Pre-pay meter woes :(

[Climbingmagnus]

Looks like it's getting resolved, thanks for the suggestions. Ecotricity are happy to swap the meter back to a normal one if I switch to them and surprise, surprise, EDF changed their minds when I told them and are offering to swap the meter back too.

Not that any of this is relevant to my original post but I'm not a smarmy property developer from London or anything - this is the house I grew up in. I rent it out because it would break my heart to sell it and I can't move back there because there's no work there for an electronics engineer.

I'd be very interested to find out where B-A-S and merlin stay when they go on their holidays? Only in accomodation which would not be suitable for permanent habitation by a 'local'?

 

[Stoday]

When I go on holiday I stay in an hotel. As a kid living with my parents, we used a boarding house.

Landlords who sequester local housing for holiday lets force up the price of housing beyond affordability by locals. Nothing illegal in that, of course, but it does not mean that I or others approve the situation.

Anyway I'm pleased that you've got EDF to stop being silly. Just as a matter of interest, will you move supplier or not?

 

[EFLImpudence]

Don't forget that these properties have, presumably, been sold by local people (or Prince Charles - but that's unlikely - he doesn't sell property) for inflated prices to grockels in the first place. That's life.

 

[Inky Pete]

When I go on holiday I stay in an hotel. As a kid living with my parents, we used a boarding house.

Landlords who sequester local housing for holiday lets force up the price of housing beyond affordability by locals. Nothing illegal in that, of course, but it does not mean that I or others approve the situation.

Any hotel could be converted into low cost flats for "locals", any boarding house could house a large extended family of "locals".

But then with all the boarding houses and hotels shut, and with no tourists about because there's nowhere to stay, what would all these "locals" do for employment to be able to afford all these new residential properties?

 

[EFLImpudence]

Would you sell your house to 'locals' for less than its value?

 

[Inky Pete]

Any property is worth just what someone is willing to pay for it. Doesn't matter who they are or where they're from.

Attractive properties in attractive areas will always sell for a premium. I've seen it happen in the rural village I was brought up in. I was lucky and bought my first house here just before property prices went really silly - and at the time it was a serious stretch financially to do so. Others were not so lucky, and so despite the fact that thousands of new homes have been built here over the last 20 years I'm the only one from my school year who still lives in the village.

Sad, but a fact of life.

 

[Stoday]

Would you sell your house to 'locals' for less than its value?

Of course not. I wouldn't expect anyone to do so.

The problem is caused by planners, who have restricted housing development thus causing a shortage. Prices respond to the shortage to squeeze people out of the market until buyers and sellers balance. That's how markets work. But the price driver's planning.

Regretfully, it's the locals who get squeezed out. House owners enjoy a bonus as house prices rise, as do outside speculators.

 

[EFLImpudence]

That's how it works.

Who do you think tells the planners what to do?

We could confiscate the land stolen by the Normans - i.e. ALL OF IT - that would bring down the price of land. It is still their descendants who own the vast majority of it and still make the rules.

There is no shortage of land in this country: we are just not allowed to use it.