Ex Married Quarters

[Letsby Avenue]

Am I the only person who is really jacked off at this sort of thing - I wonder how many soldiers (other than Graham from Lulworth!) managed to get a week off to queue for one of their own ex married quarters and should they really have to?


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/6162787.stm

[Wyler]

The real story here is that people are camping out to buy a box for that amount of money!!

I bought an old Airmens quarter three years ago and did it up. Sold it on for a healthy profit. These people will need to invest considerably to bring them up to a decent spec so it is not as rosey as it seems (I had to spend 20 grand).
To address the point made, I think you will find any interested serving personnel got a heads up early and the chance to stake their claim ahead of the masses.

Thanks to Mr Portillo and the Tories for selling the lot off to a Japanese Bank. IIRC all SFA will be sold off at a rate of 10% per year.

[In Tor Wot]

Wyler, you're absolutely right, but it's 5% per annum. However, the forces have no say as to which 5% it is. Hence the MQs in the outer isles and all points north and toilet like are boarded up, whilst those in 'profitable' areas down south are being sold.

The impact is that there aren't enough MQs and SSA is being paid out (by the Services not Annington homes) hand over fist!

High Wycombe is a typical case. Due to lack of accommodation at STC personnel were using surplus quarters at Halton. Annington Homes sold 20% of the patch at Halton so there was a shortage of accommodation that required SSFA to be paid. When I left there (3 years ago) 108 personnel were in civil rented accom costing just over £150k per month - heaven knows how much it's going to be when Innsworth move in. The real crime is that we (the Services) are paying this out of already pinched pockets whilst Annington rakes in another £160k for a 25 yr lease on a 2 bedroom airman's quarter!:ugh:

[hobie]

When I left there (3 years ago) 108 personnel were in civil rented accom

memories ..... :cool:

Our tribe (all 4 of us) came back from Wahn many moons ago to a posting at St Eval ..... 4 months in a 4 bed caravan at Newquay ...... well 2 beds plus 2 more when the table was folded down ..... then 6 months in a Hireing at Mawgan Porth ...... finally approx a year in quarters at St. Eval ......

2 years after leaving Germany and the posting came through .... Aldergrove ..... (renting in Belfast of course) .... yipee .... :{

[niknak]

Welcome to the real world boys and girls.

I live in an area which is heavily occupied by second home buyers, high house prices and a shortage of any houses at reasonable prices.

Both my children have worked a lot longer than you in, and given to, the local economy a lot longer than the vast majority of any of the MOD staff in Norfolk/Suffolk(of which there must be several thousand), yet neither of them can afford to buy a house in the region.

Fortunately, developments of local low cost housing are being made available to local people who have lived in the area for more than your 3 year tours, but that still means a mortage of £90K plus on a salary of £15K.

They don't have access to the early pensions or re training that you do, so, despite the fact that you've contributed nothing, I'd love to know what makes you think that you are entitled to access to cheaper housing than they are.

[Molesworth Hold]

They don't have access to the early pensions or re training that you do, so, despite the fact that you've contributed nothing, I'd love to know what makes you think that you are entitled to access to cheaper housing than they are.
We'll have no trouble here.
http://www.bbcresources.com/images/costume/late_20th/the_league_of_gentlemen_PU.jpg
This is a local house for local people.

[L1A2 discharged]

Niknak,

Your approach seems to echo that of the majority who have no idea about Service life. When I joined, nearly 30 years ago, the leaving gratuity did the job it was partially designed for - purchase of a home in your general area of choice. Whether that be on the flat wastelands of suffolk, norfolk or similar or somewhere more hilly was up to us. Having spent a career in the Service of the nation it was just about enough to get a house. Furthermore, the training you so casually mention was, and is, necessary to civilianise what training has been delivered to enable us to carry out the task of defending your right to hold the views you espouse.

The gratuity etc does not cover a deposit now. My daughter is, unfortunately, caught in the same trap as your children. We are looking to remortgage our home in order to provide a deposit prior to me leaving the Service, this will entail me taking more active employment than I had hoped to at the end of my Service life.

We spend our working life trying to guarantee the freedoms enjoyed by you at the expense of personal loss to us, in some cases the loss of life itself. We are housed in generally inferior housing which costs us rent - this is approaching that levied in civilian employment with no further recompense to compensate us for the vastly increasing costs. Council tax is levied at a high rate, centrally decided which penalises those in 'low tax' areas and is not much below that in higher areas. Recent pay increases of 2 - 3% but rent and council tax contribution increases in double figures.

