Government have today offered everyone a chance to buy!

blue_monkey_2

Ian_Griffiths_Halifax wrote: »

A common misconception. Average house prices may be, I think, 6/7 times the average salary, but not all are bought on anywhere near 100% mortgages due to people who have equity in their house etc. This obviously takes into account £1/2/3 mil properties and not your usual FTB price.

Well, not around here. My husband earns 20k pa, he does overtime but it is not guarenteed so I would not want to borrow money on the back of getting overtimes thatmight stop. Comon sense surely? Average house prices around here for a 3 bed house - the size of house we need for our family a one bed flat is no good - are £240k upwards. That is 12 times his salary.

My mum just took a 35k drop on her delapidated house to sell it, it was priced at 250k in January. She sold it cheap to get rid of it (have to say contracts have not been exchanged yet though). How are people like us ever going to be able to afford somewhere to live. Even if I went back to work and had no childcare to pay and earned 20k then we would still not be able to afford it. Will an interest free loan mean we are now able to afford a place of our own?

blue_monkey_2

They have suspended stamp duty for one year on houses priced between £125 and £175k. So this helps single people and not people who need a family home.

They must be desperate to get rid of those new build [STRIKE]flats[/STRIKE] luxury apartments!!

wizard5353

kerryi27 wrote: »

when would the first time buyer deal come into force, would it be anytime soon.

It already is, it's called "shared ownership". Shared ownership is nothing new and the government has been supporting local housing associations for some time now with ideas such as Homebuy etc.

I'm a FTB and I've never been interested in these ideas as the figures don't add up when you look in to them. Plus it's far harder to sell a share in a home than a full home. The local papers here where I live show tons of shared ownership homes every week and the same flats and houses are listed week after week for months on end which means they don't sell.

I don't want a new build flat made from plastic & paper and smaller than the size of a large shed! I want a decent older house that has been built to last and where I can't hear the neighbours farting in the morning (I rented a new build flat several years ago where you could hear this and more).

This package is a total waste of time and made it clear to me which party I'm voting for in the next GE. :mad:

baby_boomer

Times Comment - How not to help first time buyers [by HMG ]

A pretty good article.

"....Why then, would you want to invest in half a house now when, if you wait for a year or two, you will be able to afford the whole house?..."

"...None of the measures announced today will genuinely be in the interests of first-time buyers - it just sounds better if they are promoted in that way. In reality, they are a crude attempt to buy the votes of those who already own property and are feeling a little sick at the diminishing value of their investments...."

"....The moral hazard of bailing out the housing market is serious enough - by protecting borrowers and lenders from the consequences of their actions, the Government will simply be encouraging even more reckless behaviour in the next housing boom..."

"....There are few problems so bad that a government cannot make them ten times worse by intervening..."

IMO the government is tinkering to buy votes, as is Gordon's wont, but one of the problems - and there are many - is that he is trying to be seen to help two sets of people whose interests are contradictory, viz. existing homeowners and first time buyers.

fiodyl

This isn't new, a similar scheme has been running in this area at least for a while already

http://www.homebuy.co.uk/homebuy/product_ownhome.asp

Only difference is you could buy any house, not just new builds.

As a potential FTB who is priced out of the market, I won't be falling for this scheme or any others. I will buy a house when it is affordable for me to do so without the need for gimmicks.
If that never happens then I will just rent for the rest of my life- which will be better than being in debt for the rest of it.

I don't want to live in a newbuild shoe box either. The development round here, Quayside, was known as the harbour/port when I was younger. It stank of rotten fish back then- a bit like this scheme does.

sarah_elton

I'm watching the news baffled. They're talking about doing all these things with the goal of helping first time buyers afford a house.

Prices are currently falling. So surely the best way to help is to let inflated prices fall, and for housing to naturally become affordable again.

What rubbish. Surely this is just about keeping prices shored up to try and ward off the headlines about negative equity and repossessions, and all for the benefit of Mr Brown.

:mad:

I'm planning on selling in the spring, and will probably be in negative equity to the tune of £5-10k. It happens, it's a freely operating market that goes up and down. You take that risk when you buy. Just leave it alone.

I was 8 during the last crash - what measures did the government take to "help" during the 1990 crash, and what was the effect?

sarah_elton

blue_monkey wrote: »

They have suspended stamp duty for one year on houses priced between £125 and £175k. So this helps single people and not people who need a family home.

Not 100% true. £175k will buy you a 3 bed semi in my town, and I'm only a 45 minute commute from London.

So how much is this going to pee off all those people currently on the market priced around £200k and just under, who are suddenly too close to an SD threshold....

steadysaver

I am not sure how a stamp duty holiday will help people get a mortgage or save a deposit (not that they have to now, what with the governments "free" loan).

Hasnt this new "loan" just technically recreated "100% Mortgages" again. And we all know what a good idea they were

lethal0r

two big problems in the country at the moment - too many people in too much debt, house prices too high. the governments solution - give them the chance to get into more debt & attempt to keep house prices high!

Sir_Humphrey

The posters who view this as simply an attempt to bail out the builders have it right IMO.

£300m for a scheme of this sort is indeed chicken feed. This is not going to stop the crash.

The govt should have simply bought up the flats for a massive haircut and used them for social housing (maybe converting them into Duplexes - see thread on GHPC).

Who cares if the big housebuilders go bust. The houses would still get built, just by smaller firms (and probably for higher quality owing to more competition).

Still, this is going to make so little difference and is going to cost the taxpayer (relatively) little so I am not going to get too steamed up about it. It is just a gimmick IMHO. The Tories cretinous IHT plan would cost the taxpayer far more (the revenue would just be made up elsewhere - probably by the poor).