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Posts Tagged ‘Credit crunch’

Credit Crunch Snapshots 2

Posted in Inner city, tagged , , , , on 3 December, 2008| Leave a Comment »

The house next door has been sold at auction after it was repossessed. Our neighbour who is on the case with these things found out the price from the auction house. It went for less than half the price that was originally paid.

This is bad news for neighbours who want to rearrange their mortgages after coming off fixed rate deals. The value of the houses has dropped so much that they can’t go anywhere else, but have to stay with the original mortgage companies on the (most expensive) variable rate. We are thankful for living in a tied house, even if it confuses people when we fill in surveys and applications.

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Credit Crunch Snapshots 1

Posted in Inner city, tagged , , , , on 2 December, 2008| Leave a Comment »

After the recent repossessions on our street, we are seeing the recession in action in our neighbourhood:

Yesterday I met my neighbour at the pedestrian crossing. He’s lost his job so he and his wife are going to English lessons. He’s an Asian, who previously worked in Europe as a skilled parts machinist, but has been on a factory line here because his English isn’t as good as his other two or three languages.

I wonder how he and his wife are going to manage to pay their mortgage if he doesn’t get another job soon.

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The echoing crunch…

Posted in Inner city, Wolverhampton, tagged , , on 1 July, 2008| 2 Comments »

The other week we had the bailiffs round. Not calling for us – the Church of England isn’t in such a bad state yet. Sadly asking about our next door neighbour who disappeared at the end of February after telling us he was going on holiday.

The following morning the bailiffs were here again, breaking in next door and going to repossess two doors down too. That makes the fourth house in our development of forty or so houses that have been claimed back by lenders.

Wolverhampton has one of the highest rates of subprime mortgages in the country. It’s been so sad to see what’s happened to our friends, who have been trapped by plummeting property prices so they can’t even sell up and go back to renting.

This week the repossessed house next door got its ‘For Sale’ sign. It joins around five or so in the close that are up for sale. If you’re looking for a bargain priced property near to a good bible-teaching church and an excellent church primary school, this is the place to look. A two bedroomed terraced house on the road up from ours sold for £60,000. Just don’t get a sub-prime mortgage…

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