Why not just rebadge social care as part of Our NHS, so everyone will love it and want to give it 350m a week? This is a serious proposal, which would work.
The NHS has already got the £350m from the EU so where would you get a new £350m from?
Dunno. As we're still paying the EU as part of our exit deal we haven't done the bus slogan anyway - its a different £350m. Nor did people think "£350m" was either the magic number nor the cost of fixing the NHS - they just wanted better front line services.
So as waiting lists get absurdly wrong and we face a winter crisis where people drop dead of everything that Covid has allowed to become a crisis, we are unlikely to see any triumphalist "you've had yer money" posturing from the government.
In reality there is little point tipping endless monies into the NHS if so much is going to keep leaking out to pay for all the pointless layers of corporate management and marketised duplication. But as the whole point in the reforms is help their donor friends make money would the Tories do that?
@HYUFD you forcefully point out that Boris won't allow an Indy referendum because it was a promise. How does that differ from a promise not to increase NI?
As Covid necessitated extra funds for the NHS, it did not necessitate indyref2, in fact the reverse
Ah ok. So when you say never what you really mean is that if Boris can find a good reason to break that promise it is ok then.
That is not a position I disagree with, but it is not what you have been saying.
So if something happens that changes Boris's mind (as with the NI increase) then we may have an Indy ref. That is not what you have been saying is it?
He won't, he had made clear he will not allow an indyref2 while he is PM as he knows if he lost it he would have to resign and become the 21st century Lord North.
A 1% NI rise for the NHS with negligible electoral risk is entirely different
You are missing the point. You say never, but also agree if circumstances change for something else he will. They are contradictory positions. So try this:
SNP get 80% vote share, Indy polls show 80%. UK Govt ignores, and people take to the streets, people die in riots, car and buildings burn down, bombs go off, army sent in. Sounds familiar. The difference being in NI the nationalist were in a minority, if they are in a big majority that defence is no longer there.
I appreciate this is hypothetical and unlikely, but you can't say at the same time 'Never' and then allow a reason for a change because 'Unforeseen Circumstances'.
Legally there would be nothing to stop the UK government refusing an indyref2 even then.
However anyway that is entirely hyopthetical, most Scottish polls have No still narrowly ahead and most Scots not wanting indyref2 for 5 years at least
Please answer the question I asked, not one I didn't. Remember the pandemic was hypothetical before it happened, so answer the hypothetical question. Do you agree that there is no such thing as 'never' here. Very unlikely yes, but never?
For clarification I don't have strong views on this, but you are arguing the exact opposite on these issues.
I don't think the NI proposal will see the light of day.
PB is not representative of anything. But it's the first time ever I've seen right, centre, left and all shades between united in thinking that an NI increase is a Bad Idea. There may be little agreement between us on what the alternative should be, but the PB tribe seems pretty united in rejecting an NI increase.
The government should listen to us.
Speak for yourself, I find myself in rare agreement with BJO amongst others in backing a 1% NI rise over less palatable alternatives
Apols if I've missed it but what's your rationale for NI being a better option than IT?
@HYUFD you forcefully point out that Boris won't allow an Indy referendum because it was a promise. How does that differ from a promise not to increase NI?
As Covid necessitated extra funds for the NHS, it did not necessitate indyref2, in fact the reverse
Ah ok. So when you say never what you really mean is that if Boris can find a good reason to break that promise it is ok then.
That is not a position I disagree with, but it is not what you have been saying.
So if something happens that changes Boris's mind (as with the NI increase) then we may have an Indy ref. That is not what you have been saying is it?
He won't, he had made clear he will not allow an indyref2 while he is PM as he knows if he lost it he would have to resign and become the 21st century Lord North.
A 1% NI rise for the NHS with negligible electoral risk is entirely different
You are missing the point. You say never, but also agree if circumstances change for something else he will. They are contradictory positions. So try this:
SNP get 80% vote share, Indy polls show 80%. UK Govt ignores, and people take to the streets, people die in riots, car and buildings burn down, bombs go off, army sent in. Sounds familiar. The difference being in NI the nationalist were in a minority, if they are in a big majority that defence is no longer there.
I appreciate this is hypothetical and unlikely, but you can't say at the same time 'Never' and then allow a reason for a change because 'Unforeseen Circumstances'.
Legally there would be nothing to stop the UK government refusing an indyref2 even then.
However anyway that is entirely hyopthetical, most Scottish polls have No still narrowly ahead and most Scots not wanting indyref2 for 5 years at least
Please answer the question I asked, not one I didn't. Remember the pandemic was hypothetical before it happened, so answer the hypothetical question. Do you agree that there is no such thing as 'never' here. Very unlikely yes, but never?
For clarification I don't have strong views on this, but you are arguing the exact opposite on these issues.
Yes, never.
If necessary this government would follow the Madrid route with the Catalan nationalists if they held a wildcat referendum, there will never be an indyref2 allowed while the Tories remain in government before a generation has elapsed since 2014
GMB comes out against NI hike to pay for social care. Also wants a 50% pay rise for carers.
At least the union has got one bit right - to fix the shortage of care workers massive pay rises are required (or an exemption made for foreign workers).
I don't think the NI proposal will see the light of day.
PB is not representative of anything. But it's the first time ever I've seen right, centre, left and all shades between united in thinking that an NI increase is a Bad Idea. There may be little agreement between us on what the alternative should be, but the PB tribe seems pretty united in rejecting an NI increase.
The government should listen to us.
Speak for yourself, I find myself in rare agreement with BJO amongst others in backing a 1% NI rise over less palatable alternatives
Apols if I've missed it but what's your rationale for NI being a better option than IT?
For starters as IT goes against Tory principles of preserving estates and family assets and NI was set up originally to fund healthcare so if we need more funds to pay for it that is where it should come from
I still think an option that should be looked at is increasing council tax, bigly.
Fair on everybody that.
I like this. The way I would do it is put several more bands above Band H and make it big!
And of course we could have a special rate eg x3 on all second property/BTL?
Scrap council tax.
What kind of country is so decrepit as to base it’s local tax on valuations from the early 90s?
Replace it with a flat per annum 0.5% tax on property, or even better, a 1.5% tax on unimproved land value.
1.5% tax on unimproved land value.
That being property value less rebuild cost ?!
Hah - I think that would clobber Londoners and the Home counties even more than my 2k nationally for a band D. Council tax as it is though is pretty well rigged against the north.
If this was replacement for council tax and set locally the London rate might be 1.0% or whatever the local council chose to fund it's commitments/desires.
I don't think the NI proposal will see the light of day.
PB is not representative of anything. But it's the first time ever I've seen right, centre, left and all shades between united in thinking that an NI increase is a Bad Idea. There may be little agreement between us on what the alternative should be, but the PB tribe seems pretty united in rejecting an NI increase.
The government should listen to us.
Its often said that politicians read PB.
I'll be glad if they do, or I'll be getting my pitchfork out. 🔱
Well, HYUFD posts here. Not always convinced he actually reads other posts, though
Ian Birrell @ianbirrell · 2h Now David Willetts, a supposed expert and former minister, saying the beneficiaries of increased social care funding will be exclusively elderly. Pitiful. Almost half spending goes on working age adults. So bored of people pontificating about the system when so ignorant about it
That does raise the question of how much of their care costs do the elderly pay, versus working age adults. Willets might be correct if he means that the elderly would be greater beneficiaries in cash terms ?
I still think an option that should be looked at is increasing council tax, bigly.
Fair on everybody that.
I like this. The way I would do it is put several more bands above Band H and make it big!
And of course we could have a special rate eg x3 on all second property/BTL?
Scrap council tax.
What kind of country is so decrepit as to base it’s local tax on valuations from the early 90s?
Replace it with a flat per annum 0.5% tax on property, or even better, a 1.5% tax on unimproved land value.
1.5% tax on unimproved land value.
That being property value less rebuild cost ?!
Hah - I think that would clobber Londoners and the Home counties even more than my 2k nationally for a band D. Council tax as it is though is pretty well rigged against the north.
If this was replacement for council tax and set locally the London rate might be 1.0% or whatever the local council chose to fund it's commitments/desires.
You couldn't have a Home Country rate of 0.2% and a 1% rate up north - but that is what local rates would result in.
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
The problem that opponents of this approach have is the sound bite version, I think.
National Insurance to pay for medical/care *sounds* middle-of-the-road, pay-for-stuff....
My guess is that, as is mentioned in the header, the government will conflate social care with the NHS - as "Social Care/NHS spending" where they can.
They already have - the NI rise is initially intended for more cash to the NHS, and then at some unspecified time, in some unspecified manner will do something (or not) for social care.
And unless you are a pensioner, why would anyone think a rise in NI preferable to a rise in income tax ?
It doesn't actually seem to be a plan to fix social care. It's more a way of doing just enough to allow Johnson not be accused of a bald lie when he promised that he would.
@HYUFD you forcefully point out that Boris won't allow an Indy referendum because it was a promise. How does that differ from a promise not to increase NI?
As Covid necessitated extra funds for the NHS, it did not necessitate indyref2, in fact the reverse
Ah ok. So when you say never what you really mean is that if Boris can find a good reason to break that promise it is ok then.
That is not a position I disagree with, but it is not what you have been saying.
So if something happens that changes Boris's mind (as with the NI increase) then we may have an Indy ref. That is not what you have been saying is it?
He won't, he had made clear he will not allow an indyref2 while he is PM as he knows if he lost it he would have to resign and become the 21st century Lord North.
A 1% NI rise for the NHS with negligible electoral risk is entirely different
You are missing the point. You say never, but also agree if circumstances change for something else he will. They are contradictory positions. So try this:
SNP get 80% vote share, Indy polls show 80%. UK Govt ignores, and people take to the streets, people die in riots, car and buildings burn down, bombs go off, army sent in. Sounds familiar. The difference being in NI the nationalist were in a minority, if they are in a big majority that defence is no longer there.
I appreciate this is hypothetical and unlikely, but you can't say at the same time 'Never' and then allow a reason for a change because 'Unforeseen Circumstances'.
Legally there would be nothing to stop the UK government refusing an indyref2 even then.
However anyway that is entirely hyopthetical, most Scottish polls have No still narrowly ahead and most Scots not wanting indyref2 for 5 years at least
Please answer the question I asked, not one I didn't. Remember the pandemic was hypothetical before it happened, so answer the hypothetical question. Do you agree that there is no such thing as 'never' here. Very unlikely yes, but never?
For clarification I don't have strong views on this, but you are arguing the exact opposite on these issues.
Yes, never.
If necessary this government would follow the Madrid route with the Catalan nationalists if they held a wildcat referendum, there will never be an indyref2 allowed while the Tories remain in government before a generation has elapsed since 2014
Question. Do you understand that "never" is different to "during the 2019 Westminster parliament"
I don't think the NI proposal will see the light of day.
PB is not representative of anything. But it's the first time ever I've seen right, centre, left and all shades between united in thinking that an NI increase is a Bad Idea. There may be little agreement between us on what the alternative should be, but the PB tribe seems pretty united in rejecting an NI increase.
The government should listen to us.
Speak for yourself, I find myself in rare agreement with BJO amongst others in backing a 1% NI rise over less palatable alternatives
Apols if I've missed it but what's your rationale for NI being a better option than IT?
For starters as IT goes against Tory principles of preserving estates and family assets and NI was set up originally to fund healthcare so if we need more funds to pay for it that is where it should come from
I'd be interested for your take on the wider societal benefit of seeking to "preserve estates and family assets". Beyond it being Tory doctrine and it suiting a segment of society that lend the party their votes as a result.
Ian Birrell @ianbirrell · 2h Now David Willetts, a supposed expert and former minister, saying the beneficiaries of increased social care funding will be exclusively elderly. Pitiful. Almost half spending goes on working age adults. So bored of people pontificating about the system when so ignorant about it
How many working age adults in care own their own property?
This is a genuine question, I'm not familiar with this but my understanding was that most young adults in social care are because they have conditions that mean they require care and many have done their entire life so likely haven't ever bought a property in the first place.
But I have absolutely no facts or figures on this, could be entirely wrong.
I don't think the NI proposal will see the light of day.
PB is not representative of anything. But it's the first time ever I've seen right, centre, left and all shades between united in thinking that an NI increase is a Bad Idea. There may be little agreement between us on what the alternative should be, but the PB tribe seems pretty united in rejecting an NI increase.
The government should listen to us.
Speak for yourself, I find myself in rare agreement with BJO amongst others in backing a 1% NI rise over less palatable alternatives
Apols if I've missed it but what's your rationale for NI being a better option than IT?
Less impact on the Tory pensioner vote.
Yep. But I'm hoping H has something stronger than that. He deserves the chance anyway. Let's see.
@HYUFD you forcefully point out that Boris won't allow an Indy referendum because it was a promise. How does that differ from a promise not to increase NI?
As Covid necessitated extra funds for the NHS, it did not necessitate indyref2, in fact the reverse
Ah ok. So when you say never what you really mean is that if Boris can find a good reason to break that promise it is ok then.
That is not a position I disagree with, but it is not what you have been saying.
So if something happens that changes Boris's mind (as with the NI increase) then we may have an Indy ref. That is not what you have been saying is it?
He won't, he had made clear he will not allow an indyref2 while he is PM as he knows if he lost it he would have to resign and become the 21st century Lord North.
A 1% NI rise for the NHS with negligible electoral risk is entirely different
You are missing the point. You say never, but also agree if circumstances change for something else he will. They are contradictory positions. So try this:
SNP get 80% vote share, Indy polls show 80%. UK Govt ignores, and people take to the streets, people die in riots, car and buildings burn down, bombs go off, army sent in. Sounds familiar. The difference being in NI the nationalist were in a minority, if they are in a big majority that defence is no longer there.
I appreciate this is hypothetical and unlikely, but you can't say at the same time 'Never' and then allow a reason for a change because 'Unforeseen Circumstances'.
