Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Booming Great Britain

Movng to a new home in around three weeks (we hope). Fortunately house structure was built some time ago and most fittings already safely in garage or being fitted, kitchen delivered and enough bricks to complete drive to garage, not our rear patio though . Builder reports steady flow of materials but always part shipments on raw materials, bricks, cement, plaster etc.

This is incredible, you could say snap to all your comments out here in NZ, houses selling immediately for way more than their valuation, huge material shortages, people borrowing way more, developers promising affordable options in the developments -then quietly forgetting about it as they go. At least you dont have the rampant urban spread that Auckland has yet... That is one of the endearing features of England to me -the green belts and sprinkling of villages, here we just have housing without break for miles with no community hub,
local pub or shops .Dont follow us...

Rural California is going crazy as well. Everyone is trying to escape here to the High Desert yet when they arrive the first thing the do is scrape the natural landscape and build an ugly metal fence for “privacy.” They also don’t understand “dark skies” and install outdoor lighting - my wife is convinced they’re afraid of the dark. Our home on 10 acres has tripled in value in the last 5 years - 30% of that in the last 8 months. It’s tulip mania here. I hate the changes but where would I go. It’s still heaven on earth

Yes - nationwide!!
We rely nationally on imports and there are very few local manufacturers

HS2 and all the big housing companies are purchasing stock and storing it, whereas your local builder can't do that generally

The Construction Index - HS2 blamed for materials shortage

I always found NZ the further south you went the more it tended to remind me of rural parts of England (although the topography could be very different) with small towns with little urban sprawl outside of the cities like Auckland, Wellington etc. And south Island in places felt absolutely deserted by comparison.

It will be interesting to see whether we go into another housing boom and bust, the key indicator historically for London was when the salary multiplier went above 7 x earnings. This time we have other factors in play WFH and the Chancellor has given a stamp duty break on house sales........but somehow I do get a feeling this is not all going to end well. We have seen much higher periods of rampant housing inflation in the 70's when in some areas house prices doubled every 2 years or so and that was against a backdrop of really high CPI inflation and high interest rates.

Anyone remember when interest rates on mortgages crept upto around 15% at their height.

Its like the toilet roll rush of 2020, the press report that you can't get hold of cement, every builder orders extra bags to stock up, suddenly the shelves are empty.

There certainly are shortages of some materials but I think following brexit delays at the ports are more of a problem than HS2.

In the first covid shutdown, a lot of material manufacturers either slowed down or shut down completely & furloughed their workers, building carried on, albeit slower than before & used up all the stockpiled supplies.

Theres also problems getting stuff from China. There is a worldwide shortage of available shipping containers, the backlog at Uk ports means that shipping companies don't want to ship to the uk, they would prefer to go to Rotterdam & we then have to transport by lorry back to the Uk.

Its an absolute nightmare trying to finish building projects, whatever you are doing there is bound to be something unavailable. On one project recently we just sent a few chaps out to different Ikea stores to get 120 matching light fittings as it was a safer bet than waiting for the imported stuff to turn up.

Taxes are virtually guaranteed to go up. The expenditure for Covid has massively increased public spending and borrowing. For the life of me I can’t understand the apparent rush to stretch personal finances the way some are doing.
“Money has never been cheaper so borrow” is a well used term. Great if you have a guaranteed income with long term stability. I wonder how many are letting themselves open to serious money issues as we move out of the measures introduced to mitigate loss of earnings through furlough, grants, economic downturn. I remember the days of up to 15% interest rates and having a mortgage to pay coupled to a period of rebuilding our finances post the steel industry carve up around 1980.
Sorry to add it but Brexit isn’t helping either. The war drums can be heard from some in the EU. Inefficient cross border measures are being masked by the added on Covid restrictions. We have a long way to go yet.

Well, money's gettin' cheaper
Prices gettin' steeper
Found myself a woman
But I just couldn't keep her

Jimmy Witherspoon - 1963

Well the EU will do what it is going to do.

Already UK and EU trade has fallen both ways in the 2021 1st Quarter, yet imports from the ROW have gone up. Not surprising as UK:EU trade was always overstated by what is known as the Rotterdam effect, that is UK ROW trade that was consolidated for shipment to/from Rotterdam was treated as an UK:EU movement not a UK:ROW movement. So now to avoid border crossings that via Rotterdam trade is now increasingly coming direct to/from the UK.

Increasingly, from what I read the Financial Services sector is developing a global approach, not waiting for EU playing silly buggers over equivalence. The real threat apparently going forward to London is not the EU but HK and Singapore, whilst we may lose some trade to the EU, already there are reports that they cannot recruit locally the skill sets necessary in Frankfurt and Paris.

Covid has changed priorities and apparently eg many NY bankers have now moved to Florida during the lockdown for better quality of life.....a trend being experienced around the world that may undermine traditional finance centres.

We do have a long way to go and its more than just the EU, but the increasing advancement of AI and automation which is expected to replace upto 40% of the current jobs within a decade. Add to that the work mobility caused by WFH will lead to migration of work to the lowest cost base.........

A nice part of the world Prop Man, enjoy