Evil, amoral gazunderers

[Saracen]

If it's there at all it'll be there on one of their many bile-fuelled websites. I hereby revise my offer: find such an atricle on any News International website or publication and I'll get you drunk at Central London prices.

I'll guarantee you won't.

But, booze aside, I'm not sure of the mechanism by which it's possible to cheat someone out of their home, 600k or not, by gazumping? After all, gazumping, by definition, is perpetrated by the property owner on the buyer, and the buyer either has to stump up the extra or lose the deal and any money expended to that point, which could well be a lot. It can cost you thousands, but I can't see how you can guzump them out of the home?

The nasty bit about gazumping, and I suppose it's why it works, is that if it's done at the right time, it costs the buyer a lotwhatever they do. Which is why I called in extortion, albeit entirely legal ..... which it shouldn't be by now. Of course, the legal profession aren't in any great hurry to see it outlawed, because they get paid either way.

[Betty_Swallocks]

It's O.K. because I've worked pretty hard since I was 20 and still own sod all. I don't particularly care when rich, gullible people get 419d.

The politics of envy. Pretty.

I haven't got what you've got so it's nice when bad things happen to you.

Presumably you chose your career. What is it? Bus driving? Nobody forced you into it and you MUST have suspected that it wasn't all that well paid. You can't complain when other people choose more lucrative jobs and get paid more than you.

You sound reasonably intelligent if a little misguided at times so I assume you could have got a better job if you'd wanted one but you made your choices in life just as everyone else does, including the couple you criticise and call tw*ts for working hard in the early part of their career to establish themselves rather than going to the theatre and spending time down the pub as you seem to think everyone should just because they live in London.

[Rave]

The politics of envy. Pretty.

I haven't got what you've got so it's nice when bad things happen to you.

I didn't say it was nice. I merely said that I have no sympathy. The point of the post was to laugh at the outraged tone of the article. If you don't find it funny then fair enough.

Presumably you chose your career. What is it? Bus driving? Nobody forced you into it and you MUST have suspected that it wasn't all that well paid. You can't complain when other people choose more lucrative jobs and get paid more than you.

I'm a controller now as it happens, and I earn about the median wage for London if I do a little overtime. Even when I was a driver it was by far the best paying job I've had.

You sound reasonably intelligent if a little misguided at times so I assume you could have got a better job if you'd wanted one but you made your choices in life just as everyone else does, including the couple you criticise and call tw*ts for working hard in the early part of their career to establish themselves rather than going to the theatre and spending time down the pub as you seem to think everyone should just because they live in London.

Well yes, I do think that, which makes it a bit absurd for you to accuse me of being envious. Let me make it crystal clear, one more time. I don't envy people who have more than me, I just don't feel the slightest shred of sympathy when they lose some of that wealth.

[IBM]

Well yes, I do think that, which makes it a bit absurd for you to accuse me of being envious. Let me make it crystal clear, one more time. I don't envy people who have more than me, I just don't feel the slightest shred of sympathy when they lose some of that wealth.

Funny thing is, I always took you for a decent sort of bloke. And yet you are saying that you don't envy that have more than you. I've got to say that the logical conclusion as to why the humane aspects of your personality have been removed in this particular instance would be envy.

Or maybe you're just....

[Saracen]

I didn't say it was nice. I merely said that I have no sympathy. The point of the post was to laugh at the outraged tone of the article. If you don't find it funny then fair enough.

....

But, you see, I think that's why I don't find the tone of the article at all funny.

If it was people that got got all their wealth in an ill-gottened way, and then be duped out of it, I could see the funny side. I'd probably even cheer. But guzumping and gazundering are legal but reprehensible ways of screwing people over once you've got them over a barrel and provided the people getting screwed aren't morally bankrupt themselves, I would have sympathy with them however wealthy they are.

It's not about what people have got, it's about whether they're being screwed by sharp practice or not. It's also a 'there but for the grace of God (if he existed, but that's another thread) go I' kind of thing.

Personally, I don't believe gazumping or gazundering just happens. It's a quite deliberate ploy, and it relies on entering into a deal where an element of good faith is required, and then waiting until people are going to lose quite a lot of money and then holding them to ransom.

How would you feel if you'd saved for a house, finally managed to get all the necessary money together, just about managed to make it all come together and just as contracts were about to be exchanged, the seller gazumped you and demanded £10k more .... which you couldn't afford. So, now, the whole deal collapses, you're £1500 out in legal bills and sundry costs, three months down the line and back to square one, looking for a new home? And it's not just you that got screwed, it's everybody in your chain, and all because one individual utilises an opportunity which it's about time was made illegal.

