Synthesizer Patel

Well, I thought Four Lions was great - I guess it depends if you know Chris Morris's work or not. Whilst it's probably the weakest thing he's done so far in his career, it's still better than any other British film this year, and it's the only comedy that I actually laughed at. If you can laugh at suicide bombers and everything that surrounds that, then you'll love it. If a joke like this (which Morris also wrote) makes you laugh, then that'll be a good indication of whether you'll like it or not: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRRw1ERj2Gc

you sparked my interest in her, actually. so thanks.

66rebilac said what i thought, he owes more for the house than what he can sell it for. so he can't actually lower the price to the current market value - which is the reason he can't sell it, he must keep the price higher than people will pay out of necessity. which is something your parents didn't have to do. obviously what people spend their salary on will vary a great deal from person to person. look at it this way - it's not like you have to take a loan out to buy a car which you need to get around, you can if you wish - but, on a normal income you can buy a car outright, either brand n

i was saying why couldn't he sell as to show that your parent's situation wasn't the norm. obviously i understand why he can't sell. well, actually he can sell - he just can't sell it at the current market value - that's what he can't do. housing prices are still too high if you ignore the fact that the prices have to go back up for people to not get backrupted over their housing purchases. housing prices should reflect the populations wages - you should be earning enough to live in a house that suits the level of work you do - with some help from the banks, but not virtually total dependenc

so your parents example is not reflective of the market, and therefore wasn't worth mentioning, or what? what was the point in mentioning it then? or was that the sensible way, and the vast majority of the american housing market behaves in a different way. i was only expanding on your parents situation to show that even in that way they still lost out. i wasn't using it as an example of how most people go about buying and selling houses in your country. i think i said something along the lines of how their situation was based on the 20% mortgage you mentioned as being your example of "sensi

what have i said that makes you think i don't understand the market? when you say he'll walk away from 200k - do you mean that he owned the house and that's his 200k, or it's mortaged, and that's the banks money? if it's his then he's obviously still screwed, but he's not tied down to making the value he purchased the property for - other than to not make a loss on his purchase. if it's the bank's money, then obviously he's got a bigger problem - as he doesn't have the money to pay for the value he purchased the property for - and for being tied into that place whilst needing to live somewhe

and he has bought another house, or is renting? and if he's renting, is he renting from someone who is in the same situation as him? why can't he sell it as Recorded Nap's parents did? as any new house he'd want to buy would be roughly the same value as the one he is trying to sell. i don't think the housing market sucks. i still think house prices are too high. the only thing that sucks is that lots of people are in the same situation as your brother - and everyone will either have to bite the bullet and suffer to make things more realistically sustainable, or else have another cycle of boo

well i meant investment in all ways. all people that buy property to rent are making two investments. the first is the money from the rent, and the second is value the house makes over time - as the market goes up. you don't buy houses to rent out with the idea that the property will devalue over time as this will result in a loss on the value of the property as the money from the rent will never offset this loss. it can often just be a way of putting your money somewhere other than a bank, so that you spread your money around and avoid certain taxes - people who do this aren't doing it with

ok, so people do buy houses for investment, and this does have to continue if the housing market is to work in a way that you think it will work best? based on your "rent until you can afford to buy scheme" and you do, therefore know these people, as you yourself rent? "no further question your honour, no further questions!" WHAT? people are renting out their houses? you mean the ones they live in, or their second or third etc... homes? and these were not purchased for investment in the first place?

no. HOW DO YOU HAVE HOUSES THAT PEOPLE RENT when PEOPLE DON'T PURCHASE HOUSES AS AN INVESTMENT? how does that work? do people buy the houses and rent them out at a loss so that they can't be regarded as investments, but follies? do you really not understand what i am saying? or just don't want to acknowledge anything that might impact on your argument.

lol. 2/3 of the value that the house was a few years ago. see - even that simple sentence is lost in translation. people. people. yeah, ok - nobody anywhere sees buying houses as an investment. the people that you are saying will let the houses that people will rent are just collectors of houses - they can't help it, they just can't stop until they get the set! or aren't these people that own the houses for rent people at all. perhaps they are dogs? so, anyway - it's wrong to buy houses as an investment. yet people should rent properties until they can afford to buy them. yes? and that wor

that's what i said - the problem is that people see housing as an investment. the fact that people did and do think that led to the housing boom, which in turn has led to it's partial collapse. the fact that your parents don't view their house as an investment doesn't mean it's not part of the market that does. i take it they had a big party when they sold their house for 2/3 of it's value a few years back. i don't know; i think you fundamentally can't understand what i say 90% of the time, and whilst it's fun saying the same thing in 20 different ways to try and get my point to stick - it'

it's not that the value went down. they made a loss on their investment. were they given the house for free or something?

