The House Mover's Tale

Ok, it looks like I'm staying put for the foreseeable future. The costs of moving, both financial and in terms of emotional and psychological aggro, are greater than the costs of staying. Interest rates have gone up twice in recent months and all the pundits are agreed that there'll be more, with rates perhaps rising to 6% or more (currently Bank of England base rate is 4.25%) in order to cure "overheating" in the "housing market". Moving now to a more costly house would risk losing a good few grand, and at worst end up in the dreaded "negative equity". (Lovely Yuppy phrase that, meaning that your assets don't cover your debts.) Either way, moving to a better place in Nottingham would make it more difficult, and at worst impossible, to move out of this sodding city to somewhere civilised.

So, although Bilborough's a grotty Darren-ridden graffiti-d and vandalised dump, it makes more sense to stay in the house and batten down the hatches so as to be able to move to civilisation when/if the opportunity arises, than to move to a more expensive house (thus taking on more mortgage debt) and effectively committing myself to Nottingham for years. This illustrates two of the major disadvantages of being a 'home owner':

1. Inflexibility. Once you've bought a house it's difficult and time-consuming to move again.


2. Soothsaying. You have to become an amateur economic pundit in order to decide whether to move or not

Were I still renting and had ended up in Grotsville, I could just decide to rent somewhere else and move at the end of my rent contract (usually 6-12 months these days). No agents, no briefs, no house tours, no offers, no retracted offers - just wash 'n' go. It irritates me that, as a 'house owner' (rather, debtor to a building society), your decision as to where to live is dictated almost solely by economics. Of course, the disadvantages of renting are legion, not least having to kowtow to a petty-bourgeois penny-penching narrow-minded Daily-Mail-reading landlord/lady, but the freedom to bugger off whenever you want is pretty appealing.

The choice is simple, then: stay in Grotsville, Notts, hoping for a better job opportunity to arise elsewhere (preferably a long way North of Nottingham), or commit to Nottingham for years to come. No choice, really. As cities go, Nottingham is relatively civilised, at least compared to London or Manchester or Leeds, even to Hull. But that's not saying much. Cities are noisy, overcrowded, violent, stressful, and destructive of human solidarity, and Nottingham's no exception. It's greener than some, with some good parks, but it's hideously overcrowded, choked with traffic, and crime-ridden (not surprising given the vast wealth disparities living cheek by jowl in the city). People aren't as unfriendly and aggressive as in London, but that's a bit like saying that Michael "Drac" Howard isn't as right-wing as Nick "I'm no Nazi, honest guv" Griffin, or that solitary confinement isn't as bad as being dropped into a scorpion pit, or that Nicholas Parsons is preferable to Bernard Manning: forced into a choice you'd have to choose the least bad, but given a free choice you'd not choose either.

Aggression, stress, and chronic low-level nervousness are constants in a city. You can never fully relax, and petty aggro can strike unpredictably at any time. Two recent incidents:

1. When cycling in Shipley Country Park a carfull of Darrens drove past in the opposite direction and the driver lobbed something at me, probably a can, hitting me on the leg. I turned around and chased after them (foolishly - what would I have done if I'd caught up, given that I've not had a fight for over 25 years?), but they drove off with some slack-jawed grinning knuckledragger looking a fair bit like the banjoist in Deliverance giving me repeated V-signs through the back window. Provocation on my part? Nil. Zero. Nada. Niente. Zip. Bubkes.

2. Again on my bike, turning into the Wheelhouse pub on Russell Drive at around 8pm, going past a parked car with 3 black lads, one of whom leans out of the window and shouts incomprehensible insults (including "bitch" - since when has that been an insult to throw at males?) and makes menacing gestures. I just rode on past, shaken and annoyed. Again, provocation zero. Perhaps the guy thought he had to 'big it up' to his mates and make like some mean muthafucka in a rap video? Who knows.

There have been a few others, but it's not worth listing all the petty random aggressions that get thrown at you in this city. The point is that conflict can happen at any time in any place in the city, even if you adopt a low profile, are unprovocative, avoid eye contact with lads and hard men, don't dress in any subcultural uniform, and generally try to make yourself as anonymous and unnoticed as possible. It's just a fact of life in a city, where humans are turned inhuman and conflict, not solidarity and empathy, mediates human relations.

I'm more acutely aware of this at the moment because I've just come back from 2 very happy weeks in the Scottish Highlands, where sheep outnumber humans by orders of magnitude, and people are people and interact as humans, not regarding each other suspiciously as potential threats. It hurt badly, really badly, to come South of the Border, and worse when I got back to the Midlands, where open country is as rare as clean air. Going from how people should naturally live, in face-to-face communities, to how people are forced to live, as mutually antagonistic anonymous economic entities, is a shock to the system which takes some time to recover from.

I just can't hack city life, and I know that shedloads of other people in cities feel the same. Sure, some folk actively like cities, but I reckon they're in a minority. To me, living in a city is bad for your physical and psychological health, strips you of your natural empathy and solidarity with other humans, and reduces your life span. I'm sure that if I could live in the Highlands I'd live years longer than I will down here. Best keep on buying those lottery tickets I suppose....

Ok, ok, quit nagging - I'm still thinking about whether or not to move on. I certainly got more encouragement today, after talking to my neighbour round the corner who was telling me all about various "goings off" and feuds that have been happening of late. He's certainly a fund of local gossip, and even making allowances for dramatic licence what he said was still alarming. Off the top of my memory:

1. There was a mini-riot a week last Friday, early evening, which I'd missed by not getting back from work while 8-ish. Apparently there's been a long-running feud between a family a few doors down opposite (whose kids are nice - I give them wee jobs to do now and again) and a "problem family" up on "The Green", and this broke out into open warfare that evening, with insults and objects flying, baseball bats being brandished, and a host of cop cars descending on the area. Gordon Bennett! That never happened even in Coltman Street in Hull, where I first moved in Hull in my innocence, and which is populated with drug dealers, lowlife, and general lumpen scumbags.