The lack of appreciation expressed by people such as you is a contribution to my reason for leaving.

[niknak]

L1A2

Fair point, well made.

Molesworth - most amusing, but you are frightenly close to the truth....:D

[Letsby Avenue]

Good point L1A2 - After nearly 25 years in BAOR and without a foothold on the UK housing ladder, I left with my gratuity and wondered just how the hell I was supposed to get a roof over my head :confused: I needed to live where I got a job which necessitated a monster mortgage which fortunately (?) I was given - Now I've got pay massive monthly repayments so that I can one day own it (probably just before I die) :eek: I saw the light a few years ago though... It's time to sell, get the equity and move to Spain - P1ss poor reward for 25 years service when you can't get to live in the country you served when you retire. At least I'm not on the streets where 25% of the UKs homeless are apparently ex servicemen - I wonder why?

[handysnaks]

Letsby, one hates to be cruel but during that 25 years in BAOR you must have had some inkling that you would eventually have to leave the forces and find somewhere to live! With all the LOA you were able to earn in BAOR surely you could have invested some of it in your future accommodation needs. I can recall plenty of boring financial planning lectures that we were all forced to attend at regular intervals. :rolleyes:
I bet you had plenty of tax free new cars though ;)

I don't recall anywhere in the contract that I signed where the Army said they would make sure I was housed once I left.

[Letsby Avenue]

Quite right.. but one based one's financial stats on reasonably stable house prices and it wasn't that easy to keep tabs on the UK housing market. 70K one minute 200K the next:eek:

I could have judged it better but a lot of people seem to get caught out, just look at the homlesness figures.

My original winge was that for years our only perk was the surplus quarters that would appear in that monthly yellow book. It just winds me up that that useless barsteward Portillo flogged the lot to Annington who are now pocketing massive returns at the expense of service personnel.

PS - My only memory of those 'mandatory' financial lectures was of spivs trying to flog me endless endowment policies and getting me to opt out of my military pension scheme - Nice...:mad:

[toddbabe]

Got to agree with niknak and a few others, and I have plenty of military experience! but you are all grown ups if you want a house of your own then save like the rest of us and buy one if you can.
The gratuity is a like a golden handshake, a goodbye present to help you on your way not to set you up for life cos you haven't bothered your arse to save for the last twenty years or so!
True a lot of the benefits of the armed forces have gone and it is a crying shame, wiping your arse for you wasn't ever one of em.
Dry em!

[Vage Rot]

Welcome to the real world boys and girls.
I live in an area which is heavily occupied by second home buyers, high house prices and a shortage of any houses at reasonable prices.
Both my children have worked a lot longer than you in, and given to, the local economy a lot longer than the vast majority of any of the MOD staff in Norfolk/Suffolk(of which there must be several thousand), yet neither of them can afford to buy a house in the region.
Fortunately, developments of local low cost housing are being made available to local people who have lived in the area for more than your 3 year tours, but that still means a mortage of £90K plus on a salary of £15K.
They don't have access to the early pensions or re training that you do, so, despite the fact that you've contributed nothing, I'd love to know what makes you think that you are entitled to access to cheaper housing than they are.

Sorry to quote the whole lot but it really gripped my ring!

Service personnel move every 2-3 years and have no control over it - why should we be out of pocket buying and selling when we don't wish to move?

Service personnel have little or no choice to where they are posted so again, why should we be out of pocket?

The Civil service get a guaranteed price for their house on posting, move paid for, free travel home to tend their property whilst it is for sale and an allownace to make up the shortfall in house value if they are posted to an area of hight cost. All without having to serve 8 months in the desert and paying tax for the privellige.

Most large civvy companies will pay a resettlement/disturbance package if they move you for their benefit.

Don't get me wrong - i live in my own house and don't take advantage of this ridiculasly cheap benefit but then again, it's not cheap, the forces council tax rate for quarters isn't cheap either and it is certainly not a perk - unless you are posted to London!

At the end of the day, if you have a problem with it then join up, give me some time off from the desert flying aircraft that leak more fuel than they burn and maybe contribute something to this country other than CO2 and hot air.

Tw4t

[Vage Rot]

Got to agree with niknak and a few others, and I have plenty of military experience! but you are all grown ups if you want a house of your own then save like the rest of us and buy one if you can.
The gratuity is a like a golden handshake, a goodbye present to help you on your way not to set you up for life cos you haven't bothered your arse to save for the last twenty years or so!
True a lot of the benefits of the armed forces have gone and it is a crying shame, wiping your arse for you wasn't ever one of em.
Dry em!

ditto my above!

