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To buy, or not to buy — that is the question

A newly-married couple from Biggleswade in Hertfordshire are seriously considering not getting on the property ladder right now following the public warning from the Governor of the Bank of England over possible house price falls and the likelihood of higher interest rates in the near future.

Sandy, 26, and Dean, 28, Seager have told friends and family that they are thinking of waiting until "prices fall to what people will consider them to be sustainable in the long term", although that may change "if that slimy guy from Wimpey Homes comes back with a much better deal than he offered last week". All this follows months of their endlessly boring everyone who knows them with tales such as how they had seen "this really great place in Baldock that's just right and we're certainly going to buy". This has been going on ever since they got married last year soon after Sandy's promotion to deputy chief junior stylist at Hairforce One in the High Street.

Speaking last week, Governor Mervyn King warned borrowers that the ratio of house prices to average income was now at heights that are fundamentally unsustainable. His words worried the Seagers when they "caught the end of them on Channel 5 News", said a friend who declined to be named as "last time I told them it's a waste of money buying they got pissed off with me big time".

Dean Seager told some mates down the pub yesterday evening that his job as an assistant sales manager with a bottled flavoured-water firm "doesn't pay enough to cover what any mortgage would be right now. Not if we're still going to go on holiday to Turkey anyway and if Sandy still wants to shop for all that rubbish at Top Shop she seems to like." However he added, while having a second extra cold Guinness: "it's clear from my research that inflationary pressures mean that the upward spiral of price increase cannot be maintained indefinitely". His best friend Arwan agreed before offering to get his round in plus a couple of bags of dry roasted cashew nuts.

Sandy's mum admitted to The Rockall Times in a telephone interview that "Sandy's really upset right now because she saw a house in that new development on the Letchworth Road that she just adored. It had fitted carpets and a new cooker included in the price." But she went on to say that "me and my husband are very happy for her to keep living here at home for now rather than pay too much. She's still our baby girl. Dean can still visit her here — if he must. Just so long as they don't do it while we're around like that time we came home from the supermarket and found them half-naked on the bathroom floor. Ugh." Until the pair finally do buy somewhere together Dean will have to go on living with his workmate Zack in a rather unappealing bedsit on the outskirts of the town.

However Dean confessed to his dad that he intended to write to King to ask for a definite explanation of what Sandy and he ought to be doing as a young couple in modern day Britain. "It's really confusing," declared Dean who had even taken the trouble to look at a copy of the Bank of England quarterly magazine at the main library in Letchworth in an attempt to understand the issues. "I've figured out that all this speculation over interest rates had dampened buyer actions and the rate rises should lessen. I think. Or is it the other way round?" Sandy had declined to come with Dean to the library pointing out that "they give pretty good advice on stuff like this in the Sainsbury's magazine don't they?"

Dean's older sister Debbie, who bought a flat in Bedford with her boyfriend a couple of years ago, has been making her brother desperate to buy ever since. "She's like 'Do you know how much we've made since 2002?'," said an aggrieved Sandy. "They paid like thirty grand less than it's worth now — plus it's right in the centre of Bedford, near to an All Bar One and a Harvester", explained Dean. "How lucky is that? What we were looking at is off a B road and near an industrial estate. Sod the free carpets Sandy's mum thinks are so great." He explained that he had respected Debbie's judgement on money matters ever since she helped finance his 'World Cup 1990 Super Stars' sticker album purchase and that weighing up the merits of her advice against that of Mervyn King was proving very difficult indeed.

Sandy on the other hand has confessed to "not much liking" Debbie at all or thinking highly of her property market judgement but admitted that she "usually keeps quiet about it because Dean thinks she's so bloody marvellous". Debbie has especially annoyed Sandy when she and Dean visit because of "all that talk of how much money they've made — as in we haven't — but I still think we should wait if what that King guy said is right. He's never told me I'm not good enough for Dean anyhow."

However just when the Seagers looked to have jointly decided to definitely wait until prices fall they saw an advert in the local free paper telling them of a special one-day offer of some renovated ex-council housing stock in Royston that might be worth looking at. This may have fractured their new-found agreement on waiting. "Look at this Dean", shrieked Sandy when she saw the full-page colour ad, "it's for this weekend only and the prices are crazy."

Dean told Sandy that there was no way that he was living in Royston — "it's dead at night" — but that he would add this point into the letter going to King to make sure those at the top are "made aware of the pressures we're under".

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