Blame It On That Beckham Bloke!
Looking for someone to blame because your house is worth less now than it was when you bought it? Well, look no further because in the four years since the financial crisis hit, economic 'experts' and political commentators have been going on and on and on about why it happened, how it happened... but never about whose fault it all was. And we'll let you know whose in a second.
We keep hearing over and over again about burgeoning consumer debt getting out of control. That sub-prime mortgage crisis. Banks playing fast and loose with lending policies, thereby overheating the housing market on both sides of the Atlantic. Pushing that homebuying envelope further and further. Salary multiples bordering on the ridiculous. Cashback. 125% mortgages. Self certification for the self-employed. All this, and more, helped to fuel the fire of exuberance.
But what started this fire of exuberance in the first place? What sparked off this obsession of self-improvement, and showing off to the world with top of the range trinkets? Bigger cars? Bigger houses? Bigger bling? It's all got to be paid for, somehow, whether we can really afford it or not. And the root cause of all this? Celebrity culture. Pushing the latest trends, the flashiest gadgets, those must have accessories onto those who don't really need them - while conditioning everybody to want them all. The newspaper gossip columns, reality TV shows, magazine shoots... the media is the message, and the message is 'buy'.
Among the newest additions to the English language is the slang term for dressing up with the coolness of the celebrity: 'being Reem'. So when we see Tulisa wearing a pair of limited-edition Christian Dior sunglasses and a pair of jewel encrusted Ugg boots as she climbs into the latest Range Rover, we want all that too. Perhaps not the menfolk so much as the ladies amongst us.
A glimpse of Peter Andre in Super Dry, or with a Burberry iPad nestling under his tattooed arm, triggers an outburst of copycat shopping in aspiring Peterphants. This consumer boom was all down to the aspirations and ambitions of Mr and Mrs Everyday Person wanting desperately to keep up with the Joneses. And that desperation leads them to max out their credit cards, borrow, borrow, and borrow again - even remortgaging - so that they, too, can display the trappings of celebrity wealth. And then, of course Mr and Mrs Everyday Person are seriously caught out when the brakes of reality are ultimately applied. The remnants of their delusions now lie in a mountain of personal debt - secured on house prices that have gone, for now at least, in the same direction as the morals of a premiership footballer.
And talking of premiership footballers, who was it to first had it all - and then shoved everything into our faces? Why, none other than everybody's favourite ex-premiership footballer, David Beckham. And during the time he took to morph from footballer to brand representative, everything he drove, wore or even just purchased became a target for wannabes. Really? Absolutely - why else with Vodafone pay him a million quid to tell us he used their mobile network? Why else would Pepsi pay him two million for telling us he preferred Pepsi to Coke? And why is he reported to have pocketed three million from Marks & Spencer for promoting their DB07 range of boys clothing? Influence, you say... or just downright coercion?
These deals do make us want to drink more fizzy pop, buy many more phones and wear much newer tracksuits - they really do. In fact, our David almost single-handedly brought back the Pringle brand from the brink of disaster by casually throwing a piece of knitwear over his shoulder one night... and posing for the paparazzi in it. Sales immediately rocketed. But the desire for accessories, clothing and accoutrements to make us appear as cool as the celebs endorsing them comes at a price - the consumer spending boom, together with the house price boom, could never go on forever. Just like the short career of any given professional footballer, the fire burns itself out.
So if you're looking for the single person on whom you can pin the blame for the mess everybody is in today, ladies and gentlemen I give you... David Beckham! If you're having a hard time achieving the price you want for your property, blame it on the Beckham. But somewhere in the mess we've all been dropped into thanks to celebrity access, there's a little ray of optimism we can provide: you can save yourself money by selling your home through eMoov online estate agents. Typically, we can save you 3000 - that's a lot of fizzy cola, many, many mobile phones... and even a new tracksuit or two.
We keep hearing over and over again about burgeoning consumer debt getting out of control. That sub-prime mortgage crisis. Banks playing fast and loose with lending policies, thereby overheating the housing market on both sides of the Atlantic. Pushing that homebuying envelope further and further. Salary multiples bordering on the ridiculous. Cashback. 125% mortgages. Self certification for the self-employed. All this, and more, helped to fuel the fire of exuberance.
But what started this fire of exuberance in the first place? What sparked off this obsession of self-improvement, and showing off to the world with top of the range trinkets? Bigger cars? Bigger houses? Bigger bling? It's all got to be paid for, somehow, whether we can really afford it or not. And the root cause of all this? Celebrity culture. Pushing the latest trends, the flashiest gadgets, those must have accessories onto those who don't really need them - while conditioning everybody to want them all. The newspaper gossip columns, reality TV shows, magazine shoots... the media is the message, and the message is 'buy'.
Among the newest additions to the English language is the slang term for dressing up with the coolness of the celebrity: 'being Reem'. So when we see Tulisa wearing a pair of limited-edition Christian Dior sunglasses and a pair of jewel encrusted Ugg boots as she climbs into the latest Range Rover, we want all that too. Perhaps not the menfolk so much as the ladies amongst us.
A glimpse of Peter Andre in Super Dry, or with a Burberry iPad nestling under his tattooed arm, triggers an outburst of copycat shopping in aspiring Peterphants. This consumer boom was all down to the aspirations and ambitions of Mr and Mrs Everyday Person wanting desperately to keep up with the Joneses. And that desperation leads them to max out their credit cards, borrow, borrow, and borrow again - even remortgaging - so that they, too, can display the trappings of celebrity wealth. And then, of course Mr and Mrs Everyday Person are seriously caught out when the brakes of reality are ultimately applied. The remnants of their delusions now lie in a mountain of personal debt - secured on house prices that have gone, for now at least, in the same direction as the morals of a premiership footballer.
And talking of premiership footballers, who was it to first had it all - and then shoved everything into our faces? Why, none other than everybody's favourite ex-premiership footballer, David Beckham. And during the time he took to morph from footballer to brand representative, everything he drove, wore or even just purchased became a target for wannabes. Really? Absolutely - why else with Vodafone pay him a million quid to tell us he used their mobile network? Why else would Pepsi pay him two million for telling us he preferred Pepsi to Coke? And why is he reported to have pocketed three million from Marks & Spencer for promoting their DB07 range of boys clothing? Influence, you say... or just downright coercion?
These deals do make us want to drink more fizzy pop, buy many more phones and wear much newer tracksuits - they really do. In fact, our David almost single-handedly brought back the Pringle brand from the brink of disaster by casually throwing a piece of knitwear over his shoulder one night... and posing for the paparazzi in it. Sales immediately rocketed. But the desire for accessories, clothing and accoutrements to make us appear as cool as the celebs endorsing them comes at a price - the consumer spending boom, together with the house price boom, could never go on forever. Just like the short career of any given professional footballer, the fire burns itself out.
So if you're looking for the single person on whom you can pin the blame for the mess everybody is in today, ladies and gentlemen I give you... David Beckham! If you're having a hard time achieving the price you want for your property, blame it on the Beckham. But somewhere in the mess we've all been dropped into thanks to celebrity access, there's a little ray of optimism we can provide: you can save yourself money by selling your home through eMoov online estate agents. Typically, we can save you 3000 - that's a lot of fizzy cola, many, many mobile phones... and even a new tracksuit or two.
About the Author:
eMoov makes it easy for you to sell your house on the internet. You can sell your house quickly and with the benefit of cheap estate agents fees. All houses are listed on UK's top 25 property websites including Rightmove and Prime Location, to revery 170 million buyer visitors every month. Moreover as Internet estate agents, their low cost service reveryes millions of people 24/7.