Personal Opinion Of Garry Peter Leigh On Credit Crunch – Who’S Fault Is It?
This week the Guardian has devoted a full page to another worthless story. In this latest piece of nonsense, we’re supposed to feel sorry for a group of potential property buyers who can no longer get mortgages and, if the angle that the Guardian seems to be taking is to be believed, it’s the property developers fault!
The story goes like this:
‘Dozens of young professionals’ they say, face ‘financial ruin’ because Berkeley Homes, one of Britain’s largest property builders, is threatening to sue if the buyers don’t complete on their contracts.
These professionals put down their 10% deposits at the height of the property market when mortgages were ‘easier’ to obtain. Now that property values have collapsed by ‘up to 40%’ the story goes that the Banks don’t want to cough up the remainder of the money because the properties aren’t worth what they were originally sold for ‘off-plan’.
So a protest group has been set up.
Quite what this protest group is hoping to achieve isn’t clear but the gist appears to be that Berkeley Homes should relieve these individuals of their contracts and let them walk away.
But wouldn’t that mean then that Berkeley Homes would have to carry the can for these people’s speculative losses? If property prices had gone up during the same period would Berkeley Homes be allowed to withdraw from their contract and buy the properties back at the old ‘lower’ prices?
The homes in question by the way are not your average two ups two downs. We’re talking about Caspian Wharf, Royal Arsenal Riverside and Chelsea Bridge Wharf – all luxury developments in London.
One unnamed IT consultant may lose his ‘life savings’ of £45,000 because of the debacle. He and his ‘wife to be’ were ‘trading up’ to a £450,000 3 bedroom luxury apartment. An apartment which is now worth only £340,000 due to the property slump. Poor chap.
He wants Berlekey to drop its original agreed price and take half the losses so that he can ‘scrape’ together a mortgage. Berkeley have apparently said ‘No’.
What a surprise.
This is yet another Non story put out by the British press. The fact is all of these people signed contracts for agreed prices. Presumably they took legal advice and most it seems had consulted with banks. Now that circumstances have changed, don’t blame the seller. They’ve SOLD the properties and completed their end of the deal – they built them.
If these individuals want to blame anyone - they should blame the banks or themselves for not putting proper mortgages in place before they ‘bought’.
With journalism like this going on in the press it’s no wonder that the British public can no longer tell right from wrong, fact from fiction.
The Guardian by the way also announced last week that they lost £24 million on the currency exchange markets out of their £200 million hedge fund. If the Guardian is so fond of Capitalistic markets – why don’t they give these people their mortgages?
The story goes like this:
‘Dozens of young professionals’ they say, face ‘financial ruin’ because Berkeley Homes, one of Britain’s largest property builders, is threatening to sue if the buyers don’t complete on their contracts.
These professionals put down their 10% deposits at the height of the property market when mortgages were ‘easier’ to obtain. Now that property values have collapsed by ‘up to 40%’ the story goes that the Banks don’t want to cough up the remainder of the money because the properties aren’t worth what they were originally sold for ‘off-plan’.
So a protest group has been set up.
Quite what this protest group is hoping to achieve isn’t clear but the gist appears to be that Berkeley Homes should relieve these individuals of their contracts and let them walk away.
But wouldn’t that mean then that Berkeley Homes would have to carry the can for these people’s speculative losses? If property prices had gone up during the same period would Berkeley Homes be allowed to withdraw from their contract and buy the properties back at the old ‘lower’ prices?
The homes in question by the way are not your average two ups two downs. We’re talking about Caspian Wharf, Royal Arsenal Riverside and Chelsea Bridge Wharf – all luxury developments in London.
One unnamed IT consultant may lose his ‘life savings’ of £45,000 because of the debacle. He and his ‘wife to be’ were ‘trading up’ to a £450,000 3 bedroom luxury apartment. An apartment which is now worth only £340,000 due to the property slump. Poor chap.
He wants Berlekey to drop its original agreed price and take half the losses so that he can ‘scrape’ together a mortgage. Berkeley have apparently said ‘No’.
What a surprise.
This is yet another Non story put out by the British press. The fact is all of these people signed contracts for agreed prices. Presumably they took legal advice and most it seems had consulted with banks. Now that circumstances have changed, don’t blame the seller. They’ve SOLD the properties and completed their end of the deal – they built them.
If these individuals want to blame anyone - they should blame the banks or themselves for not putting proper mortgages in place before they ‘bought’.
With journalism like this going on in the press it’s no wonder that the British public can no longer tell right from wrong, fact from fiction.
The Guardian by the way also announced last week that they lost £24 million on the currency exchange markets out of their £200 million hedge fund. If the Guardian is so fond of Capitalistic markets – why don’t they give these people their mortgages?
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