From: Ronald Raygun 
Subject: Re: Keeping your home vs Instant Property portfolio.
Newsgroups: uk.finance
Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2006 16:08:43 GMT

Andy Pandy wrote:

> It is "stupid (financially)" to buy a 4 course meal and only eat 2 courses
> of it.

Not if there are two of you sharing and you eat two courses each.

> Just as it is to buy a 4 bedroom house and only use 2 of the rooms.

Not if you fill the two spare rooms with lodgers and their rent reduces
your net houseing costs to less than a 2 bedroom house would have cost.

>> A house costing three times as much, won't usually
>> have a three times higher council tax or heating bill.
> 
> It will under the new proposed scheme (where council tax will be a
> percentage of the property value).

What proposed new scheme?  The one which has no chance of making it?

> As for heating etc, why not?  A 5 bed detached house will
> likely have 3 times the heating cost of a 1 bedroom flat at a third of the
> price.

Hmm.  Think of a detached house divided into 3 1-bedroom flats.
That house would have three times the value and three times the
heating bill as each of its thirds.  But if they were knocked
into a single dwelling it would have rather more than 5 bedrooms.

>> Equally:
>> If you want to *invest*, rather than eat more than you need
>> to live (or better quality food), you'll likely be much better
>> off eating the bare minimum and using any additional funds
>> to .
>> So what?
> 
> Won't work, because if you get fat you'll die younger and so will spend
> less overall.

Are you suggesting that eating the bare minimum gets you fat?