Impossible to Buy a House as a Young Single Person.

House prices- everybody is talking about them. Will they crash? If so, when? Will I be able to afford a house? If I can get a house, will it have more than three rooms and include an indoor toilet?

Up north it does seem to be a little bit cheaper than down south, but I'm pretty sure I'm still going to struggle.

One of my modules last term required that I went out and recorded a radio interview with somebody. I spoke to a Mortgage Advisor from Halifax Bank about first- time buyers and how difficult it is for young people to get onto the property market.

After chatting to him for quite some time, my outlook grew bleaker as I felt my chances of ever owning my own property slip away. It pretty much turns out that if I want a house that costs £120,000, I'll have to have an income of about £32,000 per year and an initial deposit of £12,000 before I even have a chance of affording the repayments.

Sorry, but I really don't know that many people who are in their 20s who earn that kind of money. Which made me think: 'Do you have to be in a couple to afford a mortgage?' Two people with reasonable incomes could afford a house worth £120,000, but as a single person? Probably not.

So, will house prices crash? Who knows. House prices are slowly falling, but that is probably a direct effect of the fact that nobody is buying because nobody can afford to. After all, things are only worth as much as somebody is willing to pay for them.

One good site I have found is www.housepricecrash.co.uk which looks a bit daunting when you first get to the Home Page, but its full of graphs and visual content that makes the facts and figures a little easier to digest.

There is also a news blog section that allows you to keep up to date with the latest developments in the housing market and also to contribute to the site yourself.

At least on here some people are a little bit more optimistic than me about the housing market, with a couple suggesting that it is not a case of 'if' there will be a housepricecrash, but 'when.'

I would suggest checking it out.

I hope they're right anyway. I don't want to spend the rest of my life renting. I mean, it's OK for now, but renting these days can be just as expensive as paying a mortgage. It's that jump start that's the problem- the getting your foot on the property ladder.

If anyone else has any other suggestions or useful websites, please post a comment. Otherwise, I'm just gonna keep playing my numbers every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Hmmm... Spain might be nice.

Getting Personal

My intention when I began writing this blog was not to get too personal. I just wanted to be able to put across some of my own views on some topical issues that surround people of all ages living in England.

Unfortunately, I have had a two and a half week absence from these marvellous insights and I feel that I owe you an apology, so it's time to get personal and explain why.

I am writing this now because as of the 30th March 2008 an arrest warrant will probably be issued for this person, which will mean that any personal information that I write about this particular lowlife will put me in Contempt of Court- and nobody wants that now do they?

I would like to begin my story by explaining just how skint I am. I took a year out before coming to uni and travelled around Oz for a few months, which cost a hell of a lot of money. So before I even started my student life of debt and dried pasta, I was a good eight hundred quid down.

This, of course, was my resposibility and I felt that my trip had been worth it. It didn't really get me down too much and by Christmas I had worked so many nights in my local that my bank account was pretty much at zero.

That's when I met Dave. Well, I met him again. I've known him for a few years through some old friends of mine from a time in my life that I would rather forget, so why I felt so attracted to him I will never know.

I was taken in by his charm. He had nothing- no money, no real possessions- but I was skint too, so that was alright. It was pretty equal as regards how skint we were.

I won't go into too much detail, but over the next few months things moved pretty quickly. I was living in halls and by Easter last year he was staying almost every night. He had gotten himself a full time job and was earning a good wage. Everything was fine.

My friends liked him, he would do anything for anyone. He is pretty handy with cars so when my friends' banged out fiestas couldn't make it up Sheffield's hills, Dave was the first one there to lend a hand.

By June he had his own house in a nice area and we were practically living together. He got an even better job working at the hospital through an agency and then got taken on by the NHS. Good pension, good salary, good prospects. Everything was fine.

It was a few months later before everything started to go wrong. I have a credit card and he didn't have much furniture in his house, so I told him that he could use it as long as he was responsible for the balance and made payments on it. He has only ever made one payment.

It wasn't long before he was struggling to raise the rent despite having a lodger who paid him almost half of what he needed. I began to wonder where the money was going. Because I wan't getting any of it.

I continued to purchase things for him and lend him rent when he needed it. I have recently found out that none of the money that I gave him for rent actually made it to his landlady. So where did it go?

Keep in mind that I am a student, already skint and that the money I was lending him was not from savings I had, but from overdrafts and credit cards.

We were building a life together. He bought a cheap Mondeo, so we had a car, we spent Christmas together with my family. He doesn't see much of his. They don't get along. I wonder why.

I was still wondering where the money was going. I wasn't getting any of it. He hadn't been to work for a while. He was off sick with back problems. He went to physio and was told to take time off from work. I knew that he was avoiding going back.

