Sensible measures to improve the house market

lostinrates

sdooley wrote: »

You seemed to have missed out:

Provide a reasonable supply of high quality, well maintained social housing which won't immediately be withdrawn from the market by right to buy.

I agree, but I'd like to see people WHO ARE FINANCIALLY ABLE TO be encouraged -not penalised- to move into private rented or in some circumstances ownership when the social housing is no longer required and their situation improves. I wonder how possible it is to maintain a status where there is no stigma taking when you need to and yet pride AND financial benefit when you no longer need to do so

Sir_Humphrey

Max_Headroom wrote: »

How about a law whereby banks can only lend money that they actually have?

Do away with Fractional reserves and Interbank lending (why doesn't the customer just go to the bank with the money, rather than borrowing from Bank A money leant to it by Bank .

And do away with selling debt on (a lot of the ridiculous lending was on the back of simply selling dodgy loans right out so unconcerned with taking on risk).

If banks could only play with their own money they'd be keener to get it in (better savings rates) and much more careful giving it out.

You are conflating two issues there.

If banks did not lend more than their reserves, then the economy would be in permanent recession as borrowing to invest in productive assets would be choked off. That is unless governments started to do what they did in medieval times (fight wars in order to grab each other's gold reserves). Most of the populace would live in wattle and daub huts.

Conrad

3.5 x income will cause the gap between the havs and have nots to become ever wider.
"No Mr taxi driver you cannot buy a house, you must fulfil a landlords investment dreams and become a life long renter. The problem you see is that your Accountant uses legal means to reduce your real income"

This would remove a lot of the incentive people have to become self employed in the first place

WTF?_2

Conrad wrote: »

3.5 x income will cause the gap between the havs and have nots to become ever wider.

I initially read this as 'chavs and chav nots'

"No Mr taxi driver you cannot buy a house, you must fulfil a landlords investment dreams and become a life long renter. The problem you see is that your Accountant uses legal means to reduce your real income"

This would remove a lot of the incentive people have to become self employed in the first place

Not so - if you want a really big, expensive, ostentatious house then you'll just have to earn enough money to buy it instead of assuming that you can get the whole thing with one easy 'no questions asked' looney loan.

In practice, all this easy cash didn't lead to most people living in palatial pads when they couldn't do so before - it lead to them paying 'palatial pad prices' for the same kinds of house that they would have been otherwise able to buy at a reasonable price a decade earlier.

And up to their neck in debt to do it.

justpurchased

!!!!!!? wrote: »

I initially read this as 'chavs and chav nots'




Not so - if you want a really big, expensive, ostentatious house then you'll just have to earn enough money to buy it instead of assuming that you can get the whole thing with one easy 'no questions asked' looney loan.

In practice, all this easy cash didn't lead to most people living in palatial pads when they couldn't do so before - it lead to them paying 'palatial pad prices' for the same kinds of house that they would have been otherwise able to buy at a reasonable price a decade earlier.

And up to their neck in debt to do it.

Realy! but surely maps show you the higher the wages are, the higher the house price. Proximity to well paid jobs puts the prices up (too many people on a good wage, thus pushing prices up, pushing the poor further out).
I think what you are failing to see is that there may be more people per sqkm able to afford the average house, than there are average houses.

michaels

!!!!!!? wrote: »

Forget Brown's likely desperate attempts to throw taxpayer money to reignite the burst housing bubble. What sort of measures would you implement to make a stronger, more resilient housing market in the future and make sure this doesn't happen again?

Mine:

* Mandatatory 10% deposit requirement for mortgage borrowers.

* Mandatatory 3.5x single/2.5x joint salary limit on borrowing.

* Compulsory income checks on borrowers to cut out 'lie to buy'.

* Introduce 'non recourse' laws for new mortgages where handing back the house cancels the debt (to cut out silly lending). Would also protect house buyers who know that they can just give the house back if the worst comes to the worst.

* Proper financial regulations enforced by a competent organisation (not the FSA then).

* Reduce tax relief for multiple BTL properties for individuals. Each additional property after the first becomes progressively less advantageous. (Have separate regulations for a registered property business so that people who know what they are doing can manage portfolios of rental property professionally.)

* Special tax-free savings account for deposits for FTBs to facilitate and encourage saving for a deposit.

* Reform of stamp duty laws to cut out those silly thresholds.

* Reform the laws relating to house buying to prevent gazumping/gazundering. Having a system where anyone can mess around up until the last minute exchange of contracts is a recipe for chaos.

I'd rather the politicians or who ever didn't try to tell me how much of my income I spend on housing. For example if I chose not to have loan/credit card repayments, child maintainance payments, expensive holidays, expensive clothes and food and would rather spend a bigger proportion of my income on housing then that is my business. If you are concerned about who pays the mortgage if I become unemployed then make it compulsory to have insurance to cover this (and give me back some of my tax as this will no longer be covered from the public purse.

