Housing Minister answering questions now

brit1234

Click on the link for the housing minister to answer your questions.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/housing-network/2011/mar/03/grant-shapps-housing-live-q-a?commentpage=all#start-of-comments

FTBFun

I see you've been busy

Concerned FTB,
I agree that we need more house building and that's what your taxes should be spent on. Unfortunately at the moment we do not have enough house building because vested interests in government have abandoned house building and are using your taxes to support developers charging higher prices via shared equity and BTL landlords via their tax breaks.
Prices are so high because we had a credit bubble based on banks committing fraud by allowing liar loans. People being able to borrow more and more money is not the answer.

brit1234

Is that yours?

Mines this.

GrantShapps 9 March 2011 3:26PM

@Brit1234
Minister
Would you agree the government is wasting valuable tax payers money on shared ownership/equity properties designed to keep the housing bubble inflated. These homes represent a significant part of transactions at the moment.
By removing money for these schemes you can help fund valuable starved public sectors and allow house prices to fall quicker for the benefit of a whole generation of priced out first buyers.

Although I actually personally like shared ownership/equity properties, we're not actually currently spending any large sums on this area, simply because we don't have the money. However there are some interesting opportunities provided by the new Affordable Rent approach which will help people get their foot on the ladder.

Pete111

Loving the Sig Brit.

I too am on Strike - from purchasing overpriced Unicorns. That should show those pesky Unicorn salesmen!

brit1234

FTBfun how many comments have you sent and are they all pretending to be FTBers and against the HPC crowd.

IveSeenTheLight

I heard Shapps on the radio this morning.
He seemed to confirm that the UK needed to build more properties.
I think that's been mentioned once or twice in here.

Pete111

RentedAndTaxed 9 March 2011 2:25PM

Minister,
We are a young couple no longer, tax-payers, private tenants, being exploited from all sides.
A slow price correction of 2% per year won’t do. Either you fix much faster this high housing costs exploitation, or we will emigrate, taking our 4 degrees with us (we couldn’t afford to have children yet).

Yep that's the way to threaten him! What the British economy obviously needs is more people with ever more pointless degrees that give them the sqaure root of sod all in terms of a prosperous career.

Love the way that they think he can 'fix' them a nice HPC also....

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Loved watching that.

Some great comments, the hpc crowd really took a pasting. One managed to be so offensive to Shapps the comment was deleted. Brilliant, shows them up for what they are.

IveSeenTheLight

Pete111 wrote: »

RentedAndTaxed 9 March 2011 2:25PM

Minister,
We are a young couple no longer, tax-payers, private tenants, being exploited from all sides.
A slow price correction of 2% per year won’t do. Either you fix much faster this high housing costs exploitation, or we will emigrate, taking our 4 degrees with us (we couldn’t afford to have children yet).

Yep that's the way to threaten him! What the British economy obviously needs is more people with ever more pointless degrees that give them the sqaure root of sod all in terms of a prosperous career.

Love the way that they think he can 'fix' them a nice HPC also....

Where are they going to emigrate to?
How much is that going to cost them?
What are their job prospects in those countries?
What are their emigration conditions?

It's nice to think the grass is greener on the other side, but it's not always so.

Loughton_Monkey

Dear Mr Shapps,

I bought my property in 2006 with a mortgage from the Halifax. I was only earning £14,000 at the time but the Halifax mortgage advisor told me that if I took out a self-certified mortgage I'd be able to state that my income was £60,000.

I did and this allowed me to get my foot on the property ladder to buy my 1 bedroom apartment for the £200,000 asking price. However, now my 5 year fix is about to come to an end and the Halifax no longer want me as I'm in negative equity.

What can you do to help me?

He didn't answer this one! Should have said "Nothing, you lying toe-rag. You had it coming!"

IveSeenTheLight

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

He didn't answer this one! Should have said "Nothing, you lying toe-rag. You had it coming!"

Surely this would be a case for miss selling a product, if it could be prooved.
You also have to question: - How can someone on £14k afford the repayments on a £200k property / mortgage?