Does Help To Buy actually help to buy?

Rachel2016

It's only 3 grand max, probably less because I plan to buy in 2-3 years, so I wouldn't have purchased a cheaper property, just saved for a month or two longer before buying.

Generali

It's a demand side solution to a supply side problem. It won't work.

westernpromise

There are things the state can do to make housing affordable but I question whether the state should even have a view on house prices anyway - they’re a symptom, not a cause.

HTB strikes me as a poor policy choice. If the issue is that prices are too high, subbing people the difference simply supports those prices. How about a five-year stamp duty holiday on residential buying, instead? It would be a price reduction for buyers that does not come out of sellers’ pockets. There must be quite a few potential sellers who are deterred by the punitive transaction tax that SDLT represents. Of course there is a risk that the asking prices could simply go up by whatever the SDLT was, but we have seen in central London that the impact of SDLT has actually forced prices down because it’s so enormous. So I tend to think the price is the price and will stay such.