Mass suicide pact..

GrumpyOldGit

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Sorry to disappoint Mr Kipper but the town which is going to die slowly, is in fact building pleasing new properties ( unlike the marina development ) in the older end of town. A few hundred more houses are to be built on the north side of town, as could be discovered from the TDC website.
The majority of the new housing stock is being sold 'Off plan' .
Where the ideas of 'Tomahawk' come from that the old town is dying are questionable in the extreme.
Unfortunately the concepts being drawn from a silly little harbour meeting show that most commentators are entirely out of touch with what is really happening on the ground.
There, sorted that out for you!
And yes, I still run around in my old battered truck as I have absolutely nothing to prove.
 

Tomahawk

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I can understand the locals feeling that way. Generations of my family have lived in Ipswich and it was a wonderful place to grow up and to live until the people with *plans* arrived here. Now the town is a ghetto, totally congested and completely buggered beyond repair. We used to moor on the river FOC and nobody ever hassled us.


You really do need to get out your door and look about and smell the coffee. Sorry to be awkward.... but when you look back with rose tinted specs at how ipswich used to be, have you taken the trouble to wander doen the river a short way to a place called Felixstowe? Have a look at the things tied up against the dock and ask yourself how you could fit one of them into the old dock at Ipswich? Indeed it is probably the other way round.

I make no appologies for being blunt and for offending peoples sensibilities about a by gone era. The world has changed. And it sill continue to change. You have a simple choice. You change with the world or get left behind. But it is harder than that. These days you have to run to stay still if you want to change with the world.

Brightlingsea is not unique. Like many seaside towns it is loosing out because its location does not suit a post industrial service based economy. However it is getting close to the bottom of the pile The most expensive house in Brightlingsea (Rightmove) is £335,000. The most expensive house in Burnham is £450,000. In Woodbridge it is £500,000. Even Ramsgit, the armpit of Kent is more valuable than Brightlingsea at £375,000!!

These numbers alone should tell you that you are loosing out. So if you live in Brightlingsea your captial worth is less than anywhere else. Which means you can't move for work as you don't have an asset that can be sold to facilitate a move. In turn this means people can pay less for staff... or you commute. But yu are starting from the end of nowhere so your journey to work is longer and slower and more expensive..

In this situation, the harbour is not the solution to all the towns problems. However it is part of the solution if it is handled right. Unfortunatelly, the message I took away was one of rejecting change and hanging on to the past.
 

FullCircle

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I fail to see why having more expensive property prices is in any way beneficial. I live in the cheapest village near Southend. I get to live in a nice place and don't have to fork out too much for the pile of rubble.
 

GrumpyOldGit

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Possibly, the most expensive houses in Brightlingsea are not for sale currently ? Recent individual houses have been sold in excess of £600k !
The one advertised at £335,000 ( starting bid) was sold as soon as the closed bids were opened hence not available as yet as a ' Sold ' price, and was in need of total refurbishment. Estimated cost £125/150,000

As I said, things here on the ground are not as easy to quantify as Google might have it.

Things change here at the same pace as everywhere else just in a more genteel manner.
 

Tomahawk

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I fail to see why having more expensive property prices is in any way beneficial. I live in the cheapest village near Southend. I get to live in a nice place and don't have to fork out too much for the pile of rubble.

The property market is a funny old thing..
If prices start to fall, buyers stop buying. After all, do you want to spend hundreds of thousands then loose £20k in a few months? Indeed a house we have been watching in BoC has just been "newly listed" at a £20k reduced price. The moment buyers stop buying, prices start to fall faster or sellers withdraw from the market.

By way of explanation, I only looked for the price of a 3 bed house and picked up the most expensive listing. My thinking is that a 3 bed house if prety much in the middle of the market wherever you look and is a useful comparison on geneeral property values.
 

FullCircle

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You buy a house to live in, so over a long time it would not matter.
Obviously if you just want it for an investment, then you have no real interest in the community.

In real terms, those prices will rise. Brightlingsea has it's charms, just not for the Aldeburgh wannabees with a twee cottage by the sea for incomers.


Like Grumpy, I believe the community is good, just like Canewdon. Not trendy, but very well cherished by those living there
 
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