Are we heading for a depression? Property market crash?

Don’t get me wrong… I’d love for this to be a buying opportunity.


I’ve just been scrolling through all the listed REITs in the UK and if they haven’t halved in the past couple of weeks it is uncommon.


There are a fair few REITs in the US (yes, it’s a different market) that have lost >50% just today.


Someone, somewhere, at some point is going to scoop a bargain – they always do. But it’s not going to be me. I won’t be able to value anything for a good few months going forward.


If there are more people in my camp than the bargain hunter camp – you can play the guess the shape of the recovery game all you want – we’re not going anywhere.


If the reverse is true we’ll just be whipsawing about until we get some consensus of value rather than a punt on price.

All may well be true..but I say we are involved in fraud here,,that won't change,,.the fscs should step in.

That's a great piece of analysis, jhamster.  If you're mostly indoors (and potentially no income) there is almost nothing you can or want to buy.  I already know families in which every wage earner is now basically redundant - and they have no chance of a getting another job in their sector (because it's been mothballed) or another (because no-one's hiring).  The old conservative ideology of the unemployed being lazy wastrels who should just get on their bike won't wash. 

Try telling Trump that.

To me that sounds like you're describing hard working families. I volunteer at one of the food banks in my city on occasion when I'm feeling a little over privileged, both wage earners bringing in money, raising a kid or two, and we can't get enough food or staff here to sustain it. They don't just turn up, they have to hand their bank statements over to an assessor to determine what their income is, and what their outgoings are. The problem is always high rents. I don't begrudge any family having a £10 netflix subscription as that will do little to feed a family and their kids need something enjoyable in their lives, but often that's a luxury they think long and hard about, and often are missing the monthly subscription and getting cut off anyway because that £10 represents feeding the family for a week. An unexpected expense like a £60 call out to fix their washing machine destroys the entire month's ability to feed the family, there's no where else for them to turn in their destitution. 

These people are now being told by the government not to worry about their rent if their work hours get cut due to the virus, they can just "come to an arrangement" with their landlord to repay the rent arrears and not to worry about being evicted for 3 months. It's a staggering statement to make while handing out £330bn to businesses and telling them to stay at home for 14 days and isolate. The reality of the situation just doesn't seem to compute with policy makers. What these people need is money so they can hand it right over to their landlord, not the kind offer of debt they will never be able to repay, and then be evicted with a loss of their deposit, no deposit for anywhere new, no month's rent upfront, and then lost in the ever growing system of homeless families and suicides.  

People make stupid statements like "if you need more money then work more hours" "get a better paid job". How is a plumber, or a carpet fitter supposed to up the 60 hours a week they are already doing, around bringing up their kids? How can they earn more money when they are competing with all the other tradesmen in the area?  "Change your profession then!" Sure, let's solve an income issue by abandoning a skilled trade, retraining and starting from the bottom of the ladder again while maintaining the same income as a minimum to solve the aforementioned income issue. Virtually impossible. 

Sure there are people who are perpetually unemployed, or rather people who are simply unemployable who come too, but as we vet who can and can't use the service I can tell you that the vast majority are working families who just can't afford the staggering rents taking 80% of their income, and a small section of people with genuine life limiting disabilities who have been moved from DLA to LCWRA with their already unaffordably low benefits having been cut further.

I see disabled people who are desperate to move and downsize, but go to viewing after viewing of properties and always and absolutely turned away in favour of young professionals. The phrase "NO DSS" was made illegal in rental advertisements a while ago, but it certainly hasn't made an iota of difference to the way letting agencies operate. People can no longer view a property with a deposit in hand and say "I'll take it!" as the practice is to now send the landlord a selection of tenants with details of their income sources and the landlord then takes their pick. The lowest income, or anything to do with DWP income and they are disregarded outright, unless of course its a sub par property no one else will take, in which case disabled people end up in those properties. It's criminal. 

And of course there is virtually no social housing, so they are well and truly trapped. It's absolutely tragic and part of the reason I don't volunteer more there is because it takes it's toll, the feel good factor of doing your bit for others with far less doesn't last long dealing with so much despair everywhere. It completely changes your outlook on the kind of prejudice many people have against those who simply do not have the ability to do any better than they are already doing.  All of the wealth in society bears no relation to the hours people put in anymore, it's moved into businesses and the other half to ghastly proportions. The sad thing is that this is the entirety of life for these destitute people. They were born into it, and never escape it no matter how much effort, hours, graft or strife they are compelled to put into it every day. There is always a part of the system there to take it from them. 

This Pandemic situation is going to push many of them over the edge.  And of course this idea that people make a lifestyle choice to live on benefits is a fallacy. Most of those people have been failed by their parents, failed by the education system, often failed by the criminal justice system and have no hope of maintaining anything in their lives on medium to long terms. Friendships, relationships, jobs, they simply were never given those kind of life skills that everyone else doesn't even think about in their day to day lives.  That's our fault as a society as there will always be those who slip through the net during their upbringing.
Those who are quick to judge with prejudice and abuse are often those who have received all the necessary societal skills and have benefited from them quite nicely. Said people ought volunteer in food banks to get a true understanding of their privilege before continuing. 

Not bust yet. That will be determined at the end of Administration in actuality there are very few capital losses that are crystallised.

Yes there are predictions but they are just that guesses anybody guessing what current oil price would be today would never have been right.

Too many variables it may end up that all P2P may have been the best place to have money invested as losses may be small in comparison to other financial products.