yeah, apart from in the case that you just gave about your parents 1/3 house devaluation. other than that, yeah i guess you're right.

i didn't say what you are saying. i said being responsible doesn't mean you won't be hit by the problem. and i just explained how by using your parents situation as an example - doesn't what i said makes sense to you? the thing is that i agree with you in what you are saying - that you should only buy what you can afford. but, i am saying for what you are saying to become the norm the system has to collapse, and everyone has to suffer - whether you've been sensible or otherwise.

they lost 1/3 of the value of their house and they had a mortage? let's assume they did, at the 20% you said so let's say the house is worth £100,000 when they bought it. they took out a mortage of 20%, as you say. so that's £20,000 they sell it for £66,666 and buy another house with that money. their new house is no longer 20% of the mortage - it's gone up to over 30% that lower housing price is linked to the rest of the economy, the cost of daily living goes up - and the problem of that 10% difference, caused by the lower housing prices, becomes magnified. so even the very cautious mak

rent from who? if housing prices are so low, who are these people who own the houses to let? - surely they've been ruined by the property collapse. also, unfortunately just because you act cautiously and are able to pay off your mortage it doesn't mean these irresponsible jackoffs aren't going to impact on you. you buy a house for $300,000 and pay off your mortage on it - the housing market dips because the "irresponsible jackoffs" foreclose on their loans, and your house then becomes worth $150,000 you're just as screwed as they are. aren't you?

i think that the banks approved these things because they had a vested interest in the market not becoming stagnant - like i said in the post above. the big problem is that everyone says, "god housing prices are through the roof!" - yet everybody wants their own houses to be worth a lot. unfortunately if this mentality changed, people wouldn't be able to act any differently, because their houses HAVE to be worth that much money, otherwise they are absolutely screwed with the high mortage they took out and the reduced value their house then becomes.

my point is that if people took out a mortage that they could afford in terms of giving them some leeway if times become tough (which is what has happened at the moment), then that bottom rung of the housing market would not get the input it needs to sustain the rest of the ladder. it's just not possible to sustain a housing boom without people buying/taking out a mortage on things that they can't really afford. the culture that has grown in the housing market is to buy a property that you have no real intention of making your permanent home, under the premiss that you will sell it at a profit

that is simple, you're right. trouble is no young person can afford to "buy" a house - they have to take out mortages. for them to be able to "buy" a house, when they can afford it, the housing prices would have to fall to a level that actually reflects their worth. this would mean that the people who "own" (although in the current climate - they don't "own" they are still mortaged) these first time homes would be lossing out on what they bought/mortaged the property for, and what that new market value would be. this will have a knock on effect to the next rung of the property ladder, and so o

who in your model of the property ladder are these young people renting from? someone has to own the house. if all the young people rent then the property ladder will collapse as you need first time buyers to buy off of you for you to go up the scale, and so on and so on. remove a rung and it doesn't work. buying to let is obviously the first thing that suffers because owning 2 or more houses becomes a major problem as house prices fall - so when you're left with your one house it becomes a bit diffcult to rent it out to someone else, unless you're happy to camp out in the garden.

we've had free health care in the uk since the end of the second world war, and affordable schooling for everyone so it's not a sudden failour in either of these things. the failour has arisen through following the wrong economic model for growth. it's these things that have failed and now they're trying to find the money to bail them out through cut-backs. i can't see how you can see a link with "government hand-outs" and the current economic situation - what specifically went wrong in this sector that resulted in the situation we're all in now?

in england it's actually about increased tuition fees. when i went it was means tested, and most people still had to pay something towards that cost. then obviously you had to take out a student loan to pay for your daily living. coming out of university and taking out a mortage to get on the property ladder for an over-priced house, whilst being saddled with a university debt is simply crippling - it's clearly a big contributing factor to this culture of credit & debt, and it's very very hard to get out of. the problem in the uk is that the countries wealth is owned mostly by the old -

actually, i went to Leicester University, and we had an American in our halls of residence - and he called it Lie - Sester, when it's actually pronounced Lesster. he eventually swapped rooms with one of my friends, though, cos we were too noisy for him at night whilst he wanted to do his chemistry research. it was either that, or the fact that we caught him pissing out of his window because he was too lazy to go to the bathroom. he'd actually killed all the grass outside his window, so we knew it wasn't just a one off. anyway, surely pissing outside your own window is far worse than any riot