Legally there would be nothing to stop the UK government refusing an indyref2 even then.
However anyway that is entirely hyopthetical, most Scottish polls have No still narrowly ahead and most Scots not wanting indyref2 for 5 years at least
Please answer the question I asked, not one I didn't. Remember the pandemic was hypothetical before it happened, so answer the hypothetical question. Do you agree that there is no such thing as 'never' here. Very unlikely yes, but never?
For clarification I don't have strong views on this, but you are arguing the exact opposite on these issues.
Yes, never.
If necessary this government would follow the Madrid route with the Catalan nationalists if they held a wildcat referendum, there will never be an indyref2 allowed while the Tories remain in government before a generation has elapsed since 2014
OK I can't argue with that; question answered.
I can't believe you are saying that though. I personally don't have a strong view one way or the other re Independence sitting here in Surrey. But I can't believe that if a situation arises like I described you would still feel the same. Does that mean you don't feel we should have given independence to our empire, that Belarus is ok, North Korea also, etc, etc and if a vast majority want independence they shouldn't have it. That doesn't exit currently, but you are saying if it does the answer is still no. Long live the Warsaw pact.
I don't think the NI proposal will see the light of day.
PB is not representative of anything. But it's the first time ever I've seen right, centre, left and all shades between united in thinking that an NI increase is a Bad Idea. There may be little agreement between us on what the alternative should be, but the PB tribe seems pretty united in rejecting an NI increase.
The government should listen to us.
Speak for yourself, I find myself in rare agreement with BJO amongst others in backing a 1% NI rise over less palatable alternatives
Apols if I've missed it but what's your rationale for NI being a better option than IT?
For starters as IT goes against Tory principles of preserving estates and family assets and NI was set up originally to fund healthcare so if we need more funds to pay for it that is where it should come from
I'd be interested for your take on the wider societal benefit of seeking to "preserve estates and family assets". Beyond it being Tory doctrine and it suiting a segment of society that lend the party their votes as a result.
May's dementia tax would have hit most of the country as it was set over £100,000, even an increase in IHT would hit most homeowners in London and the South and East, both political suicide and both unTory.
Ian Birrell @ianbirrell · 2h Now David Willetts, a supposed expert and former minister, saying the beneficiaries of increased social care funding will be exclusively elderly. Pitiful. Almost half spending goes on working age adults. So bored of people pontificating about the system when so ignorant about it
Willetts was on R4 this morning. His point, with which I agree, is that NI has too narrow a tax base and means that the elderly do not contribute to the cost. In short he was talking about the funding of social care, not the recipients.
I have to say that the comparison between Willetts and Kendal this morning was painful. Kendall really had nothing to say except their tax would be "fairer". No idea what it would be though. We do not have an opposition worthy of the name, we have a Conservative party that produces its own opposition and discussion. This is not healthy.
GMB comes out against NI hike to pay for social care. Also wants a 50% pay rise for carers.
At least the union has got one bit right - to fix the shortage of care workers massive pay rises are required (or an exemption made for foreign workers).
The reason we needed imported care home staff in the first place was that people don't want to work long hours cleaning up someone else's mother's piss. It isn't all about wages - same as truck drivers. As various articles over the weekend pointed out, there is no solution to these acute and immediate labour shortages that "just pay them more" will fix.
We need a complete rethink of the whole care sector. Private care homes & private nurseries charge ruinous fees and pay minimum wage. Perhaps the profit motive isn't appropriate in this sector...?
@HYUFD you forcefully point out that Boris won't allow an Indy referendum because it was a promise. How does that differ from a promise not to increase NI?
As Covid necessitated extra funds for the NHS, it did not necessitate indyref2, in fact the reverse
Ah ok. So when you say never what you really mean is that if Boris can find a good reason to break that promise it is ok then.
That is not a position I disagree with, but it is not what you have been saying.
So if something happens that changes Boris's mind (as with the NI increase) then we may have an Indy ref. That is not what you have been saying is it?
He won't, he had made clear he will not allow an indyref2 while he is PM as he knows if he lost it he would have to resign and become the 21st century Lord North.
A 1% NI rise for the NHS with negligible electoral risk is entirely different
You are missing the point. You say never, but also agree if circumstances change for something else he will. They are contradictory positions. So try this:
SNP get 80% vote share, Indy polls show 80%. UK Govt ignores, and people take to the streets, people die in riots, car and buildings burn down, bombs go off, army sent in. Sounds familiar. The difference being in NI the nationalist were in a minority, if they are in a big majority that defence is no longer there.
I appreciate this is hypothetical and unlikely, but you can't say at the same time 'Never' and then allow a reason for a change because 'Unforeseen Circumstances'.
Legally there would be nothing to stop the UK government refusing an indyref2 even then.
However anyway that is entirely hyopthetical, most Scottish polls have No still narrowly ahead and most Scots not wanting indyref2 for 5 years at least
Please answer the question I asked, not one I didn't. Remember the pandemic was hypothetical before it happened, so answer the hypothetical question. Do you agree that there is no such thing as 'never' here. Very unlikely yes, but never?
For clarification I don't have strong views on this, but you are arguing the exact opposite on these issues.
Yes, never.
If necessary this government would follow the Madrid route with the Catalan nationalists if they held a wildcat referendum, there will never be an indyref2 allowed while the Tories remain in government before a generation has elapsed since 2014
OK I can't argue with that; question answered.
I can't believe you are saying that though. I personally don't have a strong view one way or the other re Independence sitting here in Surrey. But I can't believe that if a situation arises like I described you would still feel the same. Does that mean you don't feel we should have given independence to our empire, that Belarus is ok, North Korea also, etc, etc and if a vast majority want independence they shouldn't have it. That doesn't exit currently, but you are saying if it does the answer is still no. Long live the Warsaw pact.
Churchill did not want to give India independence no, it was Attlee and Labour who gave India independence.
Morally that may have been right but it cost us our superpower status no doubt which is why Churchill when he was Tory PM pre 1945 opposed it and opposed it as Leader of the Opposition
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
The problem that opponents of this approach have is the sound bite version, I think.
National Insurance to pay for medical/care *sounds* middle-of-the-road, pay-for-stuff....
My guess is that, as is mentioned in the header, the government will conflate social care with the NHS - as "Social Care/NHS spending" where they can.
They already have - the NI rise is initially intended for more cash to the NHS, and then at some unspecified time, in some unspecified manner will do something (or not) for social care.
And unless you are a pensioner, why would anyone think a rise in NI preferable to a rise in income tax ?
It doesn't actually seem to be a plan to fix social care. It's more a way of doing just enough to allow Johnson not be accused of a bald lie when he promised that he would.
@HYUFD you forcefully point out that Boris won't allow an Indy referendum because it was a promise. How does that differ from a promise not to increase NI?
As Covid necessitated extra funds for the NHS, it did not necessitate indyref2, in fact the reverse
Ah ok. So when you say never what you really mean is that if Boris can find a good reason to break that promise it is ok then.
That is not a position I disagree with, but it is not what you have been saying.
So if something happens that changes Boris's mind (as with the NI increase) then we may have an Indy ref. That is not what you have been saying is it?
He won't, he had made clear he will not allow an indyref2 while he is PM as he knows if he lost it he would have to resign and become the 21st century Lord North.
A 1% NI rise for the NHS with negligible electoral risk is entirely different
You are missing the point. You say never, but also agree if circumstances change for something else he will. They are contradictory positions. So try this:
SNP get 80% vote share, Indy polls show 80%. UK Govt ignores, and people take to the streets, people die in riots, car and buildings burn down, bombs go off, army sent in. Sounds familiar. The difference being in NI the nationalist were in a minority, if they are in a big majority that defence is no longer there.
I appreciate this is hypothetical and unlikely, but you can't say at the same time 'Never' and then allow a reason for a change because 'Unforeseen Circumstances'.
Legally there would be nothing to stop the UK government refusing an indyref2 even then.
However anyway that is entirely hyopthetical, most Scottish polls have No still narrowly ahead and most Scots not wanting indyref2 for 5 years at least
Please answer the question I asked, not one I didn't. Remember the pandemic was hypothetical before it happened, so answer the hypothetical question. Do you agree that there is no such thing as 'never' here. Very unlikely yes, but never?
For clarification I don't have strong views on this, but you are arguing the exact opposite on these issues.
Yes, never.
If necessary this government would follow the Madrid route with the Catalan nationalists if they held a wildcat referendum, there will never be an indyref2 allowed while the Tories remain in government before a generation has elapsed since 2014
OK I can't argue with that; question answered.
I can't believe you are saying that though. I personally don't have a strong view one way or the other re Independence sitting here in Surrey. But I can't believe that if a situation arises like I described you would still feel the same. Does that mean you don't feel we should have given independence to our empire, that Belarus is ok, North Korea also, etc, etc and if a vast majority want independence they shouldn't have it. That doesn't exit currently, but you are saying if it does the answer is still no. Long live the Warsaw pact.
He was also saying there'd never be a tax rise under this government as recently as a few months ago.
Never lasts as long as until there's a change of heart in Downing Street.
Ian Birrell @ianbirrell · 2h Now David Willetts, a supposed expert and former minister, saying the beneficiaries of increased social care funding will be exclusively elderly. Pitiful. Almost half spending goes on working age adults. So bored of people pontificating about the system when so ignorant about it
How many working age adults in care own their own property?
This is a genuine question, I'm not familiar with this but my understanding was that most young adults in social care are because they have conditions that mean they require care and many have done their entire life so likely haven't ever bought a property in the first place.
But I have absolutely no facts or figures on this, could be entirely wrong.
Not that many will own a property, however a reasonable proportion will have assets exceeding £80,000. This could be compensation related to their care needs, inheritance, or income prior to requiring care.
(Also, I as working age adult benefit from the security the cap provides. But I recognise that is more academic)
I don't think the NI proposal will see the light of day.
PB is not representative of anything. But it's the first time ever I've seen right, centre, left and all shades between united in thinking that an NI increase is a Bad Idea. There may be little agreement between us on what the alternative should be, but the PB tribe seems pretty united in rejecting an NI increase.
The government should listen to us.
Speak for yourself, I find myself in rare agreement with BJO amongst others in backing a 1% NI rise over less palatable alternatives
Apols if I've missed it but what's your rationale for NI being a better option than IT?
For starters as IT goes against Tory principles of preserving estates and family assets and NI was set up originally to fund healthcare so if we need more funds to pay for it that is where it should come from
I'd be interested for your take on the wider societal benefit of seeking to "preserve estates and family assets". Beyond it being Tory doctrine and it suiting a segment of society that lend the party their votes as a result.
May's dementia tax would have hit most of the country as it was set over £100,000, even an increase in IHT would hit most homeowners in London and the South and East, both political suicide and both unTory.
So basically because it's a vote winner and is Tory dogma. Thought so. Thanks.
GMB comes out against NI hike to pay for social care. Also wants a 50% pay rise for carers.
At least the union has got one bit right - to fix the shortage of care workers massive pay rises are required (or an exemption made for foreign workers).
The reason we needed imported care home staff in the first place was that people don't want to work long hours cleaning up someone else's mother's piss. It isn't all about wages - same as truck drivers. As various articles over the weekend pointed out, there is no solution to these acute and immediate labour shortages that "just pay them more" will fix.
We need a complete rethink of the whole care sector. Private care homes & private nurseries charge ruinous fees and pay minimum wage. Perhaps the profit motive isn't appropriate in this sector...?
If we needed imported care staff then why are well over 80% of care staff domestic?
Indeed the domestic/"imported" staff ratio I do believe almost exactly matches that of the labour market in general.
Ian Birrell @ianbirrell · 2h Now David Willetts, a supposed expert and former minister, saying the beneficiaries of increased social care funding will be exclusively elderly. Pitiful. Almost half spending goes on working age adults. So bored of people pontificating about the system when so ignorant about it
How many working age adults in care own their own property?
This is a genuine question, I'm not familiar with this but my understanding was that most young adults in social care are because they have conditions that mean they require care and many have done their entire life so likely haven't ever bought a property in the first place.
But I have absolutely no facts or figures on this, could be entirely wrong.
I'm also intrigued by that - and like you I suspect it's due to long term conditions (smaller numbers, but much much longer periods in care and likely more complex care - I work in research with some young people in these categories).
That can only, realistically, be met out of general taxation - what else? Charge the parents/close family members? Do what we do for children's hospices and rely mostly on charity donations? (That could conceivably work, but I'm not sure that the older adults with perhaps long lives ahead would do so well in donations as children with life-shortening conditions). So it's irrelevant to the discussion, it's a completely different question/problem.
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
No averages are not meaningless, an average buyer will be seeking to buy an average property, a first time buyer will be seeking to buy the same type of property as an average first time buyer.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North where property is far cheaper to buy even relative to income, you do not have a clue how hard it is to buy property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405,900, still well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time buyer London home on average
Ian Birrell @ianbirrell · 2h Now David Willetts, a supposed expert and former minister, saying the beneficiaries of increased social care funding will be exclusively elderly. Pitiful. Almost half spending goes on working age adults. So bored of people pontificating about the system when so ignorant about it
Willetts was on R4 this morning. His point, with which I agree, is that NI has too narrow a tax base and means that the elderly do not contribute to the cost. In short he was talking about the funding of social care, not the recipients.
I have to say that the comparison between Willetts and Kendal this morning was painful. Kendall really had nothing to say except their tax would be "fairer". No idea what it would be though. We do not have an opposition worthy of the name, we have a Conservative party that produces its own opposition and discussion. This is not healthy.
They're years out from an election, they shouldn't be announcing new taxes yet.
One of the few advantages the opposition has is that they can optimize for the world as it is at the time of the manifesto, rather than the world as it was a few years before.
@HYUFD you forcefully point out that Boris won't allow an Indy referendum because it was a promise. How does that differ from a promise not to increase NI?