2. My other next door neighbour, the shouty, but perhaps justifiably so, single mum, is in a feud with her neighbours, two doors down from me, which apparently are also a "problem" and cause trouble. There was reportedly a massive public barney between them recently because her neighbours kids kept going into her front yard. Plus she's had her windows broken (see last entry), and my neighbour says that she's had an air pellet fired through them. According to him she's looking to move out - can't say I blame her.


3. The "problem family" up on the Green are supposedly the subject of numerous complaints from folk on the estate to the Council, on account of the kids doing lots of thieving. Pinch of salt, perhaps, but yer man next door says they're going to be coming up at the next Neighbourhood Watch Meeting. One of them is apparently riding round on a motorbike and making threats to the family across the road.


4. A quiet Indian family nearly opposite are forever getting grief - "racist shit?" I asked - "all sorts", says my neighbour - with kids breaking into their cars and going into their garden.

And that's just what I heard from him today. This place sounds like bloody Deadenders - all we need is a Dirty Den equivalent to appear. And this is far from an area with a rep - Broxtowe, Strelley, Bulwell, not to mention St Anns, Meadows, Sneinton and Clifton, are reportedly far, far worse. According to the estate agent valuer who visited me last month, Bilborough is popular and houses get snapped up as soon as they go on the market, particularly by 1st-timers. Hmmm. If Bilborough is des res, at least for 1st-time buyers who'd never be able to afford anything in better areas, then it does make me wonder about Nottingham as a whole. It may be a far more vibrant, varied, and cosmopolitan city than Hull, but it's coming across to me as a whole lot rougher, and I really never thought I'd end up saying that given my views on Hull.

(This all came about because me and my neighbour need to put up a new back garden fence, the old one being, well, old and decaying, and having been damaged during storms last month. I'd got a quote from a fencer which quoted for 6' x 5' panels, and my neighbour wants 6'-high panels to keep the kids out from two doors down from me who he says keep climbing into his garden and giving him and his family grief. Which could explain why he's got two fearsome-looking terriers...)

Housing boom to bust?

A major discouraging factor is that the 'housing market' is showing classic signs of a capitalist bubble about to burst: over-valuation, rampant inflation (15-20% per year!), speculative buying, cheap money (base rate's been under 4% for some years) and the 'bandwagon effect' whereby buyers are desperate to get on the bandwagon whilst it's racing ahead for fear of losing out. It's difficult to see house prices collapse as they did in the 80s when shedloads of mortgage owners were left in 'negative equity' - they'd borrowed more than their houses were worth, and thus couldn't move without paying off their mortgage and loads on top - as there are objective factors at play in the current boom, in particular the severe shortage of housing, a low rate of house building (lowest in Europe, I read), and increasing demand as more people choose to live on their own (around 1/3 of households are single, I also read recently). However, the amount of speculation - people buying houses as a 'property investment' offering far greater returns than the meagre few percent they can get on savings accounts - and 'buying to let' is pushing up prices beyond that justified by the objective factors mentioned. In short, IMO, houses are over-valued, and at some point there'll be what the economists euphemistically call a "correction", or in plain English a crash.

The very fact that increasing numbers of pundits are talking about a "correction" (eg House prices rise by "£100 a day") of itself increases the likelihood of a crash, as happens in the stock market. There's much muttering about interest rates increasing and bubbles bursting and the "unsustainability" of prices, and that in itself has to have an effect on buyers. It's certainly having an effect on me, because it would be dangerous for me to borrow up to the hilt to pay for a 110k house if the price is likely to fall. I wouldn't be taking a mortgage out on the whole price, as I could put some 25k to a deposit, but a price fall would mean losing a substantial part of that deposit. And that's my future bloody pension, given that there'll be piss-all State pension once I get to 65.

What is to be done?

Beats me. In a 'rising market' I'd certainly think more positively about a move, as I would if I were committed to staying in Nottingham in the long term, but I've not settled in here and keep pining to move North of the Border to civilisation (at least, as compared to England), and I definitely don't want to find myself trapped in this city by over-extending myself. Plus it is nice to have some spare cash in the account. Just a few grand, but that means I don't have to worry about bills, housing repairs, going on holiday, buying goodies, or treating myself to malt whiskey :*)

The end of property porn?

If/when the market does collapse, or at least "correct itself", then at least one good thing will come out of it: the end of all that bloody property porn on TV! I'm sure that, in decades to come when yet more of those "remember the 's" get made, the Noughties will be characterised by an obsession with property, housing makeovers, and of course bloody gardening. Future pundits will shake their heads in disbelief at the collective hallucination so many of us have let ourselves fall into, the idea that we can all be mini-capitalists and make easy fortunes just by adding water features to our gardens and hanging flower baskets in our porches. It's certainly not true to say that you can't get something for nothing - the bourgeoisie plainly show that you can, if you have serious capital behind you. What is true to say is that the working and middle classes, the oiks and the wannabes and the Money Box audience, can't get something for nothing, but we've allowed ourselves to be fooled into believing that we can. When the "correction" comes and our petty capitalist fantasies are exposed as naked emperors, we'll all be holding our heads and promising "never again!" whilst the bourgeoisie laugh their heads off at our presumption.

# posted by Fred : 3:53 PM