[WorkingHard]

Of course there are drawbacks to military life, I and many others are well aware. Service personnel are by and large treated as they are percieved from the interaction with the local community. Mostly I am pleased to say with due gratitude. Never forget that there is no other "job" where you can retire after 16 or 22 years service with a tax free gratuity 3 times your annual pension and that self same pension is inflation proofed at age 55 and for the rest of your natural life. Add to that the very generous widows pensions (not so generous for those killed on active service) and many tax free allowances (Boarding School Allowance for example) and you have a generous remuneration package. If you dont save for the retirement day why should the taxpayer give more hand outs please?

[Talking Radalt]

If you dont save for the retirement day why should the taxpayer give more hand outs please?
Agree. When the Good Ship DHE started listing badly to port, I sank every last penny I had in to a house.
I'd recommend the same course of action to ANYONE in the military instead of harrumphing around, bashing on about how great it was 20 years ago.
IT AIN'T GONNA CHANGE ANYTHING.
...so start feathering your own nest is what I say. Anyone who thinks "we" can't afford a house whilst our civilian cousins lounge around in spacious mansions clearly has no idea of how many/few bricks you actually get for £1 these days.
And annuver fing...I've noticed those who tend to make the most noise about this kind of thing tend to be those who also gob off about boozy city-breaks in Europe every month and arrive at work in a year old BMW convertible or similar.

[Samuel]

Comparisons can be odious I know, but reading these tales of woe reminds me of how fortunate I was 'dunnunder' in the terms and conditions we had, especially in relation to housing. Whe I/ we were married in 1970, me an impoverished Fg Off, we bought a three-bedroomed house because I discovered I was entitled to a NZ Government 'rehab' loan in the form of a mortgage at very low interest, less than inflation,for fighting those bandits in Orchard Road during Confrontation. That mortagage stayed with you on transfer, so that when I went back to Singapore in ANZUK, we sold the house, invested the proceeds, and on return to NZ took out the by now considerably increased Govt. Loan and repurchased.

The deal was that the conditions of a servicemen on transfer were essentially the same as those for the Public Service [we don't call them Civil Servants down here], so you mortgage was portable and cheap. As far as I'm aware, the same conditions apply today, but the result was that we could always 'trade-up' on private housing, and in fact, apart from Hyde Park Gate at Seletar and Kenya Crescent in Woodlands, I never lived in a MQ in 25 years. Of course, the first mortgage being at such a low interest rate encouraged some people to take out second mortgages on the basis that inflation and promotion would see them through! By and large, that strategy worked!

[GlosMikeP]

Welcome to the real world boys and girls.

I live in an area which is heavily occupied by second home buyers, high house prices and a shortage of any houses at reasonable prices.

Both my children have worked a lot longer than you in, and given to, the local economy a lot longer than the vast majority of any of the MOD staff in ........yet neither of them can afford to buy a house in the region.

Fortunately, developments of local low cost housing are being made available to local people ..........

.....
This could have been written for any county in the UK. I hear and read the same arguments in Worcestershire, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire - exactly the same. And just as pointless. What or who is a local? What are the qualifications?

The simple fact is house prices are out of the reach of the vast majority of first time buyers, whoever they are and wherever they live. My children will be in the same position here as yours are there, and are no less local here than yours there.

The unpalatable truth is that it's the people with money who drive the market, and that people move all over UK now to find and follow work. I don't say it's the best way of doing things, only that it's the way it works.

[Letsby Avenue]

My convertible is a Mercedes actually:)

[Talking Radalt]

Most large civvy companies will pay a resettlement/disturbance package if they move you for their benefit.
Bloke across the desk from my bro' (at one of Europe's bigger aviation blue chips) commutes every day in order to live in a house he can afford whilst keeping a job he enjoys and that pays enough to retain said house.
He travels in from Nottingham.














To Bournemouth.

[splitbrain]

He travels in from Nottingham.














To Bournemouth.

:eek: Keeerrrrikey. After a commute of that distance I'd be ready to kill the first person who dallied too long over the coffee machine!!!
But seriously, that commute can't be doing him any good can it?

[PPRuNeUser0211]

One of my closest friends had the un-enviable task of commuting from Norfolk (just outside downham mkt) to southampton! And he did it every day... nutter.

Think that was a case of Soton not wanting people with webbed feet living there;) but also due to the fact he couldn't afford to live anywhere near there!