As Covid necessitated extra funds for the NHS, it did not necessitate indyref2, in fact the reverse
Ah ok. So when you say never what you really mean is that if Boris can find a good reason to break that promise it is ok then.
That is not a position I disagree with, but it is not what you have been saying.
So if something happens that changes Boris's mind (as with the NI increase) then we may have an Indy ref. That is not what you have been saying is it?
He won't, he had made clear he will not allow an indyref2 while he is PM as he knows if he lost it he would have to resign and become the 21st century Lord North.
A 1% NI rise for the NHS with negligible electoral risk is entirely different
You are missing the point. You say never, but also agree if circumstances change for something else he will. They are contradictory positions. So try this:
SNP get 80% vote share, Indy polls show 80%. UK Govt ignores, and people take to the streets, people die in riots, car and buildings burn down, bombs go off, army sent in. Sounds familiar. The difference being in NI the nationalist were in a minority, if they are in a big majority that defence is no longer there.
I appreciate this is hypothetical and unlikely, but you can't say at the same time 'Never' and then allow a reason for a change because 'Unforeseen Circumstances'.
Legally there would be nothing to stop the UK government refusing an indyref2 even then.
However anyway that is entirely hyopthetical, most Scottish polls have No still narrowly ahead and most Scots not wanting indyref2 for 5 years at least
Please answer the question I asked, not one I didn't. Remember the pandemic was hypothetical before it happened, so answer the hypothetical question. Do you agree that there is no such thing as 'never' here. Very unlikely yes, but never?
For clarification I don't have strong views on this, but you are arguing the exact opposite on these issues.
Yes, never.
If necessary this government would follow the Madrid route with the Catalan nationalists if they held a wildcat referendum, there will never be an indyref2 allowed while the Tories remain in government before a generation has elapsed since 2014
OK I can't argue with that; question answered.
I can't believe you are saying that though. I personally don't have a strong view one way or the other re Independence sitting here in Surrey. But I can't believe that if a situation arises like I described you would still feel the same. Does that mean you don't feel we should have given independence to our empire, that Belarus is ok, North Korea also, etc, etc and if a vast majority want independence they shouldn't have it. That doesn't exit currently, but you are saying if it does the answer is still no. Long live the Warsaw pact.
Churchill did not want to give India independence no, it was Attlee and Labour who gave India independence.
Morally that may have been right but it cost us our superpower status no doubt which is why Churchill when he was Tory PM pre 1945 opposed it and opposed it as Leader of the Opposition
How about North Korea, Belarus, the ex-Communist block? You agree the people of those countries shouldn't be allowed or have been allowed a say?
I don't think the NI proposal will see the light of day.
PB is not representative of anything. But it's the first time ever I've seen right, centre, left and all shades between united in thinking that an NI increase is a Bad Idea. There may be little agreement between us on what the alternative should be, but the PB tribe seems pretty united in rejecting an NI increase.
The government should listen to us.
Speak for yourself, I find myself in rare agreement with BJO amongst others in backing a 1% NI rise over less palatable alternatives
Apols if I've missed it but what's your rationale for NI being a better option than IT?
For starters as IT goes against Tory principles of preserving estates and family assets and NI was set up originally to fund healthcare so if we need more funds to pay for it that is where it should come from
I'd be interested for your take on the wider societal benefit of seeking to "preserve estates and family assets". Beyond it being Tory doctrine and it suiting a segment of society that lend the party their votes as a result.
May's dementia tax would have hit most of the country as it was set over £100,000, even an increase in IHT would hit most homeowners in London and the South and East, both political suicide and both unTory.
So basically because it's a vote winner and is Tory dogma. Thought so. Thanks.
Current Tory dogma. Is it a vote winner? Yes? Then it is Tory dogma.
I don't think the NI proposal will see the light of day.
PB is not representative of anything. But it's the first time ever I've seen right, centre, left and all shades between united in thinking that an NI increase is a Bad Idea. There may be little agreement between us on what the alternative should be, but the PB tribe seems pretty united in rejecting an NI increase.
The government should listen to us.
Speak for yourself, I find myself in rare agreement with BJO amongst others in backing a 1% NI rise over less palatable alternatives
Apols if I've missed it but what's your rationale for NI being a better option than IT?
For starters as IT goes against Tory principles of preserving estates and family assets and NI was set up originally to fund healthcare so if we need more funds to pay for it that is where it should come from
I get the 'protect estates' point but by 'IT' I meant Income Tax not Inheritance Tax.
NI is now fungible. It's a form of IT except it exempts pensioners and is more regressive in its impact across the income scale.
My question is why do you favour using that to raise money for health & social care as opposed to mainstream IT?
The problem that opponents of this approach have is the sound bite version, I think.
National Insurance to pay for medical/care *sounds* middle-of-the-road, pay-for-stuff....
My guess is that, as is mentioned in the header, the government will conflate social care with the NHS - as "Social Care/NHS spending" where they can.
They already have - the NI rise is initially intended for more cash to the NHS, and then at some unspecified time, in some unspecified manner will do something (or not) for social care.
And unless you are a pensioner, why would anyone think a rise in NI preferable to a rise in income tax ?
It doesn't actually seem to be a plan to fix social care. It's more a way of doing just enough to allow Johnson not be accused of a bald lie when he promised that he would.
I think you might be right.
His timing isn't great. Social care has been a hot potato for more than 20 years. He promised to fix it but jeez, the pressures on public finances right now are incredible. Another £5.5bn bung to the NHS for just the next 6 months being announced today.
So, I think it is true that we will end up with a "compromise" which will increase social care spending but by nowhere near enough to meet the need or implement Dilnot. Which will be decried by all and sundry on both sides of the argument but is probably not a bad effort right now.
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
No averages are not meaningless, an average buyer will be seeking to buy an average property, a first time buyer will be seeking to buy the same type of property as an average first time buyer.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North, you do not have a clue how hard it is to but property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405, 900 well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time home on average
No that is categorically false; an average buyer categorically will not be seeking to buy an average property. An average buyer will be seeking to buy what they can afford.
First time buyers will be seeking to buy the cheapest properties in general, while people moving up the property ladder can buy more expensive ones.
Most homes are sold for less than average prices. The "average" prices are inflated by multimillion pound homes.
Even FTB averages will be inflated by the very well off buying above average properties. That's how averages work. A multimillionaire like a Premier League professional or someone with extremely wealthy parents etc looking to buy their first property won't be buying an entry level property but will still class as FTB and inflate the averages.
In order to buy a property you don't need to buy an "average" home. You need to buy a home.
The problem that opponents of this approach have is the sound bite version, I think.
National Insurance to pay for medical/care *sounds* middle-of-the-road, pay-for-stuff....
My guess is that, as is mentioned in the header, the government will conflate social care with the NHS - as "Social Care/NHS spending" where they can.
They already have - the NI rise is initially intended for more cash to the NHS, and then at some unspecified time, in some unspecified manner will do something (or not) for social care.
And unless you are a pensioner, why would anyone think a rise in NI preferable to a rise in income tax ?
It doesn't actually seem to be a plan to fix social care. It's more a way of doing just enough to allow Johnson not be accused of a bald lie when he promised that he would.
I think you might be right.
His timing isn't great. Social care has been a hot potato for more than 20 years. He promised to fix it but jeez, the pressures on public finances right now are incredible. Another £5.5bn bung to the NHS for just the next 6 months being announced today.
So, I think it is true that we will end up with a "compromise" which will increase social care spending but by nowhere near enough to meet the need or implement Dilnot. Which will be decried by all and sundry on both sides of the argument but is probably not a bad effort right now.
Quite. Ailbhe Rea of the Staggers (not Stephen Bush as I said earlier - cerebral eructation, sorry) made the point in the Staggers morning email that on Mr J's first dat as PM he promised "to introduce legislation on the issue that year. (You'll note that, had we stuck to that timetable, it would have been resolved pre-pandemic.)"
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
A collapse in house prices is needed dahn sarf to make any of them affordable. Even "affordable" houses are bonkers compared to salaries.
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
No averages are not meaningless, an average buyer will be seeking to buy an average property, a first time buyer will be seeking to buy the same type of property as an average first time buyer.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North where property is far cheaper to buy even relative to income, you do not have a clue how hard it is to buy property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405,900, still well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time buyer London home on average
Well obviously it depends upon what type of average you are using, conceivably and likely there are more houses under the average price than above (you can do averages can't you?) so the majority will be buying houses below the average price.
Ian Birrell @ianbirrell · 2h Now David Willetts, a supposed expert and former minister, saying the beneficiaries of increased social care funding will be exclusively elderly. Pitiful. Almost half spending goes on working age adults. So bored of people pontificating about the system when so ignorant about it
Willetts was on R4 this morning. His point, with which I agree, is that NI has too narrow a tax base and means that the elderly do not contribute to the cost. In short he was talking about the funding of social care, not the recipients.
I have to say that the comparison between Willetts and Kendal this morning was painful. Kendall really had nothing to say except their tax would be "fairer". No idea what it would be though. We do not have an opposition worthy of the name, we have a Conservative party that produces its own opposition and discussion. This is not healthy.
They're years out from an election, they shouldn't be announcing new taxes yet.
One of the few advantages the opposition has is that they can optimize for the world as it is at the time of the manifesto, rather than the world as it was a few years before.
Sure, I wasn't expecting a shadow budget from her but what is their thinking? Wealth tax? Universal social care or means testing? More or less contributions from the elderly? IT or NI? Answers came there none. Willetts did not agree with what seems to be the government position either but he at least addressed some of the issues.
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
A collapse in house prices is needed dahn sarf to make any of them affordable. Even "affordable" houses are bonkers compared to salaries.
That's entirely true but it doesn't make HYUFD right that people are buying "average" properties as a first time buyer.
Indeed the hardest element typically to get is the deposit, even 'dahn sarf'. If you can get a £40k deposit together which is not easy even for professionals then there are no shortage of £400k properties you can get for that price.
Ian Birrell @ianbirrell · 2h Now David Willetts, a supposed expert and former minister, saying the beneficiaries of increased social care funding will be exclusively elderly. Pitiful. Almost half spending goes on working age adults. So bored of people pontificating about the system when so ignorant about it
Willetts was on R4 this morning. His point, with which I agree, is that NI has too narrow a tax base and means that the elderly do not contribute to the cost. In short he was talking about the funding of social care, not the recipients.
I have to say that the comparison between Willetts and Kendal this morning was painful. Kendall really had nothing to say except their tax would be "fairer". No idea what it would be though. We do not have an opposition worthy of the name, we have a Conservative party that produces its own opposition and discussion. This is not healthy.
They're years out from an election, they shouldn't be announcing new taxes yet.
One of the few advantages the opposition has is that they can optimize for the world as it is at the time of the manifesto, rather than the world as it was a few years before.
Not good enough on this issue. Twenty years have been wasted not fixing social care. The opposition should have a policy and a way of costing it/paying for it.
I was absolutely fuming by the end of Liz Kendel's few minutes of airtime. Utterly pathetic
GMB comes out against NI hike to pay for social care. Also wants a 50% pay rise for carers.
At least the union has got one bit right - to fix the shortage of care workers massive pay rises are required (or an exemption made for foreign workers).
The reason we needed imported care home staff in the first place was that people don't want to work long hours cleaning up someone else's mother's piss. It isn't all about wages - same as truck drivers. As various articles over the weekend pointed out, there is no solution to these acute and immediate labour shortages that "just pay them more" will fix.
We need a complete rethink of the whole care sector. Private care homes & private nurseries charge ruinous fees and pay minimum wage. Perhaps the profit motive isn't appropriate in this sector...?
If we needed imported care staff then why are well over 80% of care staff domestic?
Indeed the domestic/"imported" staff ratio I do believe almost exactly matches that of the labour market in general.
Just pay them more absolutely will fix it.
How much of an extra NI rise will be needed if we gave all private care home staff a rise of 20%? People are already paying ruinous fees to care for their unwanted parents, so a whopping pay rise to get people to want to take the jobs will go straight on top of the fees charged.
I'm not saying I disagree. Its just that your "just pay more" magic money tree isn't a realistic solution. Someone has to pay for it, and nobody is willing to do so.
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
No averages are not meaningless, an average buyer will be seeking to buy an average property, a first time buyer will be seeking to buy the same type of property as an average first time buyer.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North, you do not have a clue how hard it is to but property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405, 900 well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time home on average
No that is categorically false; an average buyer categorically will not be seeking to buy an average property. An average buyer will be seeking to buy what they can afford.
First time buyers will be seeking to buy the cheapest properties in general, while people moving up the property ladder can buy more expensive ones.
Most homes are sold for less than average prices. The "average" prices are inflated by multimillion pound homes.
Even FTB averages will be inflated by the very well off buying above average properties. That's how averages work. A multimillionaire like a Premier League professional or someone with extremely wealthy parents etc looking to buy their first property won't be buying an entry level property but will still class as FTB and inflate the averages.
In order to buy a property you don't need to buy an "average" home. You need to buy a home.
For goodness sake. I have just shown you even if an average buyer seeks an average first time buyer property in London they would still be unable to afford it on the average London wage with even a 10% deposit in top of a mortgage for 4.5 times they and their partners combined income.
Buying property in London is now all but impossible for most bar high earners, the rich or those who get a gift or inheritance as I originally said. Hence London has by far the highest percentage of renters in the UK
... Jen’s unit has 18 beds. In June, there were only an average of three COVID-19 cases each day.
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About 40 percent of the beds in those facilities now are filled with COVID-19 cases. On this day, near the end of August, BayCare’s hospitals have 1,164 cases — 462 more than during the peak in July 2020, before there was a vaccine.
Across the country — around the world — the same scenes are playing out. Emergency rooms are overwhelmed. Ambulances are being turned away. More people are dying each day: An average of 250, just in Florida....
GMB comes out against NI hike to pay for social care. Also wants a 50% pay rise for carers.
