Chapter 2530: Acquired a Luxury House in Kensington Gardens

On March 12, London welcomed Feng Yiping with a bitter rain, just like the mood of many Londoners at this time.

London, or the whole of Britain, can be said to be trapped in the bitter wind and rain this spring.

The difficulties in Britain first originated from a couple who became famous inadvertently.

On September 14 last year, the Howards of the United Kingdom went to their bank, the fifth largest mortgage bank in the United Kingdom, Northern Rock Bank (also translated as Northern Rock), to withdraw their deposit of 1 million pounds from their account, but were rejected by the bank.

Everyone knows the mood of the depositors in such a situation. After all kinds of negotiations failed, the two old people blocked the bank manager who had dealt with them for decades and was very familiar with them in the office.

Northern Rock Bank also played their role as a "vulnerable group" and rescued the bank manager by calling the police.

Once the incident was reported by the media, it immediately led to very serious consequences. The share price of Northern Rock Bank quickly fell by one third before the close of the day.

Therefore, the British stock market fell across the board that day, and even the pound exchange rate fell accordingly.

Starting from the next day, long queues of people came to withdraw cash in front of all the branches of Northern Rock Bank in the UK at 5 a.m., and the panicked people all hoped to get their hard-earned money in their hands.

Like the Howards, many people's deposits in Northern Rock Bank are all their savings.

According to the British financial compensation regulations, if a bank goes bankrupt, depositors with deposits of less than 2,000 pounds can receive full compensation.

However, if the deposit exceeds 2,000 pounds, the upper limit of compensation is 35,000 pounds, and the part exceeding 2,000 pounds can only receive 90% compensation.

In other words, depositors with deposits of 35,000, 350,000, and 3.5 million pounds may only receive compensation of 31,700 pounds to a maximum of 350,000 pounds in the end.

After the Howards couldn't withdraw 1 million pounds, who would dare to keep money in Northern Rock Bank?

Soon, by September 16, two days later, Northern Rock had paid more than 12 billion pounds to depositors - half of the deposits they had absorbed.

After that, Northern Rock had to ask the British government for help.

Faced with such a run that had obviously affected other banks, on the evening of September 17, the British government unprecedentedly publicly guaranteed Northern Rock.

The British Treasury even publicly stated on television that it would provide deposit account guarantees for Northern Rock and any other banks that encountered the same problem, and immediately asked the Bank of England, which was responsible for the Bank of England, to urgently provide Northern Rock with a confidential loan of a specific amount. The situation finally eased.

But since then, the British who had been watching from the sidelines have finally experienced the chill brought by subprime loans.

In fact, people who know something about the securities market should have expected this situation long ago, because the US real estate financial market occupies a very important position in the global capital market.

This means that any institutional investor who wants to build their own asset portfolio globally has to consider buying US real estate financial products - just like central banks have to buy US Treasury bonds.

Now the deterioration of the US real estate market and real estate securities will naturally cause some British banks to suffer huge losses, which will directly affect the safety of the bank assets of the British people and the value of fixed assets.

From some current developments in British newspapers and on the Internet, we can clearly draw a conclusion that this should be the time since the American War of Independence when the British hate their American brothers the most - now they should call the American big brother, or the American master.

Huang Jingping put down the newspaper, glanced at Ham, the head of the British company sitting quietly in front of him, and asked Feng Yiping in his hometown dialect, "America, has it really hurt Britain so badly this time?"

"They are actually brothers, not to mention brothers. In terms of houses, Britain's problems are also very big," Feng Yiping shook his head.

In fact, Britain is even worse than the United States in terms of subprime loans.

According to what he learned, in the UK, 100% mortgages are common, and 125% mortgages are also common.

In other words, if you plan to buy a house worth 200,000 pounds, you can borrow 250,000 pounds from some banks.

