and they all claim a large number of the guys at the firm have been selling their properties this year in wake of another downturn in the next couple years. Might be one to sit back on and watch if anyone is looking to buy. GDP figures released earlier this week were not too encouraging either.
I am more of a ‘be on a rent’ guy.
It feels like a lot less hassle then committing yourself to one house for extended time period.
So is this a bad time to be buying a house then? I’m in the process of buying at the moment haha.
It’s speculation.
If you’re buying a house within what you can afford then it’s the right time to buy. That’s how I see it anyway. Unless it’s a buy to rent situation.
The flipside is that you are paying somebody else’s mortgage when you’re renting, rather than your own. When you have your own mortgage, those monthly payments are an investment and you should see that money again (hopefully plus more) unless the property loses value.
Well worth the extra hassle.
Honestly mate, I’d go with what Shammy said. Didn’t mean to scaremonger haha! It genuinely is all speculation!
Surely living in multiple places for the rest of your life is more hassle? I deliberately bought the house i intend to die in so I didn’t have to fuck about with agents etc. ever again. 
Maybe it’s just a cultural thing in the UK but a lot of people I know who “own” a house move relatively regularly anyway.
Yeah it’s a hugely cultural thing I think. A lot of my European colleagues don’t understand the British obsession with wanting to get on the property ladder.
That made sense when property prices weren’t twice or thrice the rate of renting.
The place, I currently live in, would have cost me 3 times in mortgages than what I pay in rent.
I could use that remaining amount and invest it if my intent is to invest.
Paying for your home loan is a massive drain on one’s income and hampers your quality of life till you reach a position where your outgoing is a manageable portion of your income.
Same culture here and people literally live on pennies because 70 percent of their income goes to pay for the property.
As I said to Jakey, property landscape has changed massively and income to loan payment ratio is not balanced
Hah yeah this is the difference. My mortgage has always been the same or less than the equivalent rent.
I’d much rather pay 1/3rd to rent it though.
Good chance our viewpoints will be different as a a lot of Ex-London folk (like me) are paying a monthly Mortgage that is cheaper than what they was paying in Rent, in fact a rent increase (1650/M 5 years ago for 2 Bedroom + Reception… outrageous) is that prompted us to get on the property market. Admittedly it does make moving out of a area you lived a long time way more appealing when you eventually end up with something.
It’s all relative. Rent is usually a high fixed fee. Mortgage can be dirt cheap depending on how much you fork up front for the property.
Ahh, very very different market out there, fair play to you then, I don’t think I’d currently be willing to shell out three times what my rent would be to buy!
I’ve moved out of London and am about an hour from the centre of London/work, which is about as long as it took me to get there when I actually lived in London. But my mortgage on a two bed flat is less than what most people I know are spending on rent in London for a single bedroom in a house/flat that is shared with other individuals. My mortgage is significantly less than what it would have cost me to rent something similar.
I can’t speak for everywhere in the UK as I’m by no means an expert in the property market, but here it isn’t the cost of a monthly mortgage that is prohibitive, it’s being able to pull together enough of a deposit due to the insane property prices. If you are lucky enough to be able to put down a deposit, if you have some money set aside for all of the legal and admin costs of buying a property, it definitely makes sense to buy rather than rent.
I for one can’t wait for the times when you don’t need to be close to offices and efficiently work from home.
That would solve over congestion and people can move to other cities. That would lower the property prices significantly
The ability to do so in England exists, its about whether its something employers choose to do in many cases. Although I choose to sacrifice them for a period when I have new starters in my team, I’m allowed to work from home two days a week, and that’s great considering how expensive it is to commute in England (particularly London and the South).
Despite how great it is that we have the technology to do this, I still think its better when you work in the office and have your team all in one place. I think it’s so much easier to build a cohesive team with strong bonds when you mostly rely on face to face interaction. But I work in a team that has yo work very closely and collaboratively with each other, so my perspective is slightly warped.
If I lived closely to my office, or it didn’t cost me a fucking bomb to commute, I’d generally prefer being in the office to working from home.
I am 50-50 on it and definitely on board with virtues of being in same room to manage work.
However The commute and accomodation occupies a huge portion of everyone’s thought process.
Remove that and you save 2-3 hours per day for everyone, which can increase productivity but yes massively hampers communication.
Definitely need more technological optimization in that regards.
There’s a 1 bed flat on my road in Fulham that’s dropped by £150k over the last year, and property prices are starting to drop all over London.
We’re getting more and more leaflets through the door from estate agents telling us now is the perfect time to buy because the market is about start doing really well which to me seems like them getting desperate.
I think with a No Deal Brexit we could house prices in London get hammered, even with a deal I think we’ll see a significant drop.
Also, there’s no doubt we’re heading into a recession in the next year or two and combine that with a potential no deal Brexit you could see some real hits to the property market.
