On the issue of UK house price growth, Ramin Nakisa from PensionCraft argues there has been no ‘real’ house price growth in the last 20 years, contrary to popular perception. Chart below….
Worth checking out his new video here:
Investors are typically landlords. They are an essential part of the rental market. Many people prefer to be tenants rather than owners.
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25 years ago our house was £145000 now £624000
I don’t know if that’s unusual?
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Should we not look at the cost of homes in relation to family incomes?
Incomes in Toronto have not kept up with home prices.
Each town/city should be looked at individually.
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Doesn’t appear unusual at all - and seemingly similar in Toronto too.
I dunno - easy to read Rightmove erroneously as a wealth indicator, and I think this Ramin chap is a clever bugger.
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Based on Land Registry house price index, current UK property prices overall are 350% of 1999 prices.
£145k to £624k is a bit higher than the index, but not necessarily unusual. Pricing growth will vary by region, type of property, condition and improvements etc.
The graphs are real (inflation adjusted to 2024) prices.
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I’m not sure they do, it’s just they have little choice. If we had decent social housing, private rents wouldn’t be so exorbitant. Both my sons rent, with ownership a distant dream.
That tied with ridiculously high uni fees at high interest rates certainly makes it hard for young people. Fees for my son to do masters on the UK were about £13000. With his dual nationality he did one in Belgium cost £1000.
As a country we don’t exactly encourage education
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What if a 20 year-old had a £20,000 lump sum as a deposit on a flat in the UK?
Maybe they could get something modest up north?
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A good point, when our two kids left home they each rented grotty flats at an exorbitant price. Eventually they accepted loans that became gifts for deposited on modest houses, whereby the mortgage was less than their previous rents. The rest is history.
Paul.
Maybe they could get something modest up north?
I’d rather live in Burnley than Cambridge.
Cambridge is boring, far too flat, and far too many crazy cyclist. 
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Everywhere a bike bike.
No, you are quite right, Chris. 466.00 is the net return without any consideration of taxes or inflation.
Information is often incomplete in posting discussions. Also, I have a bit of an odd sense of humour and the abstract of posting doesn’t help it.
When I first started texting and e-mailing people, I soon realized that I should not try to be humourous in my replies after annoying a bunch of people. But I still try sometimes … 
I know what bonds are (e.g. Gilts and U.S. Treasuries) - but what are investment bonds?
Are they tax wrappers?
Do they come in onshore and offshore variants?
How do the mechanics of them work?
Can you open such a wrapper on any major UK platform such as Vanguard or Trading 212 or HL?
Also, a related question - how many platforms do people use for pensions, ISAs and investments?
And what are the best ones?
We all use Hargreaves Lansdown for our ISAs, SIPP and active savings but only on an execution only basis.
Paul.
Internet searches are your friend here, as some platforms e.g. Vanguard, only offer their own products (AFAIK), and costs vary, as does some of the admin e.g. production of interest & dividend certificates for HMRC purposes in the UK. Check out Hargreaves, Aviva, AJ Bell. Also, I think some may restrict access to being via advisors only.
As regards ‘investment bonds’, this is more a generic term for ‘all bonds’, and the term ‘bonds’ only refers to the establishment of a creditor/loan/debt relationship on clearly structured terms. General corporates often issue bonds amongst many other debt instruments.
This said, IB’s (as a name) are often marketed via insurance/life assurance providers. These imply longer tenor investment arrangements, and many in times passed were provided with beneficial tax terms – but, as ever with these things, you have to be keenly aware of the fine print e.g. with some of these bonds you can withdraw 5% p.a. tax free (any more and you trigger higher tax exposure), so they have been attractive to higher-rate taxpayers with lump sums. But, also beware, the performance of these bonds has been sub-market (IME), as the underlying investments were very ‘balanced’ (bonds and equities), so haven’t fared overly well over the last few years.
You’re best scouring something like the Aviva website (if you are in the UK?), as they have quite a bit of information about their products. Of course, perhaps better to engage with an IFA in the UK, who can assess a more general picture of needs.