At least the union has got one bit right - to fix the shortage of care workers massive pay rises are required (or an exemption made for foreign workers).
The reason we needed imported care home staff in the first place was that people don't want to work long hours cleaning up someone else's mother's piss. It isn't all about wages - same as truck drivers. As various articles over the weekend pointed out, there is no solution to these acute and immediate labour shortages that "just pay them more" will fix.
We need a complete rethink of the whole care sector. Private care homes & private nurseries charge ruinous fees and pay minimum wage. Perhaps the profit motive isn't appropriate in this sector...?
If we needed imported care staff then why are well over 80% of care staff domestic?
Indeed the domestic/"imported" staff ratio I do believe almost exactly matches that of the labour market in general.
Just pay them more absolutely will fix it.
How much of an extra NI rise will be needed if we gave all private care home staff a rise of 20%? People are already paying ruinous fees to care for their unwanted parents, so a whopping pay rise to get people to want to take the jobs will go straight on top of the fees charged.
I'm not saying I disagree. Its just that your "just pay more" magic money tree isn't a realistic solution. Someone has to pay for it, and nobody is willing to do so.
No rise in NI needed. Care staff are on a fraction of the salary that NHS etc staff are on. There's no divine right to get someone to provide quality care for minimum wage.
If fees go up to cover it, fees go up. But only a fraction of the fees will be going towards staff wages anyway.
I don't think the NI proposal will see the light of day.
PB is not representative of anything. But it's the first time ever I've seen right, centre, left and all shades between united in thinking that an NI increase is a Bad Idea. There may be little agreement between us on what the alternative should be, but the PB tribe seems pretty united in rejecting an NI increase.
The government should listen to us.
Speak for yourself, I find myself in rare agreement with BJO amongst others in backing a 1% NI rise over less palatable alternatives
Apols if I've missed it but what's your rationale for NI being a better option than IT?
For starters as IT goes against Tory principles of preserving estates and family assets and NI was set up originally to fund healthcare so if we need more funds to pay for it that is where it should come from
I get the 'protect estates' point but by 'IT' I meant Income Tax not Inheritance Tax.
NI is now fungible. It's a form of IT except it exempts pensioners and is more regressive in its impact across the income scale.
My question is why do you favour using that to raise money for health & social care as opposed to mainstream IT?
As healthcare is what NI was set up to fund alongside unemployment insurance and state pensions.
IT was originally set up to fund the Napoleonic wars ie defence
If England wind up 30 short in the test due to bad light, will something actually be done about the ludicrous two headed problem of appallingly slow over rates and 11 am starts in September ?
Ian Birrell @ianbirrell · 2h Now David Willetts, a supposed expert and former minister, saying the beneficiaries of increased social care funding will be exclusively elderly. Pitiful. Almost half spending goes on working age adults. So bored of people pontificating about the system when so ignorant about it
Willetts was on R4 this morning. His point, with which I agree, is that NI has too narrow a tax base and means that the elderly do not contribute to the cost. In short he was talking about the funding of social care, not the recipients.
I have to say that the comparison between Willetts and Kendal this morning was painful. Kendall really had nothing to say except their tax would be "fairer". No idea what it would be though. We do not have an opposition worthy of the name, we have a Conservative party that produces its own opposition and discussion. This is not healthy.
They're years out from an election, they shouldn't be announcing new taxes yet.
One of the few advantages the opposition has is that they can optimize for the world as it is at the time of the manifesto, rather than the world as it was a few years before.
Sure, I wasn't expecting a shadow budget from her but what is their thinking? Wealth tax? Universal social care or means testing? More or less contributions from the elderly? IT or NI? Answers came there none. Willetts did not agree with what seems to be the government position either but he at least addressed some of the issues.
Vague thinking is even worse, at best you'd slightly impress one of the 3 or 4 undecided voters listening to the interview, and then the government would fill in the blanks with the most unflattering thing they could think of and pump it through all available media.
@HYUFD you forcefully point out that Boris won't allow an Indy referendum because it was a promise. How does that differ from a promise not to increase NI?
As Covid necessitated extra funds for the NHS, it did not necessitate indyref2, in fact the reverse
Ah ok. So when you say never what you really mean is that if Boris can find a good reason to break that promise it is ok then.
That is not a position I disagree with, but it is not what you have been saying.
So if something happens that changes Boris's mind (as with the NI increase) then we may have an Indy ref. That is not what you have been saying is it?
He won't, he had made clear he will not allow an indyref2 while he is PM as he knows if he lost it he would have to resign and become the 21st century Lord North.
A 1% NI rise for the NHS with negligible electoral risk is entirely different
You are missing the point. You say never, but also agree if circumstances change for something else he will. They are contradictory positions. So try this:
SNP get 80% vote share, Indy polls show 80%. UK Govt ignores, and people take to the streets, people die in riots, car and buildings burn down, bombs go off, army sent in. Sounds familiar. The difference being in NI the nationalist were in a minority, if they are in a big majority that defence is no longer there.
I appreciate this is hypothetical and unlikely, but you can't say at the same time 'Never' and then allow a reason for a change because 'Unforeseen Circumstances'.
Legally there would be nothing to stop the UK government refusing an indyref2 even then.
However anyway that is entirely hyopthetical, most Scottish polls have No still narrowly ahead and most Scots not wanting indyref2 for 5 years at least
Please answer the question I asked, not one I didn't. Remember the pandemic was hypothetical before it happened, so answer the hypothetical question. Do you agree that there is no such thing as 'never' here. Very unlikely yes, but never?
For clarification I don't have strong views on this, but you are arguing the exact opposite on these issues.
Yes, never.
If necessary this government would follow the Madrid route with the Catalan nationalists if they held a wildcat referendum, there will never be an indyref2 allowed while the Tories remain in government before a generation has elapsed since 2014
OK I can't argue with that; question answered.
I can't believe you are saying that though. I personally don't have a strong view one way or the other re Independence sitting here in Surrey. But I can't believe that if a situation arises like I described you would still feel the same. Does that mean you don't feel we should have given independence to our empire, that Belarus is ok, North Korea also, etc, etc and if a vast majority want independence they shouldn't have it. That doesn't exit currently, but you are saying if it does the answer is still no. Long live the Warsaw pact.
Churchill did not want to give India independence no, it was Attlee and Labour who gave India independence.
Morally that may have been right but it cost us our superpower status no doubt which is why Churchill when he was Tory PM pre 1945 opposed it and opposed it as Leader of the Opposition
How about North Korea, Belarus, the ex-Communist block? You agree the people of those countries shouldn't be allowed or have been allowed a say?
They were not allowed a say in the USSR and Eastern Europe until Gorbachev and Putin wants most of the old USSR back in Russia's orbit.
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
A collapse in house prices is needed dahn sarf to make any of them affordable. Even "affordable" houses are bonkers compared to salaries.
I don't see that happening, or helping. Won't happen because the treasury will introduce help to sell measures, won't help because the backs will stop lending on falling assets. It's like being on the Titanic and saying What can we do to make places in the lifeboats more *affordable*, kind of not the point.
There is little appetite to raise taxes to pay for it.
There is a well defined life lottery. Some people spend years in a nursing home; others never see the inside of one.
So I think it needs to be insurance-based. Everyone is required to put aside a sum of money each year leading into old age, where the pot of money can pay for an average length of stay, which I think is some months, given not everyone goes to a home. Possibly need to include costs of potential at home care.
The premiums need to be taken in advance, not at death, but people could mortgage their assets to cover the premium. The State would means-test premiums and covers anyone unlucky enough to require a nursing home before the premiums are fully vested.
Doesn't work - why should people pay a large sum upfront for something that might never happen - it's literally a variation of May's deal with added private firms involved.
The strange thing is that the easiest win is 1% on NI with no other changes.
No one sane will attack a 1% increase in NI to support the NHS (which social care actually does by ideally reducing emergency hospital admissions of the elderly) - the issue is if it's attached to any change in how social care works.
Because like any insurance product you are paying an affordable premium to avoid a potentially ruinous outcome. The concept has to be sold. Insurance companies are best placed to to do the selling - that's their job. Also no-one trusts the government to genuinely hypothecate a tax, which is one reason we are in the mess we are with NI.
If people aren't prepared to pay for social care out of general taxation, the next best thing is to go the people directly affected in the medium term on a case of self-interest.
Government involvement is needed to make the scheme workable.
You say raising NI is easy. Then why hasn't a scheme ever been implemented despite Brown, Cameron, May and now Johnson going through the motions?
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
No averages are not meaningless, an average buyer will be seeking to buy an average property, a first time buyer will be seeking to buy the same type of property as an average first time buyer.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North, you do not have a clue how hard it is to but property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405, 900 well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time home on average
No that is categorically false; an average buyer categorically will not be seeking to buy an average property. An average buyer will be seeking to buy what they can afford.
First time buyers will be seeking to buy the cheapest properties in general, while people moving up the property ladder can buy more expensive ones.
Most homes are sold for less than average prices. The "average" prices are inflated by multimillion pound homes.
Even FTB averages will be inflated by the very well off buying above average properties. That's how averages work. A multimillionaire like a Premier League professional or someone with extremely wealthy parents etc looking to buy their first property won't be buying an entry level property but will still class as FTB and inflate the averages.
In order to buy a property you don't need to buy an "average" home. You need to buy a home.
For goodness sake. I have just shown you even if an average buyer seeks an average first time buyer property in London they would still be unable to afford it on the average London wage with even a 10% deposit in top of a mortgage for 4.5 times they and their partners combined income.
Buying property in London is now all but impossible for most bar high earners, the rich or those who get a gift or inheritance as I originally said. Hence London has by far the highest percentage of renters in the UK
An average buyer does not seek to buy an average property. MOST SALES ARE FOR BELOW AVERAGE what part of that do you not understand?
There are thousands of homes available for the prices we're speaking about. Getting a 10% deposit is the hardest part, once someone has that mortgages are actually available for the rest but getting £40k in savings while paying exorbitant rents and taxes isn't easy.
It'd be easier if taxes were lower but you want to make them higher instead.
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
A collapse in house prices is needed dahn sarf to make any of them affordable. Even "affordable" houses are bonkers compared to salaries.
That's entirely true but it doesn't make HYUFD right that people are buying "average" properties as a first time buyer.
Indeed the hardest element typically to get is the deposit, even 'dahn sarf'. If you can get a £40k deposit together which is not easy even for professionals then there are no shortage of £400k properties you can get for that price.
Yep. So you have £40k spare in your sky rocket. Buy a £400k property in Basildon. So just a £360k mortgage. On your average Basildon salary of £26k is a mere 13.8x salary.
I'm not interested in your spat with the Essicks Massiv over what is affordable. NONE of them are affordable. My BIL lives in a shitbox new build that is pretty much as I've just costed. They can only afford it because his OH inherited cash from her parents. The other BIL will be renting forever.
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
No averages are not meaningless, an average buyer will be seeking to buy an average property, a first time buyer will be seeking to buy the same type of property as an average first time buyer.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North where property is far cheaper to buy even relative to income, you do not have a clue how hard it is to buy property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405,900, still well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time buyer London home on average
Well obviously it depends upon what type of average you are using, conceivably and likely there are more houses under the average price than above (you can do averages can't you?) so the majority will be buying houses below the average price.
Even on the average London price paid by first time buyers (the lowest you can go) average prices are still beyond the range of those on the average London wage as I showed
GMB comes out against NI hike to pay for social care. Also wants a 50% pay rise for carers.
At least the union has got one bit right - to fix the shortage of care workers massive pay rises are required (or an exemption made for foreign workers).
The reason we needed imported care home staff in the first place was that people don't want to work long hours cleaning up someone else's mother's piss. It isn't all about wages - same as truck drivers. As various articles over the weekend pointed out, there is no solution to these acute and immediate labour shortages that "just pay them more" will fix.
We need a complete rethink of the whole care sector. Private care homes & private nurseries charge ruinous fees and pay minimum wage. Perhaps the profit motive isn't appropriate in this sector...?
If we needed imported care staff then why are well over 80% of care staff domestic?
Indeed the domestic/"imported" staff ratio I do believe almost exactly matches that of the labour market in general.
Just pay them more absolutely will fix it.
How much of an extra NI rise will be needed if we gave all private care home staff a rise of 20%? People are already paying ruinous fees to care for their unwanted parents, so a whopping pay rise to get people to want to take the jobs will go straight on top of the fees charged.
I'm not saying I disagree. Its just that your "just pay more" magic money tree isn't a realistic solution. Someone has to pay for it, and nobody is willing to do so.
No rise in NI needed. Care staff are on a fraction of the salary that NHS etc staff are on. There's no divine right to get someone to provide quality care for minimum wage.
If fees go up to cover it, fees go up. But only a fraction of the fees will be going towards staff wages anyway.
That's the problem - a lot of the fee paid to a care / nursing home actually goes to the profit of others rather than care itself.
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
No averages are not meaningless, an average buyer will be seeking to buy an average property, a first time buyer will be seeking to buy the same type of property as an average first time buyer.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North where property is far cheaper to buy even relative to income, you do not have a clue how hard it is to buy property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405,900, still well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time buyer London home on average
Well obviously it depends upon what type of average you are using, conceivably and likely there are more houses under the average price than above (you can do averages can't you?) so the majority will be buying houses below the average price.
Even on the average London price paid by first time buyers (the lowest you can go) average prices are still beyond the range of those on the average London wage as I showed
Most homes are sold for below average but you still think average is the lowest you can go?
How thick are you? Do you think that zero homes are sold above average? Since when was average the lowest you can go?
I don't think the NI proposal will see the light of day.
PB is not representative of anything. But it's the first time ever I've seen right, centre, left and all shades between united in thinking that an NI increase is a Bad Idea. There may be little agreement between us on what the alternative should be, but the PB tribe seems pretty united in rejecting an NI increase.
The government should listen to us.