I'd also like to be able to decide whether I want to pay off the capital on my house or not - people who rent are not forced to save a certain proportion of their income.

If the banks are not concerned about whether my income is correct or not then it is their loss if I fail to make my payments - why do we need the Govt to protect them. If they have adequete security (by way of a deposit) against any lending then why should they worry about my ability to make the payments, their money is safe.

If landlords do not give their teneants a resonable service the tenants can vote with their feet or regualtions can be imposed on the landlords. One area that does need tightening up is to give AST tenants the same rights over the property even if the landlord is repossessed - I did not realise that this was not the casse.

Stamp duty tiers are a jole - I think abolishing CGT exemption on the primary residence would be the fairest way to tax property - the current system makes it much more expensive for people to move for jobs - tax is payable on each move even if no property price appreciation has taken place.

TBC

skap7309

Some excellent ideas here.

I am so incensed by yesterdays news i cannot stop thinking about it. For 10 years prices have rocketed by 300% or so and the government sat back.
As soon as prices start to fall by record amounts, out pop Labour to announce 'lets help FTBs into the market'. The sooner they are voted out the better, they are so corrupt it is crazy.

Labour's slogan should be - Money, money, money, f**k the people of this country.

ad9898_3

!!!!!!? wrote: »

Forget Brown's likely desperate attempts to throw taxpayer money to reignite the burst housing bubble. What sort of measures would you implement to make a stronger, more resilient housing market in the future and make sure this doesn't happen again?

Mine:

* Mandatatory 10% deposit requirement for mortgage borrowers.

* Mandatatory 3.5x single/2.5x joint salary limit on borrowing.

* Compulsory income checks on borrowers to cut out 'lie to buy'.

* Introduce 'non recourse' laws for new mortgages where handing back the house cancels the debt (to cut out silly lending). Would also protect house buyers who know that they can just give the house back if the worst comes to the worst.

* Proper financial regulations enforced by a competent organisation (not the FSA then).

* Reduce tax relief for multiple BTL properties for individuals. Each additional property after the first becomes progressively less advantageous. (Have separate regulations for a registered property business so that people who know what they are doing can manage portfolios of rental property professionally.)

* Special tax-free savings account for deposits for FTBs to facilitate and encourage saving for a deposit.

* Reform of stamp duty laws to cut out those silly thresholds.

* Reform the laws relating to house buying to prevent gazumping/gazundering. Having a system where anyone can mess around up until the last minute exchange of contracts is a recipe for chaos.

Hi !!!!!!

My name is Gordon Brown and I have come here to rubbish your proposals, they absolutely make sense..... thats why they stink !!!!!

My way is much better, I just go next door to No.11 with a highwayman mask on and a couple of pistols, point them at Darling and say "Your Money Or Your Life". Darling was heard mumbling "its not my money, its the peoples", I said I don't care my Premiership is on the line, now get to the safe quick,quick I have an itchy trigger finger.

WTF?_2

skap7309 wrote: »

Some excellent ideas here.

I am so incensed by yesterdays news i cannot stop thinking about it. For 10 years prices have rocketed by 300% or so and the government sat back.
As soon as prices start to fall by record amounts, out pop Labour to announce 'lets help FTBs into the market'. The sooner they are voted out the better, they are so corrupt it is crazy.

Labour's slogan should be - Money, money, money, f**k the people of this country.

As I saw a poster somewhere else say - When the market was booming and house prices were 'too high' the government 'helped out' by giving out loans and by implementing various schemes to get people on to to the ladder.

Now that the market is plummeting and prices are presumably therefore 'too low' the government is 'helping out' by giving out loans and by implementing various schemes to get people on to the ladder.

Hmmmm Something wrong there.

Maybe they should just admit that their whole economic strategy amounts to running an economy based on large amounts of cheap credit (largely off the back of property) being available 'forever' which never really has to be paid back - and they'll do anything and spend as much taxpayers money as it takes to get the wheels of the property market turning again in order to facilitate this.

WTF?_2

justpurchased wrote: »

Realy! but surely maps show you the higher the wages are, the higher the house price. Proximity to well paid jobs puts the prices up (too many people on a good wage, thus pushing prices up, pushing the poor further out).
I think what you are failing to see is that there may be more people per sqkm able to afford the average house, than there are average houses.

I think you'll find that there aren't appreciably more homeless people than there were back when prices were in line with reality and all that has happened over the last decade is that people are having to take on more debt to own their own homes than ever before.


I've seen the cost of a basic place go from around 50k to 150k (or more) in about 8 years. Meanwhile, wages haven't increased by anything like as much.

(Assuming a 10% deposit) how on earth is it in people's interests to borrow 135k to buy something that they'd previously have been able to get by borrowing 45k when their income has risen by maybe 5-6k pa?

Just because you can get a lot of credit to buy something doesn't mean that it is a sensible idea to do so.