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Bond ‘wrappers’ have come on leaps and bounds since even just a few years ago.
There are indeed onshore and offshore variants.
If you use the right product on the right platform, no longer with stupid charging structures and funny terms attached, besides being another tax wrapper around your assets and/or funds of choice which need be no different from your GIA/ISA/Pension selection (especially useful given CG changes but also dependent on current and future marginal rate one would be paying) there are a number of different ways they can be written in terms of ownership and life(s) assured, while (if desired) making use of various trust formats to be a useful planning tool for many.
Long sentence but there are some out of date and incorrect summaries flying about…
Note that results in a bond (onshore) are pre-taxed and deemed to have taken care of basic rate (the actual rates paid depends on the assets owned but is usually far below 20%). This cannot be claimed back and means that while invested a Bond will underperform a GIA/pension using same assets. However, there may be a tax advantage on encashment which brings them more into the zone of attractiveness…
I have 3. Hargreaves Lansdown for SIPP, Scottish Widows for SIPP and Interactive Investor for the ISA.
You would think it was simple choosing the right platform for oneself, but it’s not that straight forward. Not all platforms offer all funds and this can be frustrating if you’ve transferred your money to them and find out later that a fund you’re interested in isn’t available. Also, the way they charge can be a little complex depending on how much you have invested and which funds you want to invest in. Some funds are more expensive than others. Saying that, never buy a fund based on its cost per year. The difference in 0.2% or so is negligible to the returns you can make.
Hargreaves Lansdown is not the cheapest, but it has good customer service, offers a huge amount of funds and has a great site.
Scottish Widows has an awful website, the customer service is pretty poor and the fund choices are limited. Saying that, the fund choices I was interested were there and they were cheaper than HL. The customer service is poor in that their whole system and way of working is dated and mistakes get made. However, they do sort everything out with a phone call. When they do a mistake, bizarrely they offer £50-£150 compensations each time. One phone call resulted in them saying they’ll offer me £50 for my wasted time phoning them. I said ok yes it has been a waste, but nevermind. He instantly said, we can off you £100 then. I wasn’t even complaining 
Bit weird. Two reasons I haven’t taken my money out from them; 1) I kind of feel sorry for them, 2) They rang me a few times about 5 years ago offering me this different platform of theirs. I must have said 2-3 times I wasn’t interested and ignored them. I kept thinking there must be a catch and they’re only interested in making more money from me. On the 4th attempt by them, I said send me the details. I looked into it and the platform they were offering was way better, cheaper, more flexible and way more funds. Not many companies have come my way offering me much better service for less.
Interactive Investor is very good value once you have a certain amount in there. The site is ok, but their customer service is non existent. If you have any problems, it can be a pain getting something sorted. I use the this platform for all the Stocks & Shares stuff and it can be hell to get any advice about documents from them. They know nothing. I have USA shares and occasionally I get a letter regarding tax, companies getting bought out and then the stock gets split, etc and it can be a nightmare. They are useless. Hence, choose your platform wisely, as sometimes you need help.
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Fidelity offered one of the first cost effective platform services in the UK about 25 years ago. And they were really, really good too.
Then they were Godawful, absolute, p’ss poor, mind numbingly bad for quite a while.
Now they’re really quite good again, good people service, that is you speak to people not bots and if you have something technical to discuss you will likely be speaking to someone in the UK, who knows what they’re talking about, so nothing gets lost in translation.
If you have a substantial sum they are considerably cheaper that Hargreaves once tiering comes into play (but Hargreaves’ site, app. and data offerings are far, far superior).
Spouse accounts can also be linked at Fidelity, which not only helps with admin. but the tiered platform fee structure too.
If the costs were the same, Hargreaves wins by nature of the portfolio data and information provided and the generic and asset/fund specific material available.
If you have a GIA investment (i.e. non ISA or pension), then Hargreaves tax tools are a useful bonus (though I would still keep my own spreadsheet of entry/exit values and income delivered anyway).
However, if what can be quite a substantial costs difference works for you, then Fidelity is a good shout.