Schemes to help first-time buyers scrapped

themanbearpig

Schemes to help first-time buyers scrapped


Ministers have quietly scrapped two of the most popular schemes aimed at helping first-time buyers on to the housing ladder.:T:T




The government invested £200m ($324m) through MyChoiceHomeBuy and Ownhome, known collectively as Open Market HomeBuy, over the past year alone.



MyChoice, which gave access to a loan of up to half of a property’s value, had the highest take-up of any publicly funded home ownership scheme. Richard Stone, of SPF Sherwins, an affordable housing advisory group, said: “MyChoice was without question the most popular scheme, everyone went for it.” Ownhome was a smaller operation run by Places for People, the housing association and The Co-operative Bank.
The Conservatives believe the decision to close the schemes is evidence of financial pressures in the Department for Communities and Local Government as it seeks to divert money into new social housing.
But officials said the move was not related to last week’s announcement of a £1.5bn drive to build 20,000 extra social homes.
That scheme would be paid for partly from surpluses in other departments but also from unspecified “reprioritisation” of money within the department – for example, from cutting an existing budget for the refurbishment of council housing. The department said the two schemes had been terminated because the government wanted the focus on building homes.
“Government funding is still available for first-time buyers and we intend to focus all our efforts on helping people into homes through new-build schemes, which create jobs and homes such as HomeBuy direct and New Build HomeBuy,” he said.
The Tories said cutting the schemes would further confuse applicants who were already overwhelmed by an array of publicly funded schemes. “The government seem to believe that no one will notice if they quietly withdraw support from people desperately trying to buy their own homes,” said Grant Shapps, shadow housing minister. “Ministers would prefer you to be distracted by their headline-grabbing housing announcements.”




http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/eb9dea30-6f34-11de-9109-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1






Some good news at last! They were a complete waste of tax payers money.

nearlynew

......................good....................

DaddyBear

As a FTBer I say...... thank god. These schemes were dressed up as helping FTBers get onto the 'ladder'. Utter rubbish, they are designed to prop up overpriced property by suckering in poor FTBers into a lifetime of debt. No thankyou.
Want to help FTBers? Let property fall to its natural level instead of trying to resist it with taxpayers money.

Heyman_2

Oh dear - just over a year ago Brown was visiting the 'lucky' recipients of the Homebuy scheme, like this poor lady -



http://www.24dash.com/news/Housing/2008-04-08-1-500-grants-to-help-first-time-buyers-onto-property-ladder

Wonder how she's getting on now? :eek:

ad9898_3

Heyman wrote: »

Wonder how she's getting on now? :eek:

Badly I suspect, most of us new that anyway. Glad to here the scrapping of [STRIKE]keep house prices high at any cost scheme[/STRIKE], errrr I mean these FTB'r help schemes.

I will never understand why anybody thought these schemes were any good, for example, if you were to buy a car would you want the car to be really expensive and buy half of it and rent the other half, or would you rather the car be cheaper so as to be able to buy all of it......... some people must be dumber than dumb.

carolt

Fantastic news - if more housing is built.

I suspect that money will just be thrown into the bottomless pit that is our public finances, and, mysteriously, they'll fail - by a long way - to build any of the social housing they've promised.

Let's face it, none of it is actually going to be built before the election.

And after? It depends what priorities the Tories have.

Mini_Bear

You wouldnt encourage a 17yr old to buy a brand new car. So WHY are they encouraging FTBs to buy brand new properties??!!
they both suffer from heavy depreciation in the first few yrs, forcing the owner to stay with it, unable to move/sell.

Idiophreak

Mini_Bear wrote: »

You wouldnt encourage a 17yr old to buy a brand new car. So WHY are they encouraging FTBs to buy brand new properties??!!
they both suffer from heavy depreciation in the first few yrs, forcing the owner to stay with it, unable to move/sell.

These schemes were (as the name suggests) for use on the "open market", so not just for new builds.

Of course, the only schemes FTBs are left with access to, now, are those on new builds.

ruggedtoast

"And you promise if I lend you 10 pounds with this cafetiere as collateral I can come back in a year and you'll give me three times what I gave you?"

"Thats absolutely right mister Brown. Guaranteed."

"Done!"

carolt

Shame, there was a lovely thread on this picture, with captions.

Anyone remember where it's gone, or care to rejuvenate it so we can all have a giggle?

LisbonLaura

Does anyone wish to respond on behalf of the forum's well known Scottish funt of all knowledge?

Unfortunately he seems to have missed this thread.

I find his output fascinating