voldemort

Only first time buyers without help from parents buy their houses with salaried income. People buy houses with the money their previous house made for them, using the leverage of the mortgage to multiply the returns.

My observation is that the last few years in the software industry more and more people have been going contracting. This is partially because of the demand for good people, but also because its easy to pay less tax. In my company contractors sit next to permanent staff and do largely the same job, except generally with less management responsibility/politics, and they take home twice 25% - 50% more. In theory contractors have less job security, but here the working conditions are just as shitty for permanent staff, and they are paid less, so they tend not to last more than a year or two. Most of the contractors stay for their full 2 year term (at which point company policy is to force a contract break). Permanent staff are not stupid, so there is a steady stream of them (mostly the good ones) leaving to go contracting. Interestingly, from talking to them, some of these contractors have decided they are caught by IR35, and others have decided the opposite! Seemingly it depends on how much they fear the taxman.

Today I received an email from my letting agent about the end of my tenancy - saying I have two options: vacate the property, or renew the tenancy (with associated charge). What they don't say is that I can (by law, as you say) just let the tenancy become a periodic one, with no fee payable...

Houses in the desirable cities in China and India (where people are internally migrating) are incredibly expensive - Shanghai for example is almost as expensive as London: https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+Kingdom&country2=China&city1=London&city2=Shanghai&tracking=getDispatchComparison And Australia does have lots of immigration - more than we do, with a population less than half the size, according to: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/australia-population-growth-immigration-dick-smith-2018-3

Yep - we love to complain about immigration (and rightly so!), but we do treat the immigrants that are here with a large degree of tolerance. Germans apparently like inviting them, imagining that the immigrants will follow all the rules, and are then rudely surprised when they do not.

You can now put money into this. Your money would finance the construction of social housing in Liverpool. Once the housing has been built (after 3 years) it will be leased to a local housing authority and the income from the lease sold to pension funds, allowing the construction funding to be returned to investors... The interest rate seems low compared to other offers on Abundance: 4.5%, but then perhaps this is less risky -- the main risk is if no one wants to buy the rental income.

I am glad to see this is not being conveniently forgotten by the government. It will increase competition amongst letting agents (because they will now have to justify their fees), and amongst landlords (because it will cost less for tenants to move).

Not too many details about how it will work yet, but this could be interesting (both as an investor and a HPC poster): https://www.abundanceinvestment.com/investments/sectors/housing?utm_source=Abundance+Members&utm_campaign=4288cbc65c-April+newsletter_Investors&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1065a42054-4288cbc65c-331799901

112 Bedroom Property for sale (actually multiple properties) in Birmingham: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-53158275.html

Not really. The Turkeys simply voted for reduced immigration, and don't care if it costs them money. They have different values to you.

According to The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/jan/06/property-renting-letting-agent-fees-cap-deposit-costs This is a shame.

Berlin has been the hip place to move / holiday for a few years now. Mostly with young europhiles who keep reading in the Guardian about how Germany is das awzum. I suspect it will shortly become a very expensive place to live, especially when you compare wages to rent. According to this article rents are up 70% in 12 years (2004 - 2016) https://www.thelocal.de/20170124/this-graph-shows-how-much-berlin-rent-has-skyrocketed-in-past-decade

I think it makes sense when you think about how big the cars are. The Focus is almost as big as a Mondeo these days, and the Fiesta is quite a bit smaller (about the size of the original Focus...).

Its 8 minutes walk to the bull ring...

You can park in at least one car park all day for half that: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Birmingham+Parking+£2.50+All+Day/@52.4805648,-1.9002772,15z/data=!4m8!1m2!2m1!1sbirmingham+parking+all+day+2.50!3m4!1s0x0:0xc158ac9ce150665e!8m2!3d52.4792571!4d-1.887673?dcr=0