Mortgage Repayments

I refuse to make myself poor and let my wife and kids suffer to have the priveledge of living next door to the Jones'. Personal choice we made was to live next door to the Smiths and the Browns, prefering to live like kings in squaller, see my kids and have a life than kill myself with overtime to keep up payments on a mortgage (like so many others I know) even when times are tough, it's only a short term problem.

I have lake, I have Mountains, I have beach and shops, the kids go to a nice school and we all have toys. We have a nice lifestyle, but a crap house and it suits us fine. A few streets away where the houses are 10x the price of ours they cannot afford to sail or run their boats, drive their cars or dream of owning a horse, they do have a nice address and neighbours though. Life is pretty much Skittles and Beer.

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Originally Posted by Brian Hjelm

Loved those early nineties interest rates. By then I was an investor, not a borrower.

A very, very, wealthy friend of mine gets on his hobby horse when people want the government to act to keep interest rates low. He reckons government has no business looking after "brokes, bums, and borrowers". He calls them the lawful prey of the investor. He reckons government should be getting interest rates up and looking after the investor, whose money, he claims, is the fuel for the engine room of the economy. His wish is that the long term bank deposit rate should never be less than double figures.

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You and your mate are at odds with most businesses in OZ. The Australian business council or whatever they are called, recently said the federal government should halt spending for 2 years, to keep inflation (and interest rates) low(er) in a bid to overcome the problems related to the excessive spending in the last part of howard's reign.

I agree with what a lot of you say and yes people are in control of there own destiny, but I also believe that people can be a victim of circumstance.

And I also agree with diana not all CEO's and exectitives are up there because of what good people they are and how they thought tooth and nail to make a company what it is......I too hear the stories of how big wigs get there money and its not always mister nice creating 600 jobs its exploiting situations to better themselves and finding ways to avoid taxation

I myself do have a little compasion and do feel for the ones that don't seem to able to get out of the rutts...as not everyone even low wage people are looking for handouts and I don't believe they are all lazy either like you suggest. I myself work dam hard in my job and I have worked hard in every job I have had...and I do feel for the starving kids in africa.. But maybe they wouldn't of been starving so much if the country wasn't or had been so corrupt.

Anyway that's just how I feel.....from a low wage dirty scrubber that obviously didn't make the right choice in life and shouldn't have the right to buy a house.
my god I hope when I get reincarnated I can have the choice to come back as a CEO :b

I have to disagree with the suggestion that interest rates should be in double figures. One of the usually forgotten problems with high interest rates is that they make any form of long term investment almost impossible, whether you are talking about state or national infrastructure, developing a new invention or newly discovered minerals, anything where the payback is outside the next quarter's bottom line. This emphasis on the short term comes back to bite the community eventually.

Governments have found that while using interest rates to control inflation is a fairly blunt tool, with the major drawback given above, it has the big advantage that you can simply set a target, set up an independent board to administer it, and let her rip! Much less politically risky than the more effective method of varying taxes, and a lot easier than managing government activities so as to keep inflation down or managing money supply.

John

Coorrr i was only reading a post the other day that you lot were calling poms wingers, Christ listern to you all :):) Worse than poms :D:D

when I moved from Brissy to here 15 years ago, due to the depressed property markets in the region, the banks would not even consider lending money for a house, fullstop.So I worked hard and bought my first, and kept working and built another, mortgages who needs them!As to people not affording mortgages, come out here, you can buy anyhouse in town on acerage for under 100k and employment opportunities are endless. Oh yeah, thats right, you want to live near the coast.

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Originally Posted by crump

when I moved from Brissy to here 15 years ago, due to the depressed property markets in the region, the banks would not even consider lending money for a house, fullstop.So I worked hard and bought my first, and kept working and built another, mortgages who needs them!As to people not affording mortgages, come out here, you can buy anyhouse in town on acerage for under 100k and employment opportunities are endless. Oh yeah, thats right, you want to live near the coast.

