Snooker star Ronnie O’Sullivan warns of housing crash
Fives times World Snooker Champion Ronnie O'Sullivan has pledged not to talk snooker on his Twitter account anymore, but will focus on "running and financial terrorism".
Right no more talking snooker.. Only gonna talk running and financial terrorism
— Ronnie O'Sullivan (@ronnieo147) October 17, 2013
Yesterday O'Sullivan tweeted a stream of critiscisms of government housing policy, saying that a housing bubble will turn into a huge crash, adding that "baby it's coming".
He's advised that would be home owners refuse to take on more debt, and told followers to "refuse 90 per cent mortgages".
The hurried second stage of the government's Help to Buy Scheme has seen the introduction of 95 per cent mortgages, backed by the Treasury. O'Sullivan warns that a house price crash will see homeowners enter negative equity.
We're not sure that his housing policy analysis is spot on – and the word bubble is very loaded. There are certainly many very real concerns to be had about the government getting into the business of backing mortgages.
We are seeing soaring house price growth, but that could well be down to prices reflecting artificially constrained supply as a result of our restrictive planning system – not a bubble.
Albert Edwards of Societe Generale has previously ripped into the Help to Buy scheme in similarly strong terms, saying that the policy is "madness" and will see "our children [burdened] with more debt" in order to buy ridiculously expensive houses.
Edwards said that policy suggestion as a "solution to the problem of excessively expensive housing" make him "genuinely really angry".