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Mortgage payments increasingly becoming a big issue – politicalbetting.com
Mortgage payments increasingly becoming a big issue – politicalbetting.com
You may or may not like its politics but the @spectator consistently comes up with some great charts. This one's on mortgage (un)affordability over time. pic.twitter.com/mMQfNBH3Q5
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Edit: for instance, thanks to inheritance or the bank of mum and dad (prop: C & U Party) helping put down a much bigger deposit than in the 2000s.
Meanwhile, it's not just mortgages, but food still. Note that contrary to longstanding rightwing myth, a lot of those people quoted are obviously actually cooking proper food - or were.
https://opendatacommunities.org/slice?dataset=http://opendatacommunities.org/data/housing-market/mortgages/rolling-total&http://opendatacommunities.org/def/ontology/time/refPeriod=http://reference.data.gov.uk/id/quarter/1990-Q1
https://www.uswitch.com/mortgages/mortgage-statistics/#:~:text=The number of UK first,to almost 410,000 in 2021.
Sort of the inverse of what you are suggesting
Still, these things are cyclical, and nowadays far more people are on fixed rates and many are yet to mature.
So the pain, if it is to come, for many will not be felt for a while.
Genuine edit so the most recent figure from the England dataset is 2019 and it's 301,000 vs 370,000 1990 and 270,000 2008. Not enough difference to alter the fundamental shitshowism of the situation.
https://twitter.com/britainelects
No change in the lead though
Now they risk a snowball effect, with buy-to-let properties excluded from the mortgage charter.
Labour would make sure all mortgages holders are protected - including buy-to-let.
https://twitter.com/rachelreevesmp/status/1675434079267831808
Just when I start thinking I might be able to vote Labour next time, they come up with insanity like this.
Hell no.
All investments can go down as well as up, and every BTL parasite that can't afford their mortgage is a house freed up for someone to buy to live in, instead of trying to sweat an income from an indentured tenant.
At the same time, the rental market supply contracts.
The actual solution to the property crisis is 8 million more properties.
If ftbs are more established, earning more, byy the time they take the plunge it is relevant to the graph.
https://twitter.com/benatipsos/status/1675867726689050624?s=20
34% now prefer Sunak as PM, 38% Starmer
https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-2-july-2023/
"If people want to see your GPs or senior nurses or headteachers or an accountant give up their job to want to come into Parliament they have to take a massive fall in their lifestyle to do it.
"A lot of people are not willing to do that. So you tend to get in Parliament either really rich people who don't need money and therefore they don't care if their salary is £88,000 or £28,000....
Or you will get people that were earning sort of £30,000 - £80,000 is a big jump but they might not come with the skills that Parliament needs.
"If I had my way I would halve the number of MPs and double the salaries. That wouldn't cost the taxpayer a penny and you would get a much higher quality of Parliament - and ministers.”
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-millionaire-sajid-javid-says-30378243?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar
That's not to say there should be no private rentals, but in a functioning market economy rentals should be cheaper than mortgages, and are in much of the world. If someone can afford to pay a landlord's mortgage, they can afford to pay their own, and for them to be paying someone else's instead is a market failure that needs addressing.
People or firms who invest their own money, not their tenant's money, into a property to let is entirely reasonable, but should be getting a return less than a mortgage.
HTH!
WTF is RIshi playing at, getting involved?
He was stumped according to the laws of the game. That's it.
Personally I would just say we need to pay MPs more because heck I earn more than they do from my spare room...
"...Of all the tributes paid to Silvio Berlusconi this week, the wreath that escortadvisor[dot]com placed outside his villa was probably the one he’d have been most touched by..."
https://conservativehome.com/2023/07/03/michael-howard-small-boats-and-the-rwanda-policy-judges-should-not-substitute-their-personal-views-for-those-of-ministers/
Being an MP is a full time job and MPs get the final say on legislation, Lords can only scrutinise legislation and delay non money bills for a year but the Commons will still push it through unamended if a conflict between the 2
An MPs salary is a big jump in pay for about 97% of the population.
Based on these ONS figures I'd say about £40k is an appropriate income for MPs.
What will be interesting will be if the evil algorithm punishes me for changing my video release schedule. Have done 2 or sometimes 3 videos a week for 9 months, think the quality has suffered on some recent videos so hoping that fewer bigger better will apply.
This cannot be bought; and you are as likely to get the right mix by paying nothing at all as by paying £xtrillion.
I don't mind the occasional foray into politics, or indeed folk dancing, aliens, AI, the fetid ugliness of Scots, and likeminded distractions, but ultimately we are here to talk about the cricket, and we should remember that
Also, and this will come as a surprise to PB-ers, I was THERE yesterday, at Lord's. Yes
It is very hard to believe it is real. In future people will claim it was all faked with Stable Diffuson
Cruellest aspect of British rule in South Asia was teaching the forebears of today's Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans how to play sodding cricket instead of, say, football.
You can be rich but not posh, indeed as MCC membership is supposed to be by invite only and they have had to suspend 2 members yesterday, standards seem to have slipped as to who they invite
I would rate the LDs chances as less than evens, and more like 3-1.