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mate l was just looking at the place on google maps!

gees its small out there, what kind of work is there?

cheers

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Originally Posted by Lotz-A-Landies

I am not talking about good and successful business people who create wealth and employment.

I am talking about corporate spivs who get parachuted into chief executive positions of companies whos sole aim is the asset strip profitable businesses and frequently do this by wholesale reduncies of hundreds and thousands of employees. They pay themselves multi million dollar bonuses as a result of unemploying thousands of families.

Was it Credit Suisse this week where the current CEO has presided over a company that went from billions of dollars in profit last year to millions of dollars in losses this year, so much so that it is having to sell equity to oil rich trillionaires yet the CEO still gets paid was it 26 million Euros in bonuses and a golden parachute.

Even in companies within Australia we get similar CEO spivs dumping 8.4 million of his own shares without telling the market till the last moment because ABC Learning may be going bad. The whole executive of that company dumped the majority of their shares worth tens of millions of dollars without telling the market so the ordinary shareholders may well be left holding the bag and maybe even childcare workers losing their jobs. Time will tell.

That is the sort of thiefdom that I am talking about.

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There are rotten eggs in all walks of life. If you looked at every profession or occupation you find a handful of people who have done harm to society.

I sold a house in the uk to come out here (2.5 years ago ) This was a 2 bedroom starter house , what is called a 2 up , 2 down semi dettaced house with a tiny garden (total land size of about 200 m2 including what the house is on This is the house to move to to start a family after a flat. This was sold for $520,000 2.5 years ago . worth alot more now. This was not in a great area, if you were luck the car would still be there the next day , Have to pay more if you want a better area .
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...008/03/711.jpg

Mean while came here and bought a high set house a year ago for $300,000. Has 850m2 , three garages , pool, and views of Straddie Island and the bay . Ok in the past year this house may have gone up but only the same as my old house in the uk .

https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...008/03/712.jpg

It may be tough in Aus but belive me it is not as bad as some other are doing it.
Interest rates going up is all our fault and has nothing to do with the goverment . The goverment are trying to stop everyone spending money , and the only way to do that is to take money out of the econmoy (so that people can't over spend). The way to do that is tax or interest rates. Both unpopular and both the goverment gets blamed for. If the country was in sh*t then we would all be unemployed and skint and moaning again at the goverment , so they can't win then can they (does not matter who is in )
eveyone moans at John Howard for the rise in interest rates and house prices but they would not be like that if it were not for the fact that the Australia econmoy is very strong and doing very well. . with very good leval of employment . All these things lead to inflation, which in turns leads to high interest rates and, which then leads to unemployment

People would have also kicked him out if their house had gone down in value and they were unemployed. (AKA the Australia economy was in crap)

Belive me you lot will be moaning like hell when (and it will happen) Interest rates go up again this month and again and again. This will lead to house price crash and houses will go down in price and everyone will moan like crap that their house has gone down in value. So see can't win :)

As for Me, i am in a fixed rate morgage for 3 years and have nearly 2 years left at 6.75% percent, so every time the rate goes up it cerments my decion to fix my loan when everyone told me to not do it fixed :)

I know what BigJon is saying. And in part I agree.

Thing is I think we're heading for a big one too, and largely because of the housing boom. It's caused all sorts of trouble. Some people have done well, but those with little financial responsibility have used the opportunity to spend equity largely on stuff that doesn't matter (Plasma Tv, SS Ute anyone?).

I did the sums with a mate on buying a house with a mate and it worked out that on a modest house in my area it would cost him about 20k a year in repayments so someone else could live in his house.

But, he pointed out that if he doesn't get in the market then he might never be able to. So, it is unspoken but he like everyone else thinks that houses will just keep going up 30% a year and you'll make money on the capital growth. Taking the big picture view if you extrapolate 30% over even a small timeframe it's clear it's unsustainable. It's never ever happened that we have had a housing boom without some kind of a bust.

Anyway, I'm sitting back hoping to pick up a bargain in the next little while. :o

The signs are mounting... IMHO it's starting. :o

First signs