Speak for yourself, I find myself in rare agreement with BJO amongst others in backing a 1% NI rise over less palatable alternatives
Apols if I've missed it but what's your rationale for NI being a better option than IT?
For starters as IT goes against Tory principles of preserving estates and family assets and NI was set up originally to fund healthcare so if we need more funds to pay for it that is where it should come from
I get the 'protect estates' point but by 'IT' I meant Income Tax not Inheritance Tax.
NI is now fungible. It's a form of IT except it exempts pensioners and is more regressive in its impact across the income scale.
My question is why do you favour using that to raise money for health & social care as opposed to mainstream IT?
As healthcare is what NI was set up to fund alongside unemployment insurance and state pensions.
IT was originally set up to fund the Napoleonic wars ie defence
No-one has commented on the fact that NI is paid by the working age to fund state pensions for the, er, retired. So perhaps it's quite right that, while working, we all pay into an insurance scheme for if we can't look after ourselves when we're older. It isn't just for old people because, hopefully, we will all get old.
I don't think the NI proposal will see the light of day.
PB is not representative of anything. But it's the first time ever I've seen right, centre, left and all shades between united in thinking that an NI increase is a Bad Idea. There may be little agreement between us on what the alternative should be, but the PB tribe seems pretty united in rejecting an NI increase.
The government should listen to us.
Speak for yourself, I find myself in rare agreement with BJO amongst others in backing a 1% NI rise over less palatable alternatives
Apols if I've missed it but what's your rationale for NI being a better option than IT?
For starters as IT goes against Tory principles of preserving estates and family assets and NI was set up originally to fund healthcare so if we need more funds to pay for it that is where it should come from
I get the 'protect estates' point but by 'IT' I meant Income Tax not Inheritance Tax.
NI is now fungible. It's a form of IT except it exempts pensioners and is more regressive in its impact across the income scale.
My question is why do you favour using that to raise money for health & social care as opposed to mainstream IT?
As healthcare is what NI was set up to fund alongside unemployment insurance and state pensions.
IT was originally set up to fund the Napoleonic wars ie defence
You're conflating the Government NI with the parallel friendly societies and unions schemes. The Government one only ever dealt with unemployment pay.
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
No averages are not meaningless, an average buyer will be seeking to buy an average property, a first time buyer will be seeking to buy the same type of property as an average first time buyer.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North, you do not have a clue how hard it is to but property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405, 900 well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time home on average
No that is categorically false; an average buyer categorically will not be seeking to buy an average property. An average buyer will be seeking to buy what they can afford.
First time buyers will be seeking to buy the cheapest properties in general, while people moving up the property ladder can buy more expensive ones.
Most homes are sold for less than average prices. The "average" prices are inflated by multimillion pound homes.
Even FTB averages will be inflated by the very well off buying above average properties. That's how averages work. A multimillionaire like a Premier League professional or someone with extremely wealthy parents etc looking to buy their first property won't be buying an entry level property but will still class as FTB and inflate the averages.
In order to buy a property you don't need to buy an "average" home. You need to buy a home.
For goodness sake. I have just shown you even if an average buyer seeks an average first time buyer property in London they would still be unable to afford it on the average London wage with even a 10% deposit in top of a mortgage for 4.5 times they and their partners combined income.
Buying property in London is now all but impossible for most bar high earners, the rich or those who get a gift or inheritance as I originally said. Hence London has by far the highest percentage of renters in the UK
Responding to your side of this spat you do at least live in Essicks on the edge of London so are closer to this than Philip in Cheshire-dahling.
Your party represents the property owners who profiteer from this mess. So what is the point that you are making - that Boris will go after the landlords? Pull the other one. The only solution to property in London is collapse the value of them.
And the one thing that would help - removing the need to commute into town for a job you can do remotely - is the exact opposite of policy which implores people to start commuting again so they can spend £5 on a twatty coffee each day.
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
No averages are not meaningless, an average buyer will be seeking to buy an average property, a first time buyer will be seeking to buy the same type of property as an average first time buyer.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North where property is far cheaper to buy even relative to income, you do not have a clue how hard it is to buy property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405,900, still well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time buyer London home on average
Well obviously it depends upon what type of average you are using, conceivably and likely there are more houses under the average price than above (you can do averages can't you?) so the majority will be buying houses below the average price.
Even on the average London price paid by first time buyers (the lowest you can go) average prices are still beyond the range of those on the average London wage as I showed
Most homes are sold for below average but you still think average is the lowest you can go?
How thick are you? Do you think that zero homes are sold above average? Since when was average the lowest you can go?
First time buyer homes are sold for below average yes and as I have shown you even the average home bought by first time buyers in London is still priced at a value those on an average London wage cannot afford.
You can rant and be as rude as you like but clearly you do not understand that in London most Londoners on an average wage cannot afford to buy.
I still think an option that should be looked at is increasing council tax, bigly.
Fair on everybody that.
I like this. The way I would do it is put several more bands above Band H and make it big!
And of course we could have a special rate eg x3 on all second property/BTL?
Scrap council tax.
What kind of country is so decrepit as to base it’s local tax on valuations from the early 90s?
Replace it with a flat per annum 0.5% tax on property, or even better, a 1.5% tax on unimproved land value.
1.5% tax on unimproved land value.
That being property value less rebuild cost ?!
Hah - I think that would clobber Londoners and the Home counties even more than my 2k nationally for a band D. Council tax as it is though is pretty well rigged against the north.
If this was replacement for council tax and set locally the London rate might be 1.0% or whatever the local council chose to fund it's commitments/desires.
You couldn't have a Home Country rate of 0.2% and a 1% rate up north - but that is what local rates would result in.
That's basically what council tax is at the moment !
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
No averages are not meaningless, an average buyer will be seeking to buy an average property, a first time buyer will be seeking to buy the same type of property as an average first time buyer.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North, you do not have a clue how hard it is to but property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405, 900 well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time home on average
No that is categorically false; an average buyer categorically will not be seeking to buy an average property. An average buyer will be seeking to buy what they can afford.
First time buyers will be seeking to buy the cheapest properties in general, while people moving up the property ladder can buy more expensive ones.
Most homes are sold for less than average prices. The "average" prices are inflated by multimillion pound homes.
Even FTB averages will be inflated by the very well off buying above average properties. That's how averages work. A multimillionaire like a Premier League professional or someone with extremely wealthy parents etc looking to buy their first property won't be buying an entry level property but will still class as FTB and inflate the averages.
In order to buy a property you don't need to buy an "average" home. You need to buy a home.
For goodness sake. I have just shown you even if an average buyer seeks an average first time buyer property in London they would still be unable to afford it on the average London wage with even a 10% deposit in top of a mortgage for 4.5 times they and their partners combined income.
Buying property in London is now all but impossible for most bar high earners, the rich or those who get a gift or inheritance as I originally said. Hence London has by far the highest percentage of renters in the UK
I have no idea who is right on wrong on who can afford what, but HYUFD you are doing it again as explained by me and Philip below, you pick up at stat and then misuse it making it redundant. I know you get fed up with me going on about maths, but damn it if you are going to misuse maths what do you expect.
I will have another go:
There are many more 1st time buyer houses under the price of the average 1st time buyer houses because that is how the arithmetic average works in this scenario. Do you get this?
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
No averages are not meaningless, an average buyer will be seeking to buy an average property, a first time buyer will be seeking to buy the same type of property as an average first time buyer.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North, you do not have a clue how hard it is to but property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405, 900 well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time home on average
No that is categorically false; an average buyer categorically will not be seeking to buy an average property. An average buyer will be seeking to buy what they can afford.
First time buyers will be seeking to buy the cheapest properties in general, while people moving up the property ladder can buy more expensive ones.
Most homes are sold for less than average prices. The "average" prices are inflated by multimillion pound homes.
Even FTB averages will be inflated by the very well off buying above average properties. That's how averages work. A multimillionaire like a Premier League professional or someone with extremely wealthy parents etc looking to buy their first property won't be buying an entry level property but will still class as FTB and inflate the averages.
In order to buy a property you don't need to buy an "average" home. You need to buy a home.
For goodness sake. I have just shown you even if an average buyer seeks an average first time buyer property in London they would still be unable to afford it on the average London wage with even a 10% deposit in top of a mortgage for 4.5 times they and their partners combined income.
Buying property in London is now all but impossible for most bar high earners, the rich or those who get a gift or inheritance as I originally said. Hence London has by far the highest percentage of renters in the UK
An average buyer does not seek to buy an average property. MOST SALES ARE FOR BELOW AVERAGE what part of that do you not understand?
There are thousands of homes available for the prices we're speaking about. Getting a 10% deposit is the hardest part, once someone has that mortgages are actually available for the rest but getting £40k in savings while paying exorbitant rents and taxes isn't easy.
It'd be easier if taxes were lower but you want to make them higher instead.
There are far fewer properties in London available for £405k or less ie affordable to the average Londoner on the average London wage than the number of renters in London who want to buy property given about 50% of Londoners now rent
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
A collapse in house prices is needed dahn sarf to make any of them affordable. Even "affordable" houses are bonkers compared to salaries.
I don't see that happening, or helping. Won't happen because the treasury will introduce help to sell measures, won't help because the backs will stop lending on falling assets. It's like being on the Titanic and saying What can we do to make places in the lifeboats more *affordable*, kind of not the point.
Covid raises the prospect of a complete change in how we live and work. Cut the need to pay £stupid for a show box with easy and expensive transport links to London or the other big cities and the value of them has to fall as demand drops off.
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
No averages are not meaningless, an average buyer will be seeking to buy an average property, a first time buyer will be seeking to buy the same type of property as an average first time buyer.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North where property is far cheaper to buy even relative to income, you do not have a clue how hard it is to buy property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405,900, still well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time buyer London home on average
Well obviously it depends upon what type of average you are using, conceivably and likely there are more houses under the average price than above (you can do averages can't you?) so the majority will be buying houses below the average price.
Even on the average London price paid by first time buyers (the lowest you can go) average prices are still beyond the range of those on the average London wage as I showed
Most homes are sold for below average but you still think average is the lowest you can go?
How thick are you? Do you think that zero homes are sold above average? Since when was average the lowest you can go?
First time buyer homes are sold for below average yes and as I have shown you even the average home bought by first time buyers in London is still priced at a value those on an average London wage cannot afford.
You can rant and be as rude as you like but clearly you do not understand that in London most Londoners on an average wage cannot afford to buy.
It doesn't matter what the average is, since the majority of sales are below average. It matters what is available. Repeatedly saying "average", "average", "average" is irrelevant when literally over half of all sales are for below average.
I've show you literally thousands of homes available well below the average.
Most can't afford to buy due to ruinous rent and taxes, meaning they can't get a deposit together without help. If taxes were lower, it'd be possible to save more and get a deposit together.
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
No averages are not meaningless, an average buyer will be seeking to buy an average property, a first time buyer will be seeking to buy the same type of property as an average first time buyer.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North, you do not have a clue how hard it is to but property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405, 900 well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time home on average
No that is categorically false; an average buyer categorically will not be seeking to buy an average property. An average buyer will be seeking to buy what they can afford.
First time buyers will be seeking to buy the cheapest properties in general, while people moving up the property ladder can buy more expensive ones.
Most homes are sold for less than average prices. The "average" prices are inflated by multimillion pound homes.
Even FTB averages will be inflated by the very well off buying above average properties. That's how averages work. A multimillionaire like a Premier League professional or someone with extremely wealthy parents etc looking to buy their first property won't be buying an entry level property but will still class as FTB and inflate the averages.
In order to buy a property you don't need to buy an "average" home. You need to buy a home.
For goodness sake. I have just shown you even if an average buyer seeks an average first time buyer property in London they would still be unable to afford it on the average London wage with even a 10% deposit in top of a mortgage for 4.5 times they and their partners combined income.
Buying property in London is now all but impossible for most bar high earners, the rich or those who get a gift or inheritance as I originally said. Hence London has by far the highest percentage of renters in the UK
Responding to your side of this spat you do at least live in Essicks on the edge of London so are closer to this than Philip in Cheshire-dahling.
Your party represents the property owners who profiteer from this mess. So what is the point that you are making - that Boris will go after the landlords? Pull the other one. The only solution to property in London is collapse the value of them.
And the one thing that would help - removing the need to commute into town for a job you can do remotely - is the exact opposite of policy which implores people to start commuting again so they can spend £5 on a twatty coffee each day.
Unless London ceases to be a global city, immigration is slashed to near zero and foreign investment in London property ceases then London property prices will not collapse whether people WFH or not.
Ian Birrell @ianbirrell · 2h Now David Willetts, a supposed expert and former minister, saying the beneficiaries of increased social care funding will be exclusively elderly. Pitiful. Almost half spending goes on working age adults. So bored of people pontificating about the system when so ignorant about it
Willetts was on R4 this morning. His point, with which I agree, is that NI has too narrow a tax base and means that the elderly do not contribute to the cost. In short he was talking about the funding of social care, not the recipients.
I have to say that the comparison between Willetts and Kendal this morning was painful. Kendall really had nothing to say except their tax would be "fairer". No idea what it would be though. We do not have an opposition worthy of the name, we have a Conservative party that produces its own opposition and discussion. This is not healthy.
They're years out from an election, they shouldn't be announcing new taxes yet.
One of the few advantages the opposition has is that they can optimize for the world as it is at the time of the manifesto, rather than the world as it was a few years before.
Not good enough on this issue. Twenty years have been wasted not fixing social care. The opposition should have a policy and a way of costing it/paying for it.
I was absolutely fuming by the end of Liz Kendel's few minutes of airtime. Utterly pathetic
At least she didn't call it a Death Tax. An improvement, I guess.
The best thing that could happen in this country is a complete and utter collapse of house prices and a wipeout of housing "wealth". It distorts everything.
I don't think the NI proposal will see the light of day.