And then, to cap it all, people went around laughing at it just because you'd got more than they have, and never mind that you've worked hard for years to get it, just to see a large chunk of money you can't really afford to waste thrown away because of someone else's greed?

[mmh]

well said...

sorry but Rave, usually, i agree with your opinions...

but this thread you are way off the mark...

I couldnt help but read the article and think about that happening to my family, just because someone wants to shave a big chunk off your house price theyre gonna screw everyone over... Saracen has hit the nail on the head... if someone did that to me, I'd take a baseball bat to thier kneecaps... thats what loansharks do to people who take £1500 off them and dont give it back right?

absolutely absurd to see this kind of behaviour!

[Rave]

If it was people that got got all their wealth in an ill-gottened way,

Well, the people in the article apparently own a £600,000 flat and are in their 20s. There are only, as I see it four ways in which that could happen.

1: They worked ridiculously hard. Admittedly I would have some sympathy in this (extremely unlikely) situation, although not much as previously stated.

2. They're in ridiculously overpaid jobs. No sympathy from me.

3. They're mortgaged up to the hilt because they're financial morons. No sympathy from me.

4. They bought the flat for a lot less than £600,000 and it has increased in value considerably due to general house price inflation. Need I say it?

It seems to me that 4. is the most likely scenario. They're outraged simply because they're not going to have such a massive windfall of cash as they had hoped. The article practically says as much:

This time, however, it threatens to become an even greater curse - not least because the instant access to fluctuating house prices on websites such as Rightmove and Zoopla! provides would-be gazunderers with all the up-to-date knowledge they need to hold sellers to ransom.

Eh? Hold them to ransom? Negotiate a reduction to the market price in what is a rapidly falling market, more like. If Rightmove and Zoopla are showing that similar properties are selling for less, then asking for a reduction isn't immoral, it's simple common sense. The reason I have no sympathy for the sellers is that most of them seem to be motivated entirely by greed. The Coopers at the start of the article should just knock 50 grand off their asking price for goodness sake- £365k still buys a bloody mansion in Sydney, especially since their property market started tanking long before ours did.

Edit while I'm here: I'm in favour of a move to a system where offers are legally binding, but (happy to be proven wrong here) I didn't see the Mail calling for that change when the property market was on the up.

[TiG]

Getting what a house is worth is fine as an example, so in a falling housing market you ask less, in a rising one you ask more. When its bottomed out and on the turn back up and you have delays because the chain above you takes time to shift and the people above you come back and ask for £20k more is it fair?. NO of course not.

Why is it that people who earn higher wages deserve to be screwed over more?. If you haven't noticed the whole capitalist economy is based on greed, just look the banks got greedy and are now getting their just rewards.

A legally binding agreed price when entering into a deal for a house which is going to potentially 25 years to pay off should be agreed.

Making £365k on a property may not be enough if you bought within a certain period of time, They may have spent £300k buying it and £65k doing it up. You really make a complete leap of faith in the underlying circumstances of these people on here, and yes while I agree that the likely candidates of Daily Mail articles really are not worth the paper they are written on, I would suggest that you seem to have an incredibly negative attitude for people that have worked hard and achieved something of their own.

It does feel like there is a touch of envy in your posts. (Hell I wish i had a 600k flat to sell but i don't think i sound quite as jealous/bitter as you) Given by the negative response by a number of others on here maybe i'm not the only one that feels this.

TiG

[Rave]

Why is it that people who earn higher wages deserve to be screwed over more?. If you haven't noticed the whole capitalist economy is based on greed, just look the banks got greedy and are now getting their just rewards.

Indeed. I'm greatly enjoying that too.

A legally binding agreed price when entering into a deal for a house which is going to potentially 25 years to pay off should be agreed.

I agree, as I've already stated.

Making £365k on a property may not be enough if you bought within a certain period of time, They may have spent £300k buying it and £65k doing it up.

Yes, but they didn't, because they've owned it for 38 years, as the article states.

You really make a complete leap of faith in the underlying circumstances of these people on here,

On here? Have I?

I would suggest that you seem to have an incredibly negative attitude for people that have worked hard and achieved something of their own.

Well, that's because I don't think very much of it was down to hard work.