You can use the extra 50,000 pounds to do whatever you want, such as luxury goods such as supercars, or spend it on finding young ladies like New York Governor Spitzer, who has officially announced his resignation today.

By the way, when Spitzer fell from the clouds into the mud, the young lady named Ashley who spent time with him on February 13th quickly became popular, and the number of visits to Facebook and blogs suddenly soared. She has become a small Internet celebrity - it is very much like the ex-girlfriends of a so-called "principal".

She may be one of the few lower-class people who can achieve a comeback in the subprime mortgage crisis.

But many middle-class people in the UK, even wealthy families, are not as lucky as her.

In the UK, the definition of a middle-class family is an annual income of about 40,000 pounds, and the annual income of a wealthy family is about twice that of an ordinary middle-class family, or more than 80,000 pounds.

Since the fourth quarter of last year, real estate prices in the UK have fallen for five consecutive months.

The British people also don't have the good habit of saving like the people in our country, and most people live on a tight budget. Therefore, for many families, real estate is also their greatest wealth.

As soon as house prices fell, a large number of British people went bankrupt.

According to KPMG accounting firm, due to the impact of the US subprime mortgage crisis, one person in the UK currently falls into bankruptcy or other insolvency situations every 4 minutes.

Data from the British government's bankruptcy department shows that 25,264 cases of insolvency have occurred in the UK this year, of which 15,651 people applied for bankruptcy and 9,614 people applied for "Individual Voluntary Arrangement" (IVA) - IVA is a debt restructuring plan that allows debtors to pay 50% of their debts. Pay off the arrears within the year on a regular basis, with fixed interest rates and fixed amounts.

But this is not the worst. The British "Daily Mail" quoted expert analysis as saying that this is just the "calm before the storm" and the number of insolvent people will increase dramatically. This trend will even continue until 2009.

Another related data is even more worrying. The debt situation of British debtors has reached a "terrible" level. Excluding mortgage debt, the average debt per person is nearly 50,000 pounds!

In other words, the average debt per person exceeds the annual income of most families.

This is also the bitter result suffered by the British who treat their personal homes as money-making machines (I don’t know if we will ever have such a day).

But it is precisely because of this that Feng Yiping was able to buy a property in London so quickly.

The motorcade finally drove into Kensington Gardens Street, which he visited last year. On a rainy day, this mansion area in the center of London was particularly quiet.

Huang Jingping looked at the luxurious British-style mansions on both sides of the road and the one or two cars passing by on the road. She turned around and asked Feng Yiping, "Why do I feel like I'm on a set?"

Indeed, this place looks a bit like those domestic film and television bases, which are quite unpopular.

"Yes, it's just that the protagonists on this set are the British royal family," Feng Yiping pointed towards Kensington Palace in front of him.

Ham turned his head at this time and said, "Mr. Feng, your home has arrived,"

The car parked in front of a palace-style building. Even on a rainy day, the appearance of the entire mansion still looked very elegant.

In Feng Yiping's eyes, this house shimmered with golden light, because it could be said to be his largest investment in real estate, and the acquired price was already close to 40 million pounds!

And this is the price that the previous homeowner, who was in urgent need of cash flow, got a 25% off price.

This house has a total of four floors, with gardens at the front and back, and a garage underneath, with a total area of ​​more than 1,300 square meters.

Although housing prices in the UK will definitely fall in the future, given that luxury homes here have always been a scarce resource, and the luxury homes here will never fall by more than 25%, Feng Yiping, although feeling a little heartache, but after hearing After Ham's report, he quickly made the decision to buy it.

He believed that if he wanted to sell it after a few years of buying it, it would not be difficult to earn 10 million pounds.

Huang Jingping held Feng Yiping's arm, "Is this our home in the UK?"

"Yes," Feng Yiping patted her hand.

At this time, under the leadership of an old housekeeper in a tuxedo, three women and two men, plus the old housekeeper, a total of 6 service staff, were already standing in front of the door to welcome their arrival.