PB is not representative of anything. But it's the first time ever I've seen right, centre, left and all shades between united in thinking that an NI increase is a Bad Idea. There may be little agreement between us on what the alternative should be, but the PB tribe seems pretty united in rejecting an NI increase.
The government should listen to us.
Speak for yourself, I find myself in rare agreement with BJO amongst others in backing a 1% NI rise over less palatable alternatives
Apols if I've missed it but what's your rationale for NI being a better option than IT?
For starters as IT goes against Tory principles of preserving estates and family assets and NI was set up originally to fund healthcare so if we need more funds to pay for it that is where it should come from
I get the 'protect estates' point but by 'IT' I meant Income Tax not Inheritance Tax.
NI is now fungible. It's a form of IT except it exempts pensioners and is more regressive in its impact across the income scale.
My question is why do you favour using that to raise money for health & social care as opposed to mainstream IT?
As healthcare is what NI was set up to fund alongside unemployment insurance and state pensions.
IT was originally set up to fund the Napoleonic wars ie defence
But here we are in 2021 where it's just a way of raising money for public services. So is there an argument relevant to today? The suspicion is that other than it being an easier sell to Tory voters there isn't, but I just wondered if you had one.
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
No averages are not meaningless, an average buyer will be seeking to buy an average property, a first time buyer will be seeking to buy the same type of property as an average first time buyer.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North where property is far cheaper to buy even relative to income, you do not have a clue how hard it is to buy property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405,900, still well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time buyer London home on average
Well obviously it depends upon what type of average you are using, conceivably and likely there are more houses under the average price than above (you can do averages can't you?) so the majority will be buying houses below the average price.
Even on the average London price paid by first time buyers (the lowest you can go) average prices are still beyond the range of those on the average London wage as I showed
Most homes are sold for below average but you still think average is the lowest you can go?
How thick are you? Do you think that zero homes are sold above average? Since when was average the lowest you can go?
First time buyer homes are sold for below average yes and as I have shown you even the average home bought by first time buyers in London is still priced at a value those on an average London wage cannot afford.
You can rant and be as rude as you like but clearly you do not understand that in London most Londoners on an average wage cannot afford to buy.
It doesn't matter what the average is, since the majority of sales are below average. It matters what is available. Repeatedly saying "average", "average", "average" is irrelevant when literally over half of all sales are for below average.
I've show you literally thousands of homes available well below the average.
Most can't afford to buy due to ruinous rent and taxes, meaning they can't get a deposit together without help. If taxes were lower, it'd be possible to save more and get a deposit together.
There are 8 million people in London, about 4 million of whom + now rent.
For goodness sake you have not found 4 million homes available for them to affordably buy have you? You have found a handful of cheaper properties in the worst areas of London!!
Fascinating as the "Small" / "Further Away" Father Ted debate is between the Essicks Massiv and the World Expert, do either of them propose any solution to London/SE property prices once they finish their stats death battle?
It doesn't matter whether the prices are the average or below average or whatever - as the people needing to live in them are paid double digit multiples less than the mortgage (my example was a mortgage 13.8x average salary) they won't be buying them anyway.
All the potential solutions threaten the property prices mainly held by the kind of people who vote Tory and higher up the ladder own the Tories, so the chance of any change is zero.
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
No averages are not meaningless, an average buyer will be seeking to buy an average property, a first time buyer will be seeking to buy the same type of property as an average first time buyer.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North where property is far cheaper to buy even relative to income, you do not have a clue how hard it is to buy property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405,900, still well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time buyer London home on average
Well obviously it depends upon what type of average you are using, conceivably and likely there are more houses under the average price than above (you can do averages can't you?) so the majority will be buying houses below the average price.
Even on the average London price paid by first time buyers (the lowest you can go) average prices are still beyond the range of those on the average London wage as I showed
No it is not. You might be right but you haven't shown it. Can you not do even the simplest of maths. The average 1st time buyer home cost more than most of the 1st time buyer homes. Do you understand that and why? It is an arithmetic average of an uneven sample.
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
No averages are not meaningless, an average buyer will be seeking to buy an average property, a first time buyer will be seeking to buy the same type of property as an average first time buyer.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North, you do not have a clue how hard it is to but property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405, 900 well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time home on average
No that is categorically false; an average buyer categorically will not be seeking to buy an average property. An average buyer will be seeking to buy what they can afford.
First time buyers will be seeking to buy the cheapest properties in general, while people moving up the property ladder can buy more expensive ones.
Most homes are sold for less than average prices. The "average" prices are inflated by multimillion pound homes.
Even FTB averages will be inflated by the very well off buying above average properties. That's how averages work. A multimillionaire like a Premier League professional or someone with extremely wealthy parents etc looking to buy their first property won't be buying an entry level property but will still class as FTB and inflate the averages.
In order to buy a property you don't need to buy an "average" home. You need to buy a home.
For goodness sake. I have just shown you even if an average buyer seeks an average first time buyer property in London they would still be unable to afford it on the average London wage with even a 10% deposit in top of a mortgage for 4.5 times they and their partners combined income.
Buying property in London is now all but impossible for most bar high earners, the rich or those who get a gift or inheritance as I originally said. Hence London has by far the highest percentage of renters in the UK
Responding to your side of this spat you do at least live in Essicks on the edge of London so are closer to this than Philip in Cheshire-dahling.
Your party represents the property owners who profiteer from this mess. So what is the point that you are making - that Boris will go after the landlords? Pull the other one. The only solution to property in London is collapse the value of them.
And the one thing that would help - removing the need to commute into town for a job you can do remotely - is the exact opposite of policy which implores people to start commuting again so they can spend £5 on a twatty coffee each day.
Unless London ceases to be a global city, immigration is slashed to near zero and foreign investment in London property ceases then London property prices will not collapse whether people WFH or not.
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
No averages are not meaningless, an average buyer will be seeking to buy an average property, a first time buyer will be seeking to buy the same type of property as an average first time buyer.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North where property is far cheaper to buy even relative to income, you do not have a clue how hard it is to buy property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405,900, still well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time buyer London home on average
Well obviously it depends upon what type of average you are using, conceivably and likely there are more houses under the average price than above (you can do averages can't you?) so the majority will be buying houses below the average price.
Even on the average London price paid by first time buyers (the lowest you can go) average prices are still beyond the range of those on the average London wage as I showed
Most homes are sold for below average but you still think average is the lowest you can go?
How thick are you? Do you think that zero homes are sold above average? Since when was average the lowest you can go?
First time buyer homes are sold for below average yes and as I have shown you even the average home bought by first time buyers in London is still priced at a value those on an average London wage cannot afford.
You can rant and be as rude as you like but clearly you do not understand that in London most Londoners on an average wage cannot afford to buy.
It doesn't matter what the average is, since the majority of sales are below average. It matters what is available. Repeatedly saying "average", "average", "average" is irrelevant when literally over half of all sales are for below average.
I've show you literally thousands of homes available well below the average.
Most can't afford to buy due to ruinous rent and taxes, meaning they can't get a deposit together without help. If taxes were lower, it'd be possible to save more and get a deposit together.
There are 8 million people in London, about 4 million of whom + now rent.
For goodness sake you have not found 4 million homes available for them to affordable buy have you? You have found a handful of cheaper properties in the worst areas of London!!
That's absolutely irrelevant, there aren't 4 million people looking to buy right now.
Those who are able to get a deposit together and get a mortgage are able to find a property. The issue is that today most people can't get a deposit together without help - but that's not a fact of life that has to be true.
Fascinating as the "Small" / "Further Away" Father Ted debate is between the Essicks Massiv and the World Expert, do either of them propose any solution to London/SE property prices once they finish their stats death battle?
It doesn't matter whether the prices are the average or below average or whatever - as the people needing to live in them are paid double digit multiples less than the mortgage (my example was a mortgage 13.8x average salary) they won't be buying them anyway.
All the potential solutions threaten the property prices mainly held by the kind of people who vote Tory and higher up the ladder own the Tories, so the chance of any change is zero.
My three-pronged solution:
Lower taxes so people can save more of their own income to enable them to get more of a deposit/have more disposable income for affordability.
More and easier construction to lower house prices.
Higher inflation to allow house prices to earnings ratios to deflate without people going into negative equity.
GMB comes out against NI hike to pay for social care. Also wants a 50% pay rise for carers.
At least the union has got one bit right - to fix the shortage of care workers massive pay rises are required (or an exemption made for foreign workers).
The reason we needed imported care home staff in the first place was that people don't want to work long hours cleaning up someone else's mother's piss. It isn't all about wages - same as truck drivers. As various articles over the weekend pointed out, there is no solution to these acute and immediate labour shortages that "just pay them more" will fix.
We need a complete rethink of the whole care sector. Private care homes & private nurseries charge ruinous fees and pay minimum wage. Perhaps the profit motive isn't appropriate in this sector...?
If we needed imported care staff then why are well over 80% of care staff domestic?
Indeed the domestic/"imported" staff ratio I do believe almost exactly matches that of the labour market in general.
Just pay them more absolutely will fix it.
How much of an extra NI rise will be needed if we gave all private care home staff a rise of 20%? People are already paying ruinous fees to care for their unwanted parents, so a whopping pay rise to get people to want to take the jobs will go straight on top of the fees charged.
I'm not saying I disagree. Its just that your "just pay more" magic money tree isn't a realistic solution. Someone has to pay for it, and nobody is willing to do so.
No rise in NI needed. Care staff are on a fraction of the salary that NHS etc staff are on. There's no divine right to get someone to provide quality care for minimum wage.
If fees go up to cover it, fees go up. But only a fraction of the fees will be going towards staff wages anyway.
That's the problem - a lot of the fee paid to a care / nursing home actually goes to the profit of others rather than care itself.
If that's the case, how about the public sector providing it in house at true cost ? It's not exactly a luxury.
The best thing that could happen in this country is a complete and utter collapse of house prices and a wipeout of housing "wealth". It distorts everything.
Houses are somewhere to live, not a goldmine.
Shudders, back to stacking shelves in Sainsbury's for me then
I don't think the NI proposal will see the light of day.
PB is not representative of anything. But it's the first time ever I've seen right, centre, left and all shades between united in thinking that an NI increase is a Bad Idea. There may be little agreement between us on what the alternative should be, but the PB tribe seems pretty united in rejecting an NI increase.
The government should listen to us.
Speak for yourself, I find myself in rare agreement with BJO amongst others in backing a 1% NI rise over less palatable alternatives
Apols if I've missed it but what's your rationale for NI being a better option than IT?
For starters as IT goes against Tory principles of preserving estates and family assets and NI was set up originally to fund healthcare so if we need more funds to pay for it that is where it should come from
I get the 'protect estates' point but by 'IT' I meant Income Tax not Inheritance Tax.
NI is now fungible. It's a form of IT except it exempts pensioners and is more regressive in its impact across the income scale.
My question is why do you favour using that to raise money for health & social care as opposed to mainstream IT?
As healthcare is what NI was set up to fund alongside unemployment insurance and state pensions.
IT was originally set up to fund the Napoleonic wars ie defence
But here we are in 2021 where it's just a way of raising money for public services. So is there an argument relevant to today? The suspicion is that other than it being an easier sell to Tory voters there isn't, but I just wondered if you had one.
Indeed. On that argument IT should only ever be spent on wooden warships with cast iron guns, and on armies with each regiment effectively privately owned by the colonel, and whose officers buy their own promotion.
And he's wrong about NI as taxed by the Government - it was only ever for insurance against unemployment.
On topic, the questions are up there with "is there honey still for tea?". Of course, we all want the elderly and especially our nearest and dearest to have a dignified and comfortable life - we'd love residential care homes to be neo-palatial with caring staff on call 24/7 and those in residence wanting for nothing.
Then we wake up to the cold light of reality.
For me, it starts this time with the profit motive - the care home industry is less about caring for the residents than making any money for the care home owners and providers. Perhaps, like public transport, caring for the elderly should be run as an enormous loss leader - after all, most of those in care have contributed in so many ways but then we come back to the traditional notion of the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
Care costs - proper, decent, dignified care costs a lot more. Perhaps the operational model of care homes as hotels with fees and charges is where we go wrong - perhaps it should all be free and funded out of general taxation.
However, what of the majority who never go into or need care? What of those cared for by family or by full-time carers, what of those who sacrifice their hopes and lives to care for those who once cared for them?
Care isn't just about residential homes or assets - it's about people, lives, hopes, aspirations. It's about how we want to treat the elderly - how they should be treated. Making it a bureaucratic process fixated on asset values is demeaning and degrading.
It's also about families and individuals - it's about those with dementia or similar conditions. It's those who need 24 hour care and those who don't and it's about palliative care as well as providing a nice room in a nice house with a nice garden.
I agree we've dithered for 20 years if not longer - the demographic trends were evident in the 1980s. It's always easy to put off the hard decisions such as explaining to your independently-minded father the time has come for him to move to a place where he can receive proper care and knowing deep down it's your job and you are abdicating that responsibility because, much though you might want to, you don't have the room and you don't have the capacity or time to provide the level of care he will ultimately need.
I don't think the NI proposal will see the light of day.
PB is not representative of anything. But it's the first time ever I've seen right, centre, left and all shades between united in thinking that an NI increase is a Bad Idea. There may be little agreement between us on what the alternative should be, but the PB tribe seems pretty united in rejecting an NI increase.
The government should listen to us.
Speak for yourself, I find myself in rare agreement with BJO amongst others in backing a 1% NI rise over less palatable alternatives
Apols if I've missed it but what's your rationale for NI being a better option than IT?
For starters as IT goes against Tory principles of preserving estates and family assets and NI was set up originally to fund healthcare so if we need more funds to pay for it that is where it should come from
I get the 'protect estates' point but by 'IT' I meant Income Tax not Inheritance Tax.
NI is now fungible. It's a form of IT except it exempts pensioners and is more regressive in its impact across the income scale.
My question is why do you favour using that to raise money for health & social care as opposed to mainstream IT?