It does feel like there is a touch of envy in your posts. (Hell I wish i had a 600k flat to sell but i don't think i sound quite as jealous/bitter as you) Given by the negative response by a number of others on here maybe i'm not the only one that feels this.

You can accuse me of jealously all you like, but you're wrong. Bitter I'll admit to.

[TheAnimus]

Rave, now lets just pretend we've got the fairest system for determining worth in the world.

In non-state employed jobs, the pay is set by the amount of people capable and willing to do the roll. Excluding the tiny percentage that are children of the MD, or even a previous PM, the vast majority of people earning six or seven figures get it because there where rightly or wrongly selected as the best candiate. This is really rather true.

The desk head who i work for will earn in one year more than i will in my working life quite probably, but on the other hand he is not only a ludicrously gifted mathematician, but he works damn hard, far harder than i do, with far more risk.

you have no right to say oh he dosen't deserve to have a couple of houses, sports cars etc. anymore than i have the right to say your a lazy sod who should quit moaning and do some real work, i know you could easily earn more doing a job that really taxes your mind (which there is a considerable premium on).

now the fact of the matter is gazundering/gazumping is a really rather abhorant practice. The victims, who lets face it, are victims of these practices shouldn't have sterotypes or judgements made about their situations.

Someone in their 20s can easily of earnt the money to pay for a £600k between two of them, you can't say they don't deserve it, or what can be implied from the opening post, you seam to think you deserve it more.

I'll say this again too, i'm quite a cnt, often too much so, but even i'm not saying "bring on the recession". I should be, it could benefit me greatly, if the average man on the street has less money, i have even more by comparision, i could perhaps get all the things i want, that i'm jelous of other people having.

But i don't want them *that* way.

[Saracen]

Well, the people in the article apparently own a £600,000 flat and are in their 20s. There are only, as I see it four ways in which that could happen.

1: They worked ridiculously hard. Admittedly I would have some sympathy in this (extremely unlikely) situation, although not much as previously stated.

2. They're in ridiculously overpaid jobs. No sympathy from me.

3. They're mortgaged up to the hilt because they're financial morons. No sympathy from me.

4. They bought the flat for a lot less than £600,000 and it has increased in value considerably due to general house price inflation. Need I say it?

It seems to me that 4. is the most likely scenario. They're outraged simply because they're not going to have such a massive windfall of cash as they had hoped. The article practically says as much:

They're not the only ways. Suppose they lost their parents in a car crash, and they sold the family home to buy a flat to live where they wanted? That happened to friends of mine.

Or it could be a combination of well-paid jobs and a substantial mortgage. If they're in their 20's, that could mean 29, and they could have been earning for years, perhaps 12 or 13, and had saved for 10 years before buying it.

And how well-paid do they have to be to be "ridiculously" well-paid? If they live modest lifestyles, don't run a car and have been foregoing holidays and the pub for years, they could have put away a tidy sum even from relatively modest jobs. If you're used to a travel, restaurant and regular theatre lifestyle, it's astonishing how much you save if you take up listening to good music on CD and reading books instead. So what's "ridiculously" well-paid? £20k a year? £40k? £70k? For all we know, they're young but qualified GPs and earning £70k. But they're doing a valuable job, and trained and studied hard for years to get to that point. But two such salaries go a long way to buying a £600k flat, especially when it's shared so they're really only financing £300k each. Not exactly property billionaires, are they?

And yes, perhaps it gad gone up a lot in value since they bought it, but Rave, they're not going to have a huge windfall, because when they sell this, they're buying separate homes and they will have gone up too!

You only get huge windfalls if you sell up and don't buy again, or if you downsize significantly, or if you more to a much cheaper area (if you can find one) or if you emigrate to a cheaper area. Suppose someone bought a house for £100,000 and five years later, it's "worth" £200,000. Great! But wait ..... if you sell it to trouser that windfall, you're going to be living in a cardboard box. So, when you sell one place you buy another, and that will have doubled ion value too. The value of any home is illusory, until and unless you downsize (etc) because though your property may be worth a lot more, everything else has gone up too, and by the time you've bought again, all that loverly windfall has disappeared.


And what about

Having outgrown their two-bedroom flat, media relations officer Adam Smith, 29, and his partner Claire Brand, a 27-year-old police photographer, were ready to move on to a bigger place in Reading.

They offered their home at £189,950, but accepted £175,000 from a young Eastern European couple who said they were first-time buyers and were eager to move in quickly.

Adam and Claire then found the house they wanted: a £310,000 semi being sold by an elderly widow who wished to move nearer her son.

