Poverty on Island

[pongo 4,841]

The inevitable flip-side of soon to be negative interest rates is asset inflation - huge demand affecting anything of value apart from government money or bonds.

Almost everything is a bubble and it's barely started.

Edited February 7 by pongo

[finlo 5,112]

20 minutes ago, TheTeapot said:

https://haven.im/the-meadows-castletown/

Have a look at the plan on here, none of these houses are built, or even close. It's not a queue of real people waiting to move in who've 'reserved' all those houses. 

I've witnessed first hand greedy BTL landlords reserving large swathes of first time buyer's before they're even out of the ground!

[TerryFuchwit 707]

8 hours ago, finlo said:

I've witnessed first hand greedy BTL landlords reserving large swathes of first time buyer's before they're even out of the ground!

When?

[TerryFuchwit 707]

9 hours ago, pongo said:

The inevitable flip-side of soon to be negative interest rates is asset inflation - huge demand affecting anything of value apart from government money or bonds.

Almost everything is a bubble and it's barely started.

Negative interest rates are probably unlikely (it simply won't have any material effect on the economy).   But rates are near enough zero anyway which is driving cash out of cash and into assets.

[The Duck of Atholl 1,055]

There is always a cry for affordable housing but when people say that what do they mean? What would you price an affordable house at? How much does it cost to build? If that doen't fit a developer's pricing model who is going to build them, and where?

The Island has plenty of NIMBy's many of which are also outraged at the lack of affordable housing...as long as any built are built elsewhere

[Banker 1,957]

The topic is about poverty & lack of affordable housing and the government should be doing a lot more. They own loads of empty vacant land they should be building on & handing over to a housing association to run to ensure local families get on the housing ladder. Poverty also needs addressing and if necessary divert funds spent in wealthy pensioners 

[TerryFuchwit 707]

5 minutes ago, Banker said:

The topic is about poverty & lack of affordable housing and the government should be doing a lot more. They own loads of empty vacant land they should be building on & handing over to a housing association to run to ensure local families get on the housing ladder. Poverty also needs addressing and if necessary divert funds spent in wealthy pensioners 

There's a large number of local authority housing on island.  Dont Douglas Corp have over 2000 alone?

[Banker 1,957]

5 minutes ago, TerryFuchwit said:

There's a large number of local authority housing on island.  Dont Douglas Corp have over 2000 alone?

But there’s obviously not enough!! Another article on same subject, Howie & co need to step up and stop lording it over grandiose projects like new forest, £1.3m for converting railway bridge etc, food bank also swamped with requests.

https://www.manxradio.com/news/isle-of-man-news/poverty-increased-in-2020-says-housing-charity/

 

[Derek Flint 4,180]

The Government has just spent a rumoured £120k on ten temporary booths at Ronaldsway. I’ve described them elsewhere as the most pound-stupid administration in history. Money gets spent, but rarely on the problems in society where investment would not only make a difference to people’s existence, but also put the Island on the map as the exemplar of good social policy. 

For a long time I’ve expressed concerns as to the sustainability of government fiscal policy. I mentioned on the podcast I do weekly with Ged and Michael that prior to leaving the Island I was practically paying no income tax. Now granted, that sucks up the higher cost of living on the Island, but I can’t be the only one? It’s great having more money in your pocket, but when you have National and local government that doesn’t have any concept of austerity or living within means there has to come a day of reckoning.

 There’s a big world wide reset in progress, and the forthcoming UK and Manx budgets will be very telling. It’s likely an easy fix, with a slimmed down and more focused administration. But the wholesale laying off of public servants would blow a massive hole in the facade, and lead to perhaps just as big an unemployment problem as is the balancing of declining income against public expenditure.

it will be very interesting to see how this all pans out.

[Manxtoffee 32]

The issue with new builds is they are all sold before there’s even a brick laid down. Once they’ve got buyers signing on the dotted line, they throw up shoddy cheap builds because why not - they’ve already got their money. There’s nothing buyers can do as they signed months earlier, for something they’ve only seen on a computer generated mock-up. 

[english zloty 665]

9 hours ago, finlo said:

I've witnessed first hand greedy BTL landlords reserving large swathes of first time buyer's before they're even out of the ground!

No you haven’t. Developers are obliged to provide to government 25% of new stock. Either that or the cash equivalents. At the present time the scheme (section 13) is very much in the taxpayers advantage. 

what you may have heard is the of the remaining 75% sold at any price the developers feel. There are BTL arrangements and it is correct that they are increasing in number.

as for the thing about Manx homes for Manx folk, you must’ve lived here at least five years to get access to section 13 or open market affordable housing. 

overall the biggest issue is location. Same for social housing. Folk would rather wait than not live near or in Douglas. An interesting juxtaposition regarding numbers of affordable housing when folk would rather live where the cost of living is greatest
 

 

[Banker 1,957]

5 minutes ago, english zloty said:

No you haven’t. Developers are obliged to provide to government 25% of new stock. Either that or the cash equivalents. At the present time the scheme (section 13) is very much in the taxpayers advantage. 

what you may have heard is the of the remaining 75% sold at any price the developers feel. There are BTL arrangements and it is correct that they are increasing in number.

as for the thing about Manx homes for Manx folk, you must’ve lived here at least five years to get access to section 13 or open market affordable housing. 

overall the biggest issue is location. Same for social housing. Folk would rather wait than not live near or in Douglas. An interesting juxtaposition regarding numbers of affordable housing when folk would rather live where the cost of living is greatest
 

 

We’re not just talking about housing to buy but social housing, homeless shelters, food banks etc and Government is not doing enough. The money spent on Bakers railway bridges vanity project would fund food bank, homeless charities for a few years.

When was the last large new social housing project anywhere?

[TerryFuchwit 707]

3 minutes ago, Banker said:

We’re not just talking about housing to buy but social housing, homeless shelters, food banks etc and Government is not doing enough. The money spent on Bakers railway bridges vanity project would fund food bank, homeless charities for a few years.

When was the last large new social housing project anywhere?

How many people are homeless? Genuine question.

 

[BallaDoc 578]

We moved in to the Haven Homes development at North Shore, Ramsey in 2017.  In our row of 10 houses, all of them are showing as "sold" on the developer's plan but two of them have never been occupied.  I don't know why.

[Out of the blue 786]

The property market is a free market and should remain so. The reason that so many new builds sell quickly is that they are attractive to amateur investors who do not want headaches that come with second hand stock, but also that the banks favour new builds when it comes to mortgage finance, so making it attractive for buy to live clients.