The housing gambler cancer in the UK spread out throughout Europe and beyond these past few years. Brits were buying up "off-plan" properties sight unseen in far-flung no-income places like Bulgaria and the Ukraine. They were using Polish labor to fix up "buy-to-let" places in London for a quick flip. They were buying second and third houses throughout Europe.
And they were FRICKING OBSESSED with property speculation.
You thought the US had a housing porn problem? Take a look at this sickening list of housing mania TV shows that infected Britain the past few years.
And then the music stopped.
A Place By the Sea
A Place in Greece
A Place in the Sun
A Place in the Sun: Home or Away
Build a New Life in the Country
Build, Buy or Restore
Changing Rooms
Did They Pay Off The Mortgage In 2 Years?
DIY SOS
Escape to the Country
Extreme Makeover
Grand Designs
Grand Designs Abroad
Home
Home From Home
Homes Under the Hammer
Honey I Ruined the House
Hot Property
House Auction
House Busters
House Chain: Under Offer
House Doctor
House Hunters in the Sun
House Invaders
House Price Challenge
House Race
Houses Behaving Badly
How Not to Decorate
How To Be a Property Developer
How to Rescue a House
I Want That House
I Want That House Revisited
Living in the Sun
Living etc
Location Location
Making Space
Moving Day
My Place in the Sun
Nice House… Shame About the Garden
Other People's Houses
Our Home
Pay Off Your Mortgage in 2 Years
Property Dreams
Property Ladder
Put Your Money Where Your House Is
Relocation, Relocation
Restored to Glory
Room For Improvement
Selling Houses
Staying Put
Streets Ahead
Super Agents
Superhomes
Through the Keyhole
To Buy or Not to Buy
Trading Up
Uncharted Territory
Up Your Street
Would You Buy a House with a Stranger?
April 21, 2008
You think the US housing bubble and mania was bad? You ain't seen nothin'. The UK wrote the book. And now they're screwed.
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37 comments:
I still need their help:
http://tinyurl.com/4r5x6m
it cant be OVER
how about..
"Big Saggy Teets by the Sea"
I would not live in Europe even the house was free and came with new car.
Europeans are cold, unfriendly and full of themselves.
Which one in the picture is Suzanne?
Dang, that blonde has BIG BOOBS. Very well endowed. I would LOVE to pop her real estate bubble!
Wow, that one chick's got some bigguns!
I have tracked UK happenings for the last 40 years. They tend to experience what we have here 5 to 10 years before us. The exception is teh housing blowup. The Brits took it to another level and they are going to get screwed. Younger people will expereince what happened to the UK retirees. Many moved to places like Morocco, Cyprus, Turkey and Italy to chase lower cost of living. Then one of spouses die and they want to move back to the UK and they can't because the UK Pound worked against them along with hyperinflation in housing. Now the younger foks who invested in Tuscany and the aobve find that housing is depressed and the currency is working against them.
"Got Jugs?"
WOW Keith you're right, I can see the twin housing bubbles now, both of them heaving and bursting through our flimsy attempts at containment!
They forgot: DIY POS.
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Is there a way to make money on this - any SRS type funds for Europe RE?
Stop posting scary stuff like this. Don't you know DICK Cheney has a bad heart? We wouldn't want him to have a heart attack....would we?
Well then, where are the millionaires?
Frankly, if that whole island sank into the sea the world would be a better place.
Just heard that Prince William is using a Chinook Helicopter to go visit his girlfriend and fly friends to bachelor parties.
Yea, may as well train these future world leaders to piss on the rules, be arrogant and unaccountable, and generally give them a feeling of unlimited power and entitlement.
I mean, after all, they are better than us because they are...."royal".
The word "parasite" comes to mind when I think of "royalty".
Great boobs.