[toddbabe]

ditto my above!
Get over it vage rot, you can apply to have your legal fees paid for and you get an excellent resettlement package, move paid for etc etc!
If your flying planes that leak more than they burn then your probably referring to Kinloss as your home base, in which case you can probably stay their for your entire career without ever having to move!
PMa has for many years now left people where they wanted to be, only moving them where necesarry ( I know! ) Officers not flying a certain type or ground trade officers do expect to move around every couple of years and that is their choice, they new it when they joined up so get on with it.
I saved hard for my house and it's mine I don't expect the Raf to buy it for me or look after it neither should anyone else.
My gripe is with the people who have pissed their money up the wall for twenty odd years and then whinge cos they haven't got a house! blaming the RAF and government for it.
We aren't the civil service and I don't know a thing about it, if it seems more appealing and I am sure it does then go and join.

[Letsby Avenue]

Steady on old chap... The original thread was about ex MQs being flogged off to all and sundry when they used to be a sold to service personnel.

Whilst it was alot better in my day and age - I frankly don't know how a young family could even begin to get on the housing market today and I can see more and more homeless families in the future.

http://www.ssafa.org.uk/housing.html

[toddbabe]

couldn't agree more letsbe but this is a problem uk wide and not just the raf.
I agree it is a shame that they no longer offer first dibs on mq's to service families but thats just the way it is all going nowadays, they have taken everything from us and left us crumbs, that is why it is so important to secure your future and housing before you leave the mob and not hope that they will somehow magically provide for you.

[Grimweasel]

What a debacle. The last Con government was to blame for all this, selling them all off at a rock bottom price for a short term fix. Lab are no better, what with selling off half of the UK's gold in 2003 at its lowest price in decades!
At Rock HQ, 30 odd SFA units were sold off, even though, with the arrival of 1 Sqn RAF Regt in December, there will be a shortage!!
The residents of the said sold off SFA, had to be politely advised that the Community Centre and coffee shop was not for their use!!

[Akrotiri bad boy]

Vage Rot

You're well off beam here.

Civil Servants do not receive any financial help with moving house. True enough, it used to be the case that Aunt Betty helped with all and sundry. However it's now a case of; "You want to move?, you're on your own, but remember you're not having any time off and make sure you're not late for work".

[Talking Radalt]

"You want to move?, you're on your own, but remember you're not having any time off and make sure you're not late for work".

...and many, many civvy companies are exactly the same and regard simply being employed by them as enough of a perk.

[Letsby Avenue]

A timely report...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6210358.stm

I loved this bit

A strong economy was attracting economic immigrants - but also encouraging Brits to broaden their opportunities.

So there you have it - We aren't fleeing a stinking sh1tpit of NuLab mire after all. Merely 'broadening our opportunities' :}

[splitbrain]

However it's now a case of; "You want to move?, you're on your own, but remember you're not having any time off and make sure you're not late for work".

If a CS undergoes a managed post transfer then the service will undertake to purchase their existing house at the going rate.

[toddbabe]

Define the going rate? I live in Scotland where the actual sale price is often fifteen to twenty percent over the asking price in fact not often but the norm.
Being in the cs wouldn't help me and being in the RAF shouldn't and doesn't help anyone else either.

[814man]

Was going to post this in a new thread today but here now seems a relevant place to put it.

Drove along the A46 last week for what must have been the first time in a couple of years past the former RAF Newton and was a bit taken aback by the state of the houses next to the road. I couldn’t see the AMQ I lived in back in 79 which was along the road from the MGR, but the OMQs adjacent to the road seemed to be totally derelict with some almost in ruins and all the others boarded up.
Now there may be a logical explanation for this but to the uninformed public (and myself I should add) it does seem like another waste of public funds by the MOD (RAF?) to let a viable housing estate, in what would appear to be a fairly prime location, deteriorate to such a state where the houses are clearly no longer habitable, or worth any money to anyone.

[ZOFO]

My Youngest Zofo summed it all up really in a comment abount 10 minutes ago, we were in the Kitchen making cups of tea, and we both looked up to see the Water stained Kitchen ceiling, with the fungus now growing on it. (A quite nice stalagtite formation now) "Dad this house is Really falling apart!", Yep If they are queing up to buy these ":mad: holes" they are welcome to them!!

(DHE sent some "Paddy" workman round a week ago, Scratched his chin and said about a joiner needing to pull the upstairs floorboards up, Can't wait for that)!! When of course there is money available etc....:hmm: