Work starts on the eagerly awaited new Foxtons office on Brixton Road

[Winot]

That's still there. Good butcher but pissingly dear cos their clientele are all bankers and the like now.

And a bit mardy.

 

[Ol Nick]

And a bit mardy.

Not so many places you can get fresh mard down South.

 

[CH1]

There is a 4 bed house in HHR on offer for £940,000 Wednesday's Standard.
http://www.foxtons.co.uk/property-for-sale-in-herne-hill/chpk0685812
Is this an indicator of price decline, stasis or what?
winot leanderman

 

[leanderman]

Good spot.

Sister-in-law who has just moved house (Brixton to W Norwood) said her estate agent said the market is dead.

 

[Smick]

Good spot.

Sister-in-law who has just moved house (Brixton to W Norwood) said her estate agent said the market is dead.

Could that be due to the time of year? To me, dead suggests that people just don't want to move, rather than they want to move but won't pay so much as last year's madness.

 

[Cowley]

Could that be due to the time of year? To me, dead suggests that people just don't want to move, rather than they want to move but won't pay so much as last year's madness.

Yeah probably the time of year, come April..Foxtons et al will be ramping up the prices just like they do every year.

 

[Rushy]

I agree the market seems dead but that looks expensive to me. Even extended into the loft it's only just over 120sqm. Much much smaller than the terraces on Leander Road, for instance.

 

[leanderman]

I agree the market seems dead but that looks expensive to me. Even extended into the loft it's only just over 120sqm. Much much smaller than the terraces on Leander Road, for instance.

But Charter School catchment. Families from Sudbourne area are among those increasingly targeting it.

 

[leanderman]

Yeah probably the time of year, come April..Foxtons et al will be ramping up the prices just like they do every year.

And the conditions that have caused this madness are unlikely to change, not least ultra-low interest rates.

 

[Mr Retro]

Is there anywhere left in South London that still represents value for money? I was looking at Tooting last weekend and even there the costs are unbelieveable. Love to buy a 2/3 bedroom place somewhere centralish that won't cripple us with a mortgage. Doesn't look possible.

 

[Manter]

Tooting has been full of the nappy valley set for at least 8 years. You need to look at less fashionable areas

 

[uk benzo]

Try Lower Sydenham.

 

[teuchter]

Old Kent Rd.

 

[Gramsci]

There is a 4 bed house in HHR on offer for £940,000 Wednesday's Standard.
http://www.foxtons.co.uk/property-for-sale-in-herne-hill/chpk0685812
Is this an indicator of price decline, stasis or what?
winot leanderman

According to same edition of ES yes. Election coming up adding to uncertainty (?).

Is the boom in flogging pricey London homes sustainable? The City is not entirely convinced.

Credit Suisse has trimmed its earnings forecasts for upmarket estate agents Foxtons by 10%, warning that the year ahead is not looking as rosy as last.

The bank says the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ recent market survey points to a slow-down in activity, and the upcoming general election will only add to uncertainty in the property market. Foxtons tumbled 8.75p to 165.5p.

Must stop reading to ES. Its appalling. Article below on the "wobbly" share prices says that to look on the bright side Unions are weak. Apparently this is good as it will not stop "growth".

Still Marx and Engels used to read the financial pages. It tells you what is happening and how our rulers see it.

 

[leanderman]

According to same edition of ES yes. Election coming up adding to uncertainty (?).



Must stop reading to ES. Its appalling. Article below on the "wobbly" share prices says that to look on the bright side Unions are weak. Apparently this is good as it will not stop "growth".

Still Marx and Engels used to read the financial pages. It tells you what is happening and how our rulers see it.

The same Marx that speculated on the London stock exchange, while also living off Engels' family factory profits? (sorry!)

 

[Gramsci]

The same Marx that speculated on the London stock exchange, while also living off Engels' family factory profits? (sorry!)

I have just finished Tristram Hunts biography of Engels. Yes it is the New Labour MP. A sympathetic introduction to Engels life and work.

Engels did not want to work in the family business. Circumstances led him to end up working in Manchester part of the family business. He was on the run from Europe due to his radical activities and ended up in London broke. His only way out working at his fathers mill. He regarded Marx as the superior to himself intellectually and supported Marx and his family financially through his work so Marx was free to write. He had not planned to work there for long but realised Marx, also in exile in London need financial support. He also used his wealth to support other socialists and socialist causes. He was always generous with his wealth. He retired early from the family business after his father died. Spending the rest of his life promoting and get published Marx works and supporting socialist movement.

I do not think Marx speculated on the stock exchange. Marx was pretty useless with money. Unlike Engels who died a wealthy man living in Primrose Hill. After Marx death Engels came to the fore again and his house was a centre for socialists seeking advice.

Engels, very unusually, for a man of his station had a long term relationship with a working class woman. He led a double life as an "English" foxhunting gentleman and spending time with his working class lover at his other house.

Engels and Marx were the opposite of the stereotypical dour political activist. Engels large house ( still there with a plaque) was every Sunday open to all. Engels loved drinking and entertaining.

BTW Engels wrote on housing. Have not finished this yet

On June 26 1872, Engels contributed the first of a series of articles to the Volksstaat, entitled “The Housing Question.” The last appeared on February 22 1873. Engels’ central point was that the revolutionary class policy of the proletariat cannot be replaced by a policy of reforms, because "it is not that the solution of the housing question simultaneously solves the social question, but that only by the solution of the social question, that is, by the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, is the solution of the housing question made possible."

That is: The housing situation we are in now is due to living under Capitalism. Its should be no surprise that it is the way it is.

Engels the optimist always believed that it would be the working class that would bring about social change.

 

[leanderman]

I do not think Marx speculated on the stock exchange. Marx was pretty useless with money.

I've been to the Marx family house in Trier. Amazing place.

My favourite essay by KM is 18th Brumaire.

He excused his speculation on the stock exchange by saying he was 'relieving the enemy of his money'!

 

[Manter]

Gramsci he did speculate on the stock exchange. Try the Francis Wheen biography

 

[CH1]

Gramsci he did speculate on the stock exchange. Try the Francis Wheen biography

At least he didn't jump off his yacht leaving everyone in the lurch!

 

[CH1]

BTW Engels wrote on housing. Have not finished this yet

That Engels piece is very intense for me - especially with my current post-Christmas concentration block.
It seems largely and attack on Proudhon, who I'd never heard off. On consulting Wikipedia Proudhon seems to be a French father of anarchism or decentralised socialism - considered to be in the same line as Tolstoy and Chomsky.

Anyway it was remarkable how the housing crisis referred to by Engels has parallels with that of today - but then maybe some things never change, at least in rapidly expanding cities.

It looks as though Prouhon might have been a bid fan of the right to buy, and shared ownership, had he lived into Thatcherite times - at least according to my reading of this extract quoted by Engels:
As far, however, as this Proudhonist solution of the housing question contains any rational and practically applicable content it is already being carried out today, but this realization does not spring from “the womb of the revolutionary idea,” but from the big bourgeois himself. Let us listen to an excellent Spanish newspaper, La Emancipacion, of Madrid of March 16, 1872:

“There is still another means of solving the housing question, the way proposed by Proudhon, which dazzles at first glance, but on closer examination reveals its utter impotence. Proudhon proposed that the tenants should be converted into purchasers by installments, so that the rent paid annually would be reckoned as an installment on the payment of the value of the dwelling, and, after a certain time, the tenant would become the owner of the dwelling. This means, which Proudhon considered very revolutionary, is being put into operation in all countries by companies of speculators who thus secure double and treble payment of the value of the houses by raising the rents. M. Dollfus and other big manufacturers in Northeastern France have carried out this system not only in order to make money, but in addition, with a political idea at the back of their minds.

“The cleverest leaders of the ruling class have always directed their efforts towards increasing the number of small property owners in order to build an army for themselves against the proletariat. The bourgeois revolutions of the last century divided up the big estates of the nobility and the church into small properties, just as the Spanish republicans propose to do today with the still existing large estates, and created thereby a class of small landowners which has since become the most reactionary element in society and a permanent hindrance to the revolutionary movement of the urban proletariat. Napoleon III aimed at creating a similar class in the towns by reducing the size of the individual bonds of the public debt, and M. Dollfus and his colleagues sought to stifle all revolutionary spirit in their workers by selling them small dwellings to be paid for in annual installments, and at the same time to chain the workers by this property to the factory in which they work. Thus we see that the Proudhon plan has not merely failed to bring the working class any relief, it has even turned directly against it.”

 

[leanderman]

Proudhon: my first love! (Circa 1987))

 

[CH1]

Proudhon: my first love! (Circa 1987))

In my youth Trotsky ruled student politics absolutely. Its all a bit new to me.

 

[leanderman]

Foxtons car driving through Windrush square earlier.

 

[teuchter]

He was on the run from Europe due to his radical activities and ended up in London broke. His only way out working at his fathers mill.

Sounds broadly in line with the archetypal Brixton Forum poster.

 

[Gramsci]

Sounds broadly in line with the archetypal Brixton Forum poster.

Have you nothing better to do than post up here to wind people up?

 

[Gramsci]

That Engels piece is very intense for me - especially with my current post-Christmas concentration block.
It seems largely and attack on Proudhon, who I'd never heard off. On consulting Wikipedia Proudhon seems to be a French father of anarchism or decentralised socialism - considered to be in the same line as Tolstoy and Chomsky.

I have only read first section. The biography of Engels does explain the internecine arguments of the time. Engels and Marx lay into Proudhon as his form of socialism was at that time more influential than Marxism. Proudhon is rather forgotten now but in his day he was well known.

 

[SpamMisery]

Can we have less Engels and more Foxtons please

 

[Manter]

Can we have less Engels and more Foxtons please

Despite my degree I am inclined to agree

 

[peterkro]

I have only read first section. The biography of Engels does explain the internecine arguments of the time. Engels and Marx lay into Proudhon as his form of socialism was at that time more influential than Marxism. Proudhon is rather forgotten now but in his day he was well known.

He's not forgotten by a lot of people,he may have been wrong on some things be he was amongst the first to figure out some major political ideas.

 

[CH1]

Can we have less Engels and more Foxtons please

This is my favourite

The only example I can think of where Foxtons (and 4 fellow agents) are being used by an owner to thwart several years of council effort to try to get a derelict property back into use.