Paul Meakin
Paul talks about the effect
of the recession
on housing in Croydon:
"I remember
being on holiday,
I always tended to go away
at Christmas and New Year
because it was quiet.
I remember phoning in
from wherever I was on holiday,
phoning the four offices
and asking,
you know,
how many sales they'd made
in December
and the four offices
and like twenty members of staff
had made six sales [laughs]."
"I remember thinking,
'oh my God',
you know and that's how it was,
we'd gone from boom one minute
to no sales the next.
The recession,
I think,
lasted seven years
from August the 19th 1988,
it was a Thursday I think,
I'll have to check that.
From then
right the way through
'til the tail end of 1995."
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"I think Croydon was
right up at the top
of the repossession list
mainly because of
the vast area that it covers."
"South Norwood,
Thornton Heath,
a huge amount of conversion flats
and of course
it was the flat market as such
that got hit the hardest.
It's that much easier for a family
with two children
expecting a third child
to live in a three bed semi,
than it is
to have three kids in a two bed flat,
or one child in a one bed flat
so I think people in houses
fared slightly better
in terms of being able to
hang in there."