As healthcare is what NI was set up to fund alongside unemployment insurance and state pensions.
IT was originally set up to fund the Napoleonic wars ie defence
But here we are in 2021 where it's just a way of raising money for public services. So is there an argument relevant to today? The suspicion is that other than it being an easier sell to Tory voters there isn't, but I just wondered if you had one.
Indeed. On that argument IT should only ever be spent on wooden warships with cast iron guns, and on armies with each regiment effectively privately owned by the colonel, and whose officers buy their own promotion.
And he's wrong about NI as taxed by the Government - it was only ever for insurance against unemployment.
And JSA is still based on NI today, the fast income tax has expanded to cover education, law and order, culture, transport etc as well as defence does not mean we should not focus NI on what it was originally created to pay for
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
No averages are not meaningless, an average buyer will be seeking to buy an average property, a first time buyer will be seeking to buy the same type of property as an average first time buyer.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North where property is far cheaper to buy even relative to income, you do not have a clue how hard it is to buy property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405,900, still well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time buyer London home on average
Well obviously it depends upon what type of average you are using, conceivably and likely there are more houses under the average price than above (you can do averages can't you?) so the majority will be buying houses below the average price.
Even on the average London price paid by first time buyers (the lowest you can go) average prices are still beyond the range of those on the average London wage as I showed
Most homes are sold for below average but you still think average is the lowest you can go?
How thick are you? Do you think that zero homes are sold above average? Since when was average the lowest you can go?
First time buyer homes are sold for below average yes and as I have shown you even the average home bought by first time buyers in London is still priced at a value those on an average London wage cannot afford.
You can rant and be as rude as you like but clearly you do not understand that in London most Londoners on an average wage cannot afford to buy.
It doesn't matter what the average is, since the majority of sales are below average. It matters what is available. Repeatedly saying "average", "average", "average" is irrelevant when literally over half of all sales are for below average.
I've show you literally thousands of homes available well below the average.
Most can't afford to buy due to ruinous rent and taxes, meaning they can't get a deposit together without help. If taxes were lower, it'd be possible to save more and get a deposit together.
There are 8 million people in London, about 4 million of whom + now rent.
For goodness sake you have not found 4 million homes available for them to affordable buy have you? You have found a handful of cheaper properties in the worst areas of London!!
That's absolutely irrelevant, there aren't 4 million people looking to buy right now.
Those who are able to get a deposit together and get a mortgage are able to find a property. The issue is that today most people can't get a deposit together without help - but that's not a fact of life that has to be true.
There are over 4 million people in London who rent now and would ideally like to buy. Even if not all of them are imminent first time buyers there are also far more first time buyers in London than the handful of properties in the worst parts of London you found that could be affordable to them even with a deposit
Fascinating as the "Small" / "Further Away" Father Ted debate is between the Essicks Massiv and the World Expert, do either of them propose any solution to London/SE property prices once they finish their stats death battle?
It doesn't matter whether the prices are the average or below average or whatever - as the people needing to live in them are paid double digit multiples less than the mortgage (my example was a mortgage 13.8x average salary) they won't be buying them anyway.
All the potential solutions threaten the property prices mainly held by the kind of people who vote Tory and higher up the ladder own the Tories, so the chance of any change is zero.
My three-pronged solution:
Lower taxes so people can save more of their own income to enable them to get more of a deposit/have more disposable income for affordability.
More and easier construction to lower house prices.
Higher inflation to allow house prices to earnings ratios to deflate without people going into negative equity.
I do appreciate you proposing a solution! Question - how does it work? I've just looked at Wembley Park, where they have built a dozen new apartment blocks with thousands of apartments available (for rent). A fucking studio with room to break your cat's neck when swung costs £1,600 a month.
So lets assume that space exists for "more and easier construction" in and around that London. They're about to build at Old Oak Common, so how much do you need to lower taxes on people earning £26k a year for them to be able to afford the mortgage on a reduced cost £250k apartment?
Wages are completely disconnected from property prices and you aren't going to cut taxes or find places to build homes in to close off the gap in the private sector.
The only possible solution is the public sector. If that vast Wembley Park development had been done by Brent council (stop sniggering at the back) and rents were being offered for the cat decapitating studio apartments at affordable prices, then maybe you'd be onto something. That would collapse private sector prices though which is why it won't be done.
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
No averages are not meaningless, an average buyer will be seeking to buy an average property, a first time buyer will be seeking to buy the same type of property as an average first time buyer.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North where property is far cheaper to buy even relative to income, you do not have a clue how hard it is to buy property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405,900, still well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time buyer London home on average
Well obviously it depends upon what type of average you are using, conceivably and likely there are more houses under the average price than above (you can do averages can't you?) so the majority will be buying houses below the average price.
Even on the average London price paid by first time buyers (the lowest you can go) average prices are still beyond the range of those on the average London wage as I showed
No it is not. You might be right but you haven't shown it. Can you not do even the simplest of maths. The average 1st time buyer home cost more than most of the 1st time buyer homes. Do you understand that and why? It is an arithmetic average of an uneven sample.
Please find me then several million homes affordable to those who rent in London and who want to buy their first home, based on 4.5 times the average London wage and a 10% deposit as you are so confident they exist?
You believe the NI insurance increase is right Big G because conveniently you won't have to pay anything. Yet the young will.
You should pay, pay your own way
I have paid my way all my life and will continue to do so
I will pay the care costs of my wife and I if they become necessary, remember that if you have a continual need for nhs care it is free, and only if you go into health care usually because of dementia you risk losing your home
And you boast how you are buying a house in London from an inheritance which does seem odd that you do not want others to have the benefit you are receiving
Buying a house should be affordable from wages, not inheritance.
If we didn't have such high tax rates, it could be.
Not in London and the South East it wouldn't be.
In London the average house price is now over £600,000 and in the South East over £400,000 even the full time average London wage before tax is only £41,000. Combined for a couple that makes £82,000 and 4.5 times that is only £369,000.
You do realise don't you that the majority of homes are sold for less than the average house price? 🤦♂️
Even if you use median averages half of homes are sold for less than that, but for mean averages then multimillion pound homes drag the average up by more than dilapidated homes drop it by.
London's not cheap but its possible to buy a home for less than £369k even there. I've just put in Rightmove a search for London, 3 beds, with a filter for excluding shared ownership and it literally found hundreds of properties at the price you said.
Saving for the deposit can be the hardest part of getting a loan and if taxes weren't so high so people had more disposable income they'd be able to save up more via work and not rely upon an inheritance.
EDIT: Change it to 2 beds and there's thousands of homes available to get on the ladder at that price.
Not in London and the South East. You managed to find one borough of London, one ie Barking and Dagenham on the outer reaches of London and one of the poorest and most deprived in the country with an average house price of less than £369,000 and given there are 8 million people in London most of them on an average London wage are not going to all be able to buy the few 2 to 3 beds in London you found for less than the average price are they!!
So as I said the average earner in London and the South East cannot buy a property without an inheritance or gift in most parts of London and the South East even if taxes were 0
No I found one borough of London (and stopped looking at that point) where the average was below your quoted figure.
But the majority of homes sold are below average and almost all First Time Buyers will go for a below average home not an above average one.
Besides try looking on Rightmove. There's literally thousands of homes available for 2 beds and hundreds for 3 beds at that price.
As for your claim that millions can't buy the homes listed now, well of course not but why should they? Many of those millions either will currently already own one or don't want to own one. The ones listed on Rightmove are only those available today and will only ever be a small proportion of houses - in twelve months time there will be different homes available as these will be gone but others will be listed. That's the way the property market works.
According to Rightmove across London as a whole however the average London flat sold for on average £543,812. Terraced properties in London sold for an average price of £735,704, while semi-detached properties fetched £713,886 in the capital.
The majority of property sales are BELOW AVERAGE not average.
Are you seriously incapable of understanding what the words below average mean? It applies to the majority of sales.
So even when I produce the average price first time buyers have to pay to buy in London ie below the overall average let alone the average price it is STILL above the price those on an average wage in London could afford to pay for a property ie £369,000 only.
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
No your point does not stand since averages are meaningless. Literally thousands of homes are available below that price.
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
No averages are not meaningless, an average buyer will be seeking to buy an average property, a first time buyer will be seeking to buy the same type of property as an average first time buyer.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North where property is far cheaper to buy even relative to income, you do not have a clue how hard it is to buy property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405,900, still well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time buyer London home on average
Well obviously it depends upon what type of average you are using, conceivably and likely there are more houses under the average price than above (you can do averages can't you?) so the majority will be buying houses below the average price.
Even on the average London price paid by first time buyers (the lowest you can go) average prices are still beyond the range of those on the average London wage as I showed
Most homes are sold for below average but you still think average is the lowest you can go?
How thick are you? Do you think that zero homes are sold above average? Since when was average the lowest you can go?
First time buyer homes are sold for below average yes and as I have shown you even the average home bought by first time buyers in London is still priced at a value those on an average London wage cannot afford.
You can rant and be as rude as you like but clearly you do not understand that in London most Londoners on an average wage cannot afford to buy.
It doesn't matter what the average is, since the majority of sales are below average. It matters what is available. Repeatedly saying "average", "average", "average" is irrelevant when literally over half of all sales are for below average.
I've show you literally thousands of homes available well below the average.
Most can't afford to buy due to ruinous rent and taxes, meaning they can't get a deposit together without help. If taxes were lower, it'd be possible to save more and get a deposit together.
There are 8 million people in London, about 4 million of whom + now rent.
For goodness sake you have not found 4 million homes available for them to affordable buy have you? You have found a handful of cheaper properties in the worst areas of London!!
That's absolutely irrelevant, there aren't 4 million people looking to buy right now.
Those who are able to get a deposit together and get a mortgage are able to find a property. The issue is that today most people can't get a deposit together without help - but that's not a fact of life that has to be true.
There are over 4 million people in London who rent now and would ideally like to buy. Even if not all of them are imminent first time buyers there are also far more first time buyers in London than the handful of properties in the worst parts of London you found that could be affordable to them even with a deposit
No there aren't. There isn't a town or city anywhere in the world where the properties currently available on the market would match the quantity of renters.
That's not how the market works.
The simple fact is, even in London, if you can get a deposit and you can get a mortgage then you can get a property. And many people do that every year. But its nigh-on impossible as it stands to accrue a deposit using your own savings as costs and taxes are so high - and that is what should be getting fixed, not rely upon windfalls from inheritance as the solution for a very few people.
The solution to funding social care is to cut inheritance tax to 10% but include land and business which are exempt. Trusts currently pay 6% every 10 years without public complaint. Not only will this raise tens of billions of pounds it will be extremely popular with voters as George Osborne discovered in 2007.
I don't think the NI proposal will see the light of day.
PB is not representative of anything. But it's the first time ever I've seen right, centre, left and all shades between united in thinking that an NI increase is a Bad Idea. There may be little agreement between us on what the alternative should be, but the PB tribe seems pretty united in rejecting an NI increase.
The government should listen to us.
Speak for yourself, I find myself in rare agreement with BJO amongst others in backing a 1% NI rise over less palatable alternatives
Apols if I've missed it but what's your rationale for NI being a better option than IT?
For starters as IT goes against Tory principles of preserving estates and family assets and NI was set up originally to fund healthcare so if we need more funds to pay for it that is where it should come from
I get the 'protect estates' point but by 'IT' I meant Income Tax not Inheritance Tax.
NI is now fungible. It's a form of IT except it exempts pensioners and is more regressive in its impact across the income scale.
My question is why do you favour using that to raise money for health & social care as opposed to mainstream IT?
As healthcare is what NI was set up to fund alongside unemployment insurance and state pensions.
IT was originally set up to fund the Napoleonic wars ie defence
But here we are in 2021 where it's just a way of raising money for public services. So is there an argument relevant to today? The suspicion is that other than it being an easier sell to Tory voters there isn't, but I just wondered if you had one.
Indeed. On that argument IT should only ever be spent on wooden warships with cast iron guns, and on armies with each regiment effectively privately owned by the colonel, and whose officers buy their own promotion.
And he's wrong about NI as taxed by the Government - it was only ever for insurance against unemployment.
Income Tax was also meant to be a temporary measure - so goes the old chestnut often rolled out by fruity types. So if we're going 'back to basics' it ought to be neither cut nor raised but abolished!
Guess what? In the so called "Tax Haven" of Guernsey I pay more tax on my pension than I would in the UK - a combination of lower personal allowances and all income being subject to Guernsey's equivalent of NI - it only drops to a lower rate (3.4%) when people pass the pension age - so even pensioners in their eighties and nineties contribute.
The solution to funding social care is to cut inheritance tax to 10% but include land and business which are exempt. Trusts currently pay 6% every 10 years without public complaint. Not only will this raise tens of billions of pounds it will be extremely popular with voters as George Osborne discovered in 2007.
It might be fair, it might raise cash but wouldn't it make farming completely uneconomical ?
Meanwhile. Housing up north anecdote. On the train last night to Carlisle. 2 lads mid twenties, vaguely knew each other from school sat behind me. A bit pissed so garrulous. One drives a van, the other factory work. One has bought a house. Gone up from £180 k to £200k in 12 months. Other has saved a deposit, and is buying, by not paying any rent or keep for 6 years. Both talking about looking to buy a second home to BTL. One enthusiastic to do so, the other "too much hassle." Talked exclusively about the subject for 20 minutes. Neither seemed to regard housing as anything other than an easy way to make money. Both remarked it was the way to "not to work as hard." With a second property, the keen one's ambition was to quit and become a postman. Not sure housing will be solved any time soon.
The solution to funding social care is to cut inheritance tax to 10% but include land and business which are exempt. Trusts currently pay 6% every 10 years without public complaint. Not only will this raise tens of billions of pounds it will be extremely popular with voters as George Osborne discovered in 2007.
What land and business is exempt beyond farm land - which I think taxing would open a whole world of different issues?