Ah yes, Ukraine. I first went there in 1995 when it was dark, gray and boring. By 1995, apartment prices in Kyiv (former spelling: Kiev) were still reasonable. I could have bought a three-room apartment for under $15,000 almost anywhere in the city. That same apartment today would be close to half a million dollars. When I look at what has happened there as opposed to the USA, it's far crazier there. I wonder when it's going to come crashing down, but so far I see little sign of it happening.
I'm heading back over there next week and taking another look and will report back if this thread is still going. Anyone else been there lately?
I'm not familiar with all of the shows, but "A Place in Greece", much like "A Place in France" wasn't really real estate porn. That series of shows was mostly about dysfunctional British expats starting businesses or retiring in Europe. It was the freak show aspect rather than the focus on property that made it watchable.
Mike F
I would agree that UK property prices are insane.
The US and UK are as nothing compared to Australia market.
Here house prices doubling and then doubling again in 5 years and there are still no real signs of it stopping (unlike the US and UK).
Australia has the most unaffordable housing in THE WORLD
Keith and others, I have questions regarding the major elephant in the room... The two countries most responsible for going into Iraq, the UK and the USA, are also the deepest into the housing bubble. It'd be naive to think guys like Cheney, Blair and the neo-cons would ever take on lying to get us into an oil war without other tricks up their sleeves. I mean, come on, there's a lot of things these guys would want to accomplish under the cover of patriotism. So was this bubble just a coincidence? Or was it created to distract the citizenry? Was the creation of NINJA loans just a marketing idea from the guys at Countrywide or was it a broader plan to debt-enslave the uppity middle class? We are staring down a Depression and a financial system collapse. Was that the intention, in order to further transfer our money via bailouts? Or was this chaos something like the war: a situation walked into with hubris that spiralled out of control? I got my tin foil hat on, but I'm not sure of all the dots and how to connect them. I'd love all y'alls insight.
I thought Europeans were too smart to get involved in a mess like this.
And I thought HGTV was bad! You must have 50 shows listed there. Who has time to watch all that crap?
I don't believe it. I was told that only Americans are dumb and greedy and the rest of the world is humble and wise.
"Location, Location" is a good show and one of the few shows that predates the bubble. The premise was assisting buyers in finding their dram home within the constraints of budget and location.
"Europeans are cold, unfriendly and full of themselves."
I suppose it all depends on your presonality. A european once told me that I was the most european person he knew in the US and we got along great and had a good time.
To me, Americans are superficially friendly and expect reciprocation, big time, for any thing they do.
" SeattleMoose said...
Stop posting scary stuff like this. Don't you know DICK Cheney has a bad heart? We wouldn't want him to have a heart attack....would we?
April 22, 2008 1:56 AM"
YES as soon as possible. Drive a stake through his heart and feed his body through a wood chipper. THEN, strip the heirs of his ill-gotten assests and put them in the street penniless.
Any thing less is amoral.
I would not live in the USA even the house was free and came with new car.
Americans are fake, consumption driven, and pretend to be friendly while they're thinking about themselves.
Boy a lot of you people sure love fat chicks. Me, sure, I noticed them too, but I MUCH prefer the skinny gal.
Not sure I would include "How Not to Decorate" on the list. All it is are the two gayest men in Scotland redecorating truly appalling homes, not "you need to replace this with granite/hardwood/stainless steel" style American housing porn.
BTW, the blonde one always reminds me of this one good friend I had in college.....he was a hoot.
how lame,
all these people showing off their economic intel and financial strategies reduced to "...big boobs.."
Holy crap, that list is so long. That is truly scary.
BTW, they should have known they had a bubble when that show "Would you buy a house with a stranger?" came on the air. To think that one would have to even consider buying a house with a stranger in order to "afford" buying a house...that's pathetic and just plain wrong.
Wow...my wife is right. Most guys WOULD fuck anything.
Maybe if some of you got out of the house and learned to talk to people you would see that lady in the pics ain't worth the drink money...
I prefer it as Housing Heroine. I need my "pergraniteel" fix daily!