First: this is mostly not about SNP-LD battles. Edinburgh West is still mostly Edinburgh West. Fife North East gains a bit of Glenrothes (and is technically an SNP seat), but the LDs should be favourites there. Orkney & Shetland is unchanged.
One LD seat - before the SNP's recent issues - looked to be a real struggle for the LDs to "hold", and that is the new Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross. This gains almost half of Charles Kennedy's old Ross, Skye and Lochaber. According to Electoral Calculus, that seat now has a notional 3,700 SNP majority. Will the LDs "hold" it? Difficult to say.
Lastly, there's Bearsden and Campsie Fells. This is the successor seat to Jo Swinson's Dunbartonshire East, albeit it is only 80% of it, plus bits of a whole bunch of other seats. I would make this a 50/50 shot for the LDs, depending on their ability to attract the anti-SNP tactical vote.
So: in all probability no change to the LD count / SNP count in Scotland.
Secondly: the LDs will struggle to win more than 28 or 29 seats. Once you get to that level, they need to start overhauling 10,000 vote majorities, and the party is only going to be on 11-15% nationwide. Can they do it on occasion? Sure. Is it likely to be widespread? Nope.
Thirdly: the SNP will lose seats. They will almost certainly drop at least 10, and it could easily be 15. But their losses to the Conservatives are likely to be modest (if they exist at all). And their losses to the LibDems max out at 1, unless I've really miscalculated. Which means it's all on Lab-SNP battlegrounds. And there I can see Labour getting everything up to Glasgow South (11 gains), but then it gets tough.
My best guess is SNP 33 seats, LDs 26 seats. Could the SNP lose more? Yes. Could the LDs gain more? Sure. But is it evens? Nope. It's about a 3-1 shot right now.
For anyone with a decent slab of money to put down on investing in a rental property, either through outright purchase or with a small mortgage, this is the dawn of the Diamond Age of Landlordism. If you can afford one flat, somebody else's wages will end up paying all those expensive utility bills for you. If you can buy two, the second tenant's wages will also pay your grocery bills and you can spend most of your own salary on jollies, perhaps cut your working hours down and semi-retire. After all, why waste your own time working to support yourself when somebody else can waste their time working to support you instead?
But fair play to him for not insisting on something silly like a photo of him standing and Kawcznski sitting.
Doing better than 75% of the population is no mean thing. Especially in a job where there's absolutely no shortage of candidates to fill each vacancy.
Personally I think having MPs wages linked to median wages would be a good idea. If an MP is struggling at about 3x the average income currently then what does that say of those the MP is supposed to be representing.
1.2x or 1.5x median income I think would be a reasonable pay rate for an MP.
But we do seem to do a very bad job of fostering a culture which rewards good legislative skills or morals amongst our political elites.
This chart only goes back to 2011 but shows the trend even since then.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/557901/first-time-home-buyers-average-age-united-kingdom/
If you then consider average salary by age (see below link)
https://www.ncchomelearning.co.uk/blog/the-average-uk-salary/
...it means that affordability on a like for like basis is significantly worse than the chart suggests. In other words mortgages are as unaffordable for 32 year olds now as they were for 28 year olds in the financial crisis and probably something like 25 year olds in 1990.
However...
Henley has a Conservative majority of 14k over the LibDems. Wantage is 13k. (2019 GE, obviously.)
Vale of White Horse District Council now has no (0) Conservative councillors. South Oxfordshire District Council has one (1). That's after the 2023 locals.
I find it really difficult to reconcile "the Conservatives have been entirely wiped out locally" with "the Conservatives are going to retain the parliamentary seat". Yes, I know people vote differently at locals vs the general. But not that differently.
With that in mind, I can see two caps on the LibDems' performance. One is simply resources. They have a realistic chance in four seats in Oxfordshire (including one defence) and I doubt they have the resources to throw at all four.
And the other is our old friend FPTP. Labour has no chance in any of these four seats or indeed much of the Home Counties. But Starmer all over the airwaves for weeks will potentially divert enough casual anti-Tory voters to Labour to deprive the LibDems of victory. The LibDems traditionally work round this by carpet-bombing with leaflets but I don't think they'll have the resources to do this everywhere.
So I honestly don't know. I can see realistic scenarios anywhere between 10 and 55 seats for the LibDems.
Of the three, Labour probably still come out on top given they are more likely to give the green light to planning reform and new building.
Some other suggestions:
- Abolish council tax (paid by tenants and inconsistent nationally) and stamp duty (a tax on mobility, discourage downsizing and efficient housing stock allocation) with an annual property tax on the value that is re-rated with house market index data annually
- Vacant properties pay double the above rate, perhaps increasing with time to encourage efficient use of a scarce resource
- Proper infrastructure investment to support new houses built.
That is why Ministers exist. Because MPs who are Ministers are able to fulfil their Ministerial responsibilities as another job alongside their part time job of being an MP, not instead of it.
Ministers work even longer hours for more pay and have more constituency staff
That's linked primarily to age [ie students, or those at the very start of their career], not whether people buy or let.
There is next to no difference between average household size for rental or owner-occupied and that difference that exists is fully explained by the fact tenants are more likely to have dependent children living with them (who are not workers) while pensioner owner occupiers don't.
But, in the big picture, the key point in political terms is that the situation is not great for Sunak.