The Housing Ladder（在线收听）

　　BBC Learning EnglishLondon LifeThe Housing Ladder[ATMOS of Chris looking for a flat]
　　William: This is London Life and I’m WilliamKremer. Chris Hanley is standing outsidean old house in West London.
　　[ATMOS of Chris looking for a flat]
　　William: Chris is very interested in this housebecause it has been divided into apartments, or as weusually say in Britain, flats. One flat in the building isfor sale and Chris is looking for somewhere to buy.
　　Unfortunately, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to affordthis flat.
　　Chris: It does look very nice though, but a bit out of myprice bracket I think.
　　William: He says it’s out of his price bracket. Aprice bracket is a range of prices on an item. The flat isout of Chris’s price bracket, so it’s more than he canafford. But how much do flats in this part of London cost?
　　Listen to the next clip carefully, and see if you can hearthe answer.
　　Chris: I work in Notting Hill, so I’ll be looking fairlyclose, and you know, I have a figure in my head that Iwouldn’t be able to get anything for under sort of twohundred and fifty thousand, which is very difficult on yourown.
　　William: Listen again.
　　Chris: I work in Notting Hill, so I’ll be looking fairlyclose, and you know, I have a figure in my head that Iwouldn’t be able to get anything for under sort of twohundred and fifty thousand, which is very difficult on yourown.
　　William: Chris doesn’t think he could get anythingfor under two hundred and fifty thousand pounds – so hethinks two hundred and fifty thousand pounds is the minimumprice of a flat in this area.
　　That’s an awful lot of money – it’s almost five hundredthousand US dollars. And that’s just for a small flat,with one bedroom!
　　[STING]
　　Now, if you don’t have five hundred thousand US dollarssitting in your bank account, is it still possible to buy ahome in London? Well, yes: you can go to a bank or abuilding society and get a mortgage. A mortgage is a largeamount of money which the bank pays towards the home you’
　　re buying. The mortgage might be around 90% of the price ofyour home.
　　The remaining 10% of the price is money you pay when youyour home,maybe from your savings. We call this money the deposit onthe mortgage: the deposit.
　　But of course the 90% that you borrow from the bank isn’tyours to keep! You have to repay it over a long time.
　　How much money would Chris have to borrow to buy a flat inLondon?
　　Chris: Well, I think at the moment I couldn't reallyafford to put in a big deposit inLondon at all, so you know I’d have to sort of fork out amortgage that requiredsort of five, probably even sort of six or seven times myown salary. Erm, which puts the repayments back upextremely high.
　　William: Chris says he can’t afford to pay a bigdeposit, so he would have to borrow a large amount. Hegives this as a multiple of his own salary. Listen again:
　　Chris: Well, I think at the moment I couldn't reallyafford to put in a big deposit in London at all, so youknow I’d have to sort of fork out a mortgage that requiredsort of five, probably even sort of six or seven times myown salary. Erm,which puts the repayments back up extremely high.
　　William: Chris says he would have to get a mortgagethat was five, six or seven times his own salary! Thiswould, he says, put the repayments ‘back up extremely high’. ‘Repayment’ is a noun form of the verb ‘to repay’.
　　Repayments on a mortgage are monies that you pay back tothe bank every month. If Chris borrows a lot of money, hewould have very high repayments each month.
　　So Chris is stuck renting his flat, and he can’t affordthe deposit to buy one. He uses an interesting image toexpress his problem:
　　Chris: You know, earning, earning a fair bit, but stillnot, not able to er… get on the ladder.
　　William: He said he isn’t able to get on theladder. A ladder is a long object which you can climb toget somewhere high. What Chris is talking about is what wecall the ‘housing ladder’. It works like this: propertyin London increases in value very quickly. If you own ahome, you can use the increase in the value of your homeover time to pay for the deposit on your next home –because this will be a very large deposit, it means you canmove to a nicer home. It’s reallycomplicated, but the important thing is that once you ownyour home you’re able to live in nicer homes afterwards –moving up the housing ladder.
　　Okay, let’s end with a quick test: What is another way ofsaying you can’t afford something? It’s out of my pricebracket. What do we call the money that you borrow from abank or building society to buy a home? A mortgage. Andwhat is the money that you have repay the bank or buildingsociety every month? A repayment.
　　Remember that you can find out more about these words anddownload this programme from the London Life webpage on BBCLearning English dot com. Goodbye!
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