This last few weeks have been some of the strangest in my entire life. Dave told me that he had gotten himself a new and wonderful job working on the skeletons of yachts as an engineer. They would put him through a degree and even give him a company car. The salary was amazing.

I had no reason not to believe him. I have since discovered that the 'company car' that he turned up in was not a hire car at all, but that he had bought it and is now tied up in a four year contract for the car and the insurance on it that totals about seven grand- which he most certainly cannot afford. Even better though- the vehicle was impounded three days after he got it for having no tax. Moron.

As I said, he was acting strangely. It was the weirdest first week at work ever. He was having to drive all over the place to pick tools and materials up for this new company. Even on his first day. It seemed strange to me, but what do I say to him? You haven't got a job; you're lying to me. What if he had had a job. Would have looked pretty silly then- although probably not as silly as I feel now.

Everything all compounded on Friday last week. I had been suspicious of him for a while now and when he wanted to use the internet I let him, but later checked his internet history and saw that he had been looking for jobs in Cardiff, house shares in Cardiff, Loan Companies and also the myspace of a girl who lives in Cardiff. It began to click.

We were meant to be going on holiday three weeks later, but he had never had a passport and was having trouble finding someone to sign the back of his photo. I'm guessing that he was waiting for me to go along anyway and then clear everything out whilst I was away.

Never mind that we had been planning on moving in together when the contract was up on my house. Never mind that we had a dog together who I can't keep because it's against my contract. Never mind that he owes me at least £3500. Never mind that he had told me he loved me.

I ended the relationship and he knew he had been caught. I haven't seen him since.

I have a loan agreement for £3500 that is signed but useless because even if I find him and win a civil case, if he has no money I'll get £12 a month or something stupid that won't even cover the interest on my credit card.

He has STOLEN my laptop, my video camera, my digital camera, my Nintendo DS and God knows what else that I just haven't noticed yet. Oh yea, and all my DVDs and Playstation games, which I have located in CEX in the city centre. It's a shop that buys second hand DVDs and games and resells them. All my DVDs and games are there, but it's unlikely that I'll get them back. Legal mess apparently. Yea for me.

This is now a criminal case as well as a civil one and I've got a lot of people looking for him. If I'm not going to get my money back, I want to see him in prison.

This is somebody who invaded my life and took everything of value that I own; who has left me with nowhere to live next year because I have already signed my contract over; who owes numerous debt agencies money; who told his landlady that his dad had been killed in a horrific car accident just to get out of paying rent; who owes his landlandy over two grand; who, according to the police, is already a wanted man for a vehicle theft in Newquay about two years ago, before our realtionship even began; who has lied and cheated his way through life and will carry on doing so.

All of this I have only discovered in the last few days since he vanished. I haven't even had an explanation as to why he has been such a complete dick.

His name is David Brown. He is 24 years old, DOB: 1/2/84. He has short dark brown/ black hair, slim, 5'6" tall, lots of tattoos and is very handy so will have no problem picking up 'cash-in-hand' jobs. I really want to find him, but also give a warning to other girls who may become involved with him in the future. DON'T. He will take you for everything you have- financially and emotionally.

I'm Not Dead!

Just thought that I would let you know that although I didn't blog yesterday, by some strange twist of fate I am, in actual fact, still alive. But in lots of pain.

I can't believe how many of my achy muscles I didn't know I had. I can't sit, stand or even breathe without it aching somewhere. I won't be wearing a skirt for a couple of weeks either.

It's just a really short blog tonight because I'm cream crackered and gonna walk the dog- quite a task in itself- then settle down with a Horlicks and a book and go to bed.

Glad to be alive!

Snowboarding Hurts

I'm in quite a bit of pain. My friend, Ian and I decided to do four hours of snowboarding today in preperation for a mates holiday in france we're going on next month. Thing is, it wasn't just four hours of slopes, it was four hours of lessons. I've never even been on a snowboard before!

Ian was a little better at it than me, although he has been skiing a few times so had a bit of an unfair advantage. To be honest though, I picked it up pretty quickly if I do say so myself.

It's a lot of fun when you're not falling over but it absolutely kills your calves and your ankles for those of you who have never been before. The forst hour was definitely the most tiring though, then you just kind of get into the swing of things and it was great.

A little bit apprehensive though- we've got another four hours tomorrow and I'm not sure that I'm even going to be able to move. After four hours of walking in those massive snowboarding boots I took them off and nearly fell over- which wasn't much different from what I'd been doing all day anyway.

Well, at least now I can go, turn right, turn left, go backwards and sometimes I even manage to stop! I even did a 180 turn earlier but I absolutely did not mean to at all so can't really be seen as a good thing!

I shall let you know whether I make it back to the slope tomorrow. If you don't hear from me, I probably will have died in a tragic landing-on-neck related incident. Wish me luck!