tony de wonderful

Article in the Guardian.

• Personal debt in the UK, including mortgage lending, stands at £1.4tn – an average of £54,000 per household compared with £29,000 a decade ago.

• Consumer debt had trebled since 1993 and now stands at £158bn;

• More than 8m households have no savings, including half of low-income households;

• Outstanding debt on credit cards has almost trebled since 1998 to reach £55.6bn;

• There were 300,000 arrears on mortgage in 2012 – with 34,000 homes repossessed. This is a reduction of 30% from the peak of the recession but a 60% overall increase since 2006.


No surprise that house prices roughly correlates with the level of household debt I think!? We almost doubled debt in 10 years and house prices did similar.

Although everyone seems confident about the housing market it looks pretty exposed to an interest rate rise because as a nation we are so leveraged up.

What do you think?

ReallyReallyGoodMeat

Pardon my ignorance, what is consumer debt?

RA Dunk

We're fcuked.

dpb

Everything that isn't on an actual cedit card presumably

dpb

USA credit card per household seems to be 3 to 4 times higher

dpb

But yes rents pumped up by private landlords together with the 'everybody must own their own house' government initiatives are plain scary
I guess all those bulgarian will need a place to stay for a few months though

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

+1

tony de wonderful

I think it includes credit cards, the bulk will be mortgage debt though.

wrx300scooby

+2

Type_R_1984

It might as well be 100 trillion coz it's never going to be paid.

stonejedi

iTrader: (51)

+3.SJ.

Chip

No debt here at all , don't owe anyone a bean.

And no, we're not fukced at all. Some may be, but who gives a fukc about them anyway.

wrx300scooby

No debt here too Chip but I think the country is fubarred. I worry about what my grand kids are going to experience as they grow up.

SJ_Skyline

+1

People should live within their means.

Felix.

Its sometimes difficult though when the government pull the rug from under you.

Family living in a house well within their means - suddenly a job loss here, reduction in salary there, 10% on your gas bill, 15% on your council tax, reduction of your house price.....

That's when it becomes FUBAR

Dingdongler

Reading between the lines of TDW's post and it is basically asking whether he should delay his proposed house purchase.

In other words if he holds on is there a chance prices will nose dive if/when interest rates rise...

urban

iTrader: (1)

Yes, and the fact that someone can go out, borrow a load of dough, max out credit cars and then have the majority of that debt written off doesn't fecking help either.

paulr

What do I think.......nothing!!!!

Devildog

£54,000 INCLUDING mortgage lending is not that high TBH

jonc

If you can get over the sensationalist headline and dig a little deeper, you'll find that consumer debt including mortgages have been at this level since the financial crisis in 2008. Consumer spending is up and is one of the reasons why GDP is rising again whilst debt has remained flat over the last five years. 90% of household debt is made up of mortgage payments and cash and credit card borrowing has come down from £210bn in 2008 down to £160bn in 2013. Bottom line is the growth we're seeing is not fuelled by debt. So we're not that f*cked IMO.

Dr Hu

I've said it before - and I'll say it again - it's mainly due to the fecking *insane* house price levels in this country......

I'm lucky - we bought at right time, now have no mortgage - debt free - but for my kids to afford a house like we have now - I can't ever see it happening without them being hocked up for 50yrs with a huuuuge mortagage, thats if they can ever get one when (if) they leave university already £50k in fecking debt!!!!!!!

RANT OFF..... and breeaaathe

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

That's a bit like saying I'll ignore the £100K debt I have on credit cards that I'm just about servicing the interest on and pat myself on the back for this month having spent no more than I earned this month

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Welcome to modern Britain..... brought to you by a succession of greedy, self serving, lying w4nkers called politicians

AndyBaker

+4

Dingdongler

Scoobynet has just become the TDW/F1 Fan/Alcazar 'moaning about everything' forum.

Getting really tedious now...

Matteeboy

Our country is actually retarded.

tony de wonderful

Yeah what do you think being a property developer?

tony de wonderful

That's true, but one way to look at it is that in 2008 we had a financial crisis caused by 'too much debt', which hasn't actually gone anywhere, what is more it is mostly 'invested' in one asset class (property) so the banks still have this risk to contend with...and by extension the whole economy.

Plus also there is the issue of servicing it which we are just managing with record low interest rates.

jonc

Yes but interest on the debt as a percentage of GDP is relatively low at 3.7%, similar to what it was in 1995.

Chip

Of course he should hold on and get himself into some good quality rented acommadation