PKK (grandma here)--
I'm going to comment here though any article would do. I'm 64, and have children 44 and 40, grandsons 24, 22, to be 22, and to be 16. Our family is more frugal than some because some of our family is poor; we cook from scratch, look for sales, fix our car when we can, that kind of thing. But still we are not so different in our general outlook on managing life, except myself. I am so old school I make my own soap, spin my own yarn and weave, etc...I have been expecting this time all my life. So that's the background. (Once in RE for an unsuccessful year, not outgoing enough).
What I see over the years though, in my fam as well, is a generalized attitude that care need not be taken. Caution is an antiquated idea. Risk taking is in fact functioning.(How much can you afford to risk when you invest?:
NONE, buddy, NONE.What do you mean you can afford to risk if you are an employed person? With a family.
The correct answer was always,NONE. NONE.
There has been fundamental shift in thinking, or rather to the belief that one need not think. Take drugs or not, no diff. Save or not, no diff, unless it's to get something you WANT. Plan? Why? It's like the population which has access to credit, and therefore leveraging, even if it's just juggling bills, believes there are no threats to life, only to happiness: does he/she love me? Am I high on anything that does it? ...Do I look cool in the current mode?
Do I say the sentences that make me sound like I'm going somewhere in my life? It can all be illusion so long as it's the right illusion. There is a singular disinterest in examining one's life except as refers to material lack or lack of socially sanctioned acceptability clues(looks, partner on arm, car).
There is little sense of boundary, manners, (hey, just basic here),
propriety....witness the bare, fat, and flabby exposure look. Ugly. It's ugly folks.It's not anything but ugly. And we are fat. Look in the mirror. You think you can drink a quart of pop at a meal and have no consequences?
I digress, or do I? We are blooming out of our minds. Even people still with money and credit have an attitude of 'can't touch this'..The heck life can't. I have lived long enough to know payback is usually proportional and then some.I have shot myself in the foot like all people. But I figured out it was me that did it, all my little no-matter, don't bother me choices.
That goes for implants. You know they are going to turn out to be deadly to our immune systems. And there we'll be with a bankrupt government, no jobs, no health care, and no way to get the suckers out..
Owning property is the last thing these kids should be thinking about.
Keith and others, I have questions regarding the major elephant in the room... The two countries most responsible for going into Iraq, the UK and the USA, are also the deepest into the housing bubble.
You're pretty stupid. Home prices have soared all across Europe, including France, Ireland, Ukraine, and Latvia. Even Saskatchewan and Costa Rica have ridiculous home prices. Sheeple, sheeple, sheeple.
"Would you buy a house with a stranger?"
That made me laugh out loud! Maybe I should check it out.
Europeans are snobs, bureaucratic, highly depressed and unhappy, superficial, and only act friendly if you have anything of value to offer (i.e., money, place for them to crash) or look like a model.
They're also dumb for paying $600k to live in a studio of 250 sq ft, with a shared bathroom located outside the unit. You Europeans deserve to be paying taxes up the wazoo to subsidize Muslims and African immigrants who smoke hash all day while you work your arses off. Dumb!
No wonder all major wars started in Europe. Oh, and when you hear Europeans bitching about the US because of the Iraq war, you should just mention this list of just a few European countries that were part of the Coalition during the war, fighting in Iraq:
• UK
• Italy
• Netherlands
• Spain
• Norway
• Portugal
• Denmark
If Europeans are so righteous, why did they jump aboard with the US to invade Iraq? Greed my friends, greed!
I am from the UK and I fully appreciate your comments. The UK Market is indeed in panic mode and I am too. I am looking at selling and buying overseas - off plan development. Now everywhere I read about buying off-plan developments they say check out the developer but no one tells you what things to look out for in a developer and where to find that info. Is there any international accreditation for these developers in emerging countries? How do I know which ones to trust and buy from? Any help would be welcome.....
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