The widow was actually signing the final paperwork in her solicitor's office when Adam called to cancel the deal. He had no choice.

The young Eastern Europeans had just dropped their offer to £150,000, and when he told them he simply couldn't afford to absorb a £25,000 reduction, they pulled out.

Are they ridiculously well-paid to be able to afford their £189,950 (asking price) home?

Had the buyer offered them £150k up-front, it would have been fair enough .... and no doubt, turned down, because they could not afford to do the move they wanted at that price, so would have looked for another buyer, or a different house to buy, or simply not moved. But to wait until contracts are on the verge of being exchanged to decide to try to extort £25,000 from them is a very nasty thing to do and personally, I wish all sorts of extremely unpleasant things happen to the obnoxious <bleeps> that did it to them.

These disgraceful tactics aren't just used on the wealthy or those who, in your opinion it seems, clearly don't deserve whatever degree of wealth they have - it happens to all sorts of people, including those with average jobs in modest properties.

It's the whole practice that is disgraceful, whether it's used to gouge fairly well-off people or not.

[Rave]

So what's "ridiculously" well-paid? £20k a year? £40k? £70k? For all we know, they're young but qualified GPs and earning £70k. But they're doing a valuable job, and trained and studied hard for years to get to that point.

I personally think that 70k is a bit much for a job that essentially involves rote learning all the things that can go wrong with the human body and then applying that knowledge to either write out prescriptions or make referrals. Admittedly there are a lot of things that can go wrong with people and thus the learning takes a long time, but it is not, IMO, a particularly difficult job.

And yes, perhaps it gad gone up a lot in value since they bought it, but Rave, they're not going to have a huge windfall, because when they sell this, they're buying separate homes and they will have gone up too!

Cash out and rent for a while then, while you wait for the house you want to drop in price.

You only get huge windfalls if you sell up and don't buy again, or if you downsize significantly, or if you more to a much cheaper area (if you can find one) or if you emigrate to a cheaper area. Suppose someone bought a house for £100,000 and five years later, it's "worth" £200,000. Great! But wait ..... if you sell it to trouser that windfall, you're going to be living in a cardboard box.

Or a rented house, as I said.

Are they ridiculously well-paid to be able to afford their £189,950 (asking price) home?

No, but they probably are if they can easily afford a 310k one. Depends on how much of a deposit or equity in their current home they have I suppose.

Had the buyer offered them £150k up-front, it would have been fair enough .... and no doubt, turned down, because they could not afford to do the move they wanted at that price, so would have looked for another buyer, or a different house to buy, or simply not moved. But to wait until contracts are on the verge of being exchanged to decide to try to extort £25,000 from them is a very nasty thing to do and personally, I wish all sorts of extremely unpleasant things happen to the obnoxious <bleeps> that did it to them.

Yes, fair enough. I wasn't laughing at them so much.

[badass]

I personally think that 70k is a bit much for a job that essentially involves rote learning all the things that can go wrong with the human body and then applying that knowledge to either write out prescriptions or make referrals. Admittedly there are a lot of things that can go wrong with people and thus the learning takes a long time, but it is not, IMO, a particularly difficult job.

On that basis, no job's particularily difficult.
A fully qualified GP in this country does a total of around 13 years further education/training after GCSE's to be able to practice. That's not easy. I suppose its easy for a bus driver that can get his job after a few months training that almost any idiot can do to say that, but that'd be because they don't have a clue what they are talking about.
GP's aren't just a medical professional, they also have to run their own business. If they make a mistake, they can be permenantly struck off and they need to know far more than the average person has the faintest glimmer of hope of remembering or understanding.
You say yourself you get the median wage for london which is currently around £35k
I think you'd find that more people think that's overpaid.

[Betty_Swallocks]

&#163;35k for telling bus drivers which route they're on? Now that is ridiculous. Any muppet could do thet.

[TheAnimus]

i've always thought it was tube drivers who where over paid.

They have to do less than a bus driver, bus drivers have to worry about left and right, not just forwards and backwards. Bendy bus drivers have to be careful not to block the yellow box. They fail in this endevor most often, but still they have to be aware of it.

The only reason tube drivers are so well paid is because they strike, and hold London hostage, in actual fact i can't see how it would take more than a week to train the replacements.

[Betty_Swallocks]

i can't see how it would take more than a week to train the replacements.

"Sit there, press that button to go, stop pressing it when you want to stop."

I'd say it wouldn't take more than half an hour including some practicing time.