Fascinating as the "Small" / "Further Away" Father Ted debate is between the Essicks Massiv and the World Expert, do either of them propose any solution to London/SE property prices once they finish their stats death battle?
It doesn't matter whether the prices are the average or below average or whatever - as the people needing to live in them are paid double digit multiples less than the mortgage (my example was a mortgage 13.8x average salary) they won't be buying them anyway.
All the potential solutions threaten the property prices mainly held by the kind of people who vote Tory and higher up the ladder own the Tories, so the chance of any change is zero.
My three-pronged solution:
Lower taxes so people can save more of their own income to enable them to get more of a deposit/have more disposable income for affordability.
More and easier construction to lower house prices.
Higher inflation to allow house prices to earnings ratios to deflate without people going into negative equity.
I do appreciate you proposing a solution! Question - how does it work? I've just looked at Wembley Park, where they have built a dozen new apartment blocks with thousands of apartments available (for rent). A fucking studio with room to break your cat's neck when swung costs £1,600 a month.
So lets assume that space exists for "more and easier construction" in and around that London. They're about to build at Old Oak Common, so how much do you need to lower taxes on people earning £26k a year for them to be able to afford the mortgage on a reduced cost £250k apartment?
Wages are completely disconnected from property prices and you aren't going to cut taxes or find places to build homes in to close off the gap in the private sector.
The only possible solution is the public sector. If that vast Wembley Park development had been done by Brent council (stop sniggering at the back) and rents were being offered for the cat decapitating studio apartments at affordable prices, then maybe you'd be onto something. That would collapse private sector prices though which is why it won't be done.
If the places you build are selling for that much then the bottleneck is almost definitely finding land you're allowed to build on and how high you're allowed to build on it, so it won't make much difference whether Brent Council builds it or some private developer builds it. They could offer a few places to lucky punters at below market rates, but there would still be far more people who wanted places to live than there were places to live, so that wouldn't make a dent in the rest of the market.
Tokyo has the cheat codes for this, just legalize building things and people will build things.
The solution to funding social care is to cut inheritance tax to 10% but include land and business which are exempt. Trusts currently pay 6% every 10 years without public complaint. Not only will this raise tens of billions of pounds it will be extremely popular with voters as George Osborne discovered in 2007.
It might be fair, it might raise cash but wouldn't it make farming completely uneconomical ?
It would make it impossible to pass the business on to ones children
Comments
So as waiting lists get absurdly wrong and we face a winter crisis where people drop dead of everything that Covid has allowed to become a crisis, we are unlikely to see any triumphalist "you've had yer money" posturing from the government.
In reality there is little point tipping endless monies into the NHS if so much is going to keep leaking out to pay for all the pointless layers of corporate management and marketised duplication. But as the whole point in the reforms is help their donor friends make money would the Tories do that?
For clarification I don't have strong views on this, but you are arguing the exact opposite on these issues.
If necessary this government would follow the Madrid route with the Catalan nationalists if they held a wildcat referendum, there will never be an indyref2 allowed while the Tories remain in government before a generation has elapsed since 2014
GMB comes out against NI hike to pay for social care. Also wants a 50% pay rise for carers.
At least the union has got one bit right - to fix the shortage of care workers massive pay rises are required (or an exemption made for foreign workers).
Willets might be correct if he means that the elderly would be greater beneficiaries in cash terms ?
Do you have the figures ?
So my point buying property in London is unaffordable in most areas for most Londoners on an average wage stands absolutely.
?
This is a genuine question, I'm not familiar with this but my understanding was that most young adults in social care are because they have conditions that mean they require care and many have done their entire life so likely haven't ever bought a property in the first place.
But I have absolutely no facts or figures on this, could be entirely wrong.
I can't believe you are saying that though. I personally don't have a strong view one way or the other re Independence sitting here in Surrey. But I can't believe that if a situation arises like I described you would still feel the same. Does that mean you don't feel we should have given independence to our empire, that Belarus is ok, North Korea also, etc, etc and if a vast majority want independence they shouldn't have it. That doesn't exit currently, but you are saying if it does the answer is still no. Long live the Warsaw pact.
I have to say that the comparison between Willetts and Kendal this morning was painful. Kendall really had nothing to say except their tax would be "fairer". No idea what it would be though. We do not have an opposition worthy of the name, we have a Conservative party that produces its own opposition and discussion. This is not healthy.
We need a complete rethink of the whole care sector. Private care homes & private nurseries charge ruinous fees and pay minimum wage. Perhaps the profit motive isn't appropriate in this sector...?
Morally that may have been right but it cost us our superpower status no doubt which is why Churchill when he was Tory PM pre 1945 opposed it and opposed it as Leader of the Opposition
PS your maths were wrong anyway since the £369k is for the mortgage element of the property and excludes the deposit. If someone has saved a 10% deposit then that puts the property value affordable at over £400k.
Never lasts as long as until there's a change of heart in Downing Street.
(Also, I as working age adult benefit from the security the cap provides. But I recognise that is more academic)
Indeed the domestic/"imported" staff ratio I do believe almost exactly matches that of the labour market in general.
Just pay them more absolutely will fix it.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/09/05/tory-party-grandees-join-national-insurance-tax-rise-revolt/
That can only, realistically, be met out of general taxation - what else? Charge the parents/close family members? Do what we do for children's hospices and rely mostly on charity donations? (That could conceivably work, but I'm not sure that the older adults with perhaps long lives ahead would do so well in donations as children with life-shortening conditions). So it's irrelevant to the discussion, it's a completely different question/problem.
The fact you can find a handful of exceptions below that price in the worst parts of outer London does not change that, there are simply not enough of those to provide homes to own for all the first time buyers in London even if they were all prepared to move there.
You live in the North where property is far cheaper to buy even relative to income, you do not have a clue how hard it is to buy property in London for the average Londoner on the average London wage.
Even a 10% deposit at £369k added to the mortgage would still be only £405,900, still well below the £489,000 needed to buy even a first time buyer London home on average
One of the few advantages the opposition has is that they can optimize for the world as it is at the time of the manifesto, rather than the world as it was a few years before.
Is it a vote winner?
Yes? Then it is Tory dogma.
NI is now fungible. It's a form of IT except it exempts pensioners and is more regressive in its impact across the income scale.
My question is why do you favour using that to raise money for health & social care as opposed to mainstream IT?
So, I think it is true that we will end up with a "compromise" which will increase social care spending but by nowhere near enough to meet the need or implement Dilnot. Which will be decried by all and sundry on both sides of the argument but is probably not a bad effort right now.
First time buyers will be seeking to buy the cheapest properties in general, while people moving up the property ladder can buy more expensive ones.
Most homes are sold for less than average prices. The "average" prices are inflated by multimillion pound homes.
Even FTB averages will be inflated by the very well off buying above average properties. That's how averages work. A multimillionaire like a Premier League professional or someone with extremely wealthy parents etc looking to buy their first property won't be buying an entry level property but will still class as FTB and inflate the averages.
In order to buy a property you don't need to buy an "average" home. You need to buy a home.
Indeed the hardest element typically to get is the deposit, even 'dahn sarf'. If you can get a £40k deposit together which is not easy even for professionals then there are no shortage of £400k properties you can get for that price.
I was absolutely fuming by the end of Liz Kendel's few minutes of airtime. Utterly pathetic
I'm not saying I disagree. Its just that your "just pay more" magic money tree isn't a realistic solution. Someone has to pay for it, and nobody is willing to do so.
Buying property in London is now all but impossible for most bar high earners, the rich or those who get a gift or inheritance as I originally said. Hence London has by far the highest percentage of renters in the UK
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If fees go up to cover it, fees go up. But only a fraction of the fees will be going towards staff wages anyway.
IT was originally set up to fund the Napoleonic wars ie defence
If people aren't prepared to pay for social care out of general taxation, the next best thing is to go the people directly affected in the medium term on a case of self-interest.
Government involvement is needed to make the scheme workable.
You say raising NI is easy. Then why hasn't a scheme ever been implemented despite Brown, Cameron, May and now Johnson going through the motions?
There are thousands of homes available for the prices we're speaking about. Getting a 10% deposit is the hardest part, once someone has that mortgages are actually available for the rest but getting £40k in savings while paying exorbitant rents and taxes isn't easy.
It'd be easier if taxes were lower but you want to make them higher instead.
I'm not interested in your spat with the Essicks Massiv over what is affordable. NONE of them are affordable. My BIL lives in a shitbox new build that is pretty much as I've just costed. They can only afford it because his OH inherited cash from her parents. The other BIL will be renting forever.
How thick are you? Do you think that zero homes are sold above average? Since when was average the lowest you can go?
Your party represents the property owners who profiteer from this mess. So what is the point that you are making - that Boris will go after the landlords? Pull the other one. The only solution to property in London is collapse the value of them.
And the one thing that would help - removing the need to commute into town for a job you can do remotely - is the exact opposite of policy which implores people to start commuting again so they can spend £5 on a twatty coffee each day.
You can rant and be as rude as you like but clearly you do not understand that in London most Londoners on an average wage cannot afford to buy.
I will have another go:
There are many more 1st time buyer houses under the price of the average 1st time buyer houses because that is how the arithmetic average works in this scenario. Do you get this?
I've show you literally thousands of homes available well below the average.
Most can't afford to buy due to ruinous rent and taxes, meaning they can't get a deposit together without help. If taxes were lower, it'd be possible to save more and get a deposit together.
Houses are somewhere to live, not a goldmine.
For goodness sake you have not found 4 million homes available for them to affordably buy have you? You have found a handful of cheaper properties in the worst areas of London!!
It doesn't matter whether the prices are the average or below average or whatever - as the people needing to live in them are paid double digit multiples less than the mortgage (my example was a mortgage 13.8x average salary) they won't be buying them anyway.
All the potential solutions threaten the property prices mainly held by the kind of people who vote Tory and higher up the ladder own the Tories, so the chance of any change is zero.
Those who are able to get a deposit together and get a mortgage are able to find a property. The issue is that today most people can't get a deposit together without help - but that's not a fact of life that has to be true.
Lower taxes so people can save more of their own income to enable them to get more of a deposit/have more disposable income for affordability.
More and easier construction to lower house prices.
Higher inflation to allow house prices to earnings ratios to deflate without people going into negative equity.
It's not exactly a luxury.
And he's wrong about NI as taxed by the Government - it was only ever for insurance against unemployment.
On topic, the questions are up there with "is there honey still for tea?". Of course, we all want the elderly and especially our nearest and dearest to have a dignified and comfortable life - we'd love residential care homes to be neo-palatial with caring staff on call 24/7 and those in residence wanting for nothing.
Then we wake up to the cold light of reality.
For me, it starts this time with the profit motive - the care home industry is less about caring for the residents than making any money for the care home owners and providers. Perhaps, like public transport, caring for the elderly should be run as an enormous loss leader - after all, most of those in care have contributed in so many ways but then we come back to the traditional notion of the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
Care costs - proper, decent, dignified care costs a lot more. Perhaps the operational model of care homes as hotels with fees and charges is where we go wrong - perhaps it should all be free and funded out of general taxation.
However, what of the majority who never go into or need care? What of those cared for by family or by full-time carers, what of those who sacrifice their hopes and lives to care for those who once cared for them?
Care isn't just about residential homes or assets - it's about people, lives, hopes, aspirations. It's about how we want to treat the elderly - how they should be treated. Making it a bureaucratic process fixated on asset values is demeaning and degrading.
It's also about families and individuals - it's about those with dementia or similar conditions. It's those who need 24 hour care and those who don't and it's about palliative care as well as providing a nice room in a nice house with a nice garden.
I agree we've dithered for 20 years if not longer - the demographic trends were evident in the 1980s. It's always easy to put off the hard decisions such as explaining to your independently-minded father the time has come for him to move to a place where he can receive proper care and knowing deep down it's your job and you are abdicating that responsibility because, much though you might want to, you don't have the room and you don't have the capacity or time to provide the level of care he will ultimately need.
Good start, well played. Then out next ball. 🤦♂️🏏
So lets assume that space exists for "more and easier construction" in and around that London. They're about to build at Old Oak Common, so how much do you need to lower taxes on people earning £26k a year for them to be able to afford the mortgage on a reduced cost £250k apartment?
Wages are completely disconnected from property prices and you aren't going to cut taxes or find places to build homes in to close off the gap in the private sector.
The only possible solution is the public sector. If that vast Wembley Park development had been done by Brent council (stop sniggering at the back) and rents were being offered for the cat decapitating studio apartments at affordable prices, then maybe you'd be onto something. That would collapse private sector prices though which is why it won't be done.
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It's a very clever slogan and one which sails well above the heads of Brexiteers
That's not how the market works.
The simple fact is, even in London, if you can get a deposit and you can get a mortgage then you can get a property. And many people do that every year. But its nigh-on impossible as it stands to accrue a deposit using your own savings as costs and taxes are so high - and that is what should be getting fixed, not rely upon windfalls from inheritance as the solution for a very few people.
https://twitter.com/kateferguson4/status/1434812342907322372
Tony Blair "I don't rule out at all engaging with the Taliban...but it has to be done from a position of strength."
On the train last night to Carlisle. 2 lads mid twenties, vaguely knew each other from school sat behind me. A bit pissed so garrulous.
One drives a van, the other factory work.
One has bought a house. Gone up from £180 k to £200k in 12 months. Other has saved a deposit, and is buying, by not paying any rent or keep for 6 years.
Both talking about looking to buy a second home to BTL. One enthusiastic to do so, the other "too much hassle."
Talked exclusively about the subject for 20 minutes. Neither seemed to regard housing as anything other than an easy way to make money. Both remarked it was the way to "not to work as hard." With a second property, the keen one's ambition was to quit and become a postman.
Not sure housing will be solved any time soon.
Tokyo has the cheat codes for this, just legalize building things and people will build things.