Do you want house price to rise or fall?

tara747

Thrugelmir wrote: »

They do. There's less to repay.

Errr what?? And the rest of us are expected to make up the difference?

Chrysalis

ilovehouses wrote: »

There are about 4m social homes in the UK.

That's an abundance; not a shortage.

maybe if the UK population was just 2 million yes.

How do you consider 4 million an abundance with our population and a clear demand outstripping supply situation?

Made even worse that the supply is reducing with the horrible right to buy scheme and some social homes been demolished or sold for a £1.

Bedroom tax also isnt helping as in some areas larger social houses are empty ,the biggest strain is on properties for single people. Second biggest strain is 2 bed homes.

Chrysalis

andrewf75 wrote: »

It!!!8217;s a shortage because millions more are stuck in private rentals where they pay as much as people pay for a mortgage but with no security.

Its basically just transferring public money into the hands of private landlords via tax credits/housing benefit.

Its pretty sad I am the only one who liked your post, yet you said it exactly how it is.

Apparently its socially acceptable for people to pay the rate of a mortgage for 6 months security and for the government to send 10s of billions a year to private landlords.

It took a world war for the populace to consider we should provide our people with security of accomodation, too much peacetime seems to have poisoned the priorities of people.

Chrysalis

westernpromise wrote: »

So what's your solution? Refuse to pay housing benefit to private tenants? Good luck with that.

Its already happening but a slow gradual process.

Before LHA was introduced. Housing Benefit worked that on every new claim an assessment was carried out manually by the rental officer to determine if the rent is reasonable for the area, if it was yes, then the full rent would be covered by the state providing there is no excess income.

LHA has now replaced housing benefit for private rental, LHA has gradually became stricter in the limits it will cover. As is right now LHA will provide a fixed amount of money to cover the rent, this is regardless of what the rental costs actually are, if in the very unlikely situation the rent is lower than LHA, then LHA will be reduced, but if rent is higher, it will "not" be increased. In recent years LHA has been changed to only do an average of the bottom 30% of rents in the area, that sounds ok, but it includes social rents, social homes are not available on the market for the most part, so LHA is based on rents that the average person has no access to, this means that generally LHA does not cover rental costs, even if you dont have excess income. In addition LHA rates have long stopped been reviewed and as such no longer track inflation, meaning the gap each passing year is increasing.

So yes the government has realised that rents are out of control, the way they decided to try and mitigate the cost to the taxpayer was simply to cap the amount of help they will provide to vulnerable people. Washing their hands of the problem so to speak. Obviously this is not sustainable tho, eventually the gap will cause noticeable increases in homelessness which will probably force a social attitude change, but that could be a decade or more away.

People are pretty out of touch here it seems.

Increasing housing benefits to track rental increases has these problems.

1 - It sends a message to landlords that the government is willing to accept their behaviour and will always pay up on increases. This would probably lead to even higher rental increases at cost to the taxpayer.
2 - Increases the risk of fraudulent benefit claims where e.g. someone is not actually a paying tenant but can pretend to be for the purpose of weeding money from the state.
3 - Doesnt solve the lack of security problem, and costs associated with LA's.

Regulating rents so they always "lower" than mortgage costs, and closer to social rent costs has these problems.

1 - Landlords would effectively quit, you take away their money gravy train, they will just stop letting out. So instead of a social housing shortage it would be a social AND private housing shortage, much worse for the government.
2 - Goes against the principles of capitalism.
3 - Doesnt solve the lack of security problem, and costs associated with LA's.

The only "viable" solution is to build en masse a load more social homes. These would be to serve the needs of those who for whatever reason cannot get a mortgage, such as those on benefits, unemployed, low inconsistent income, bad credit etc. The principle of the right to "secure affordable home" will be the justification in the policy.

1 - The policy would eventually pay for itself long term, as the 10s of billions now shifted to private landlords would diminish if all those tenants became social tenants.
2 - People would not need to use LAs.
3 - People would have security in their home.
4 - More homes would be empty on the private market and prices would come down as a result helping first time buyers.

The only downside sadly however is a political nasty one, hence this solution not been pursued by governments.

1 - Falling house prices would likely be considered unacceptable by existing home owners who see homes as a financial asset, in addition those making money from BTL also wouldnt be happy.

This is basically a conflict of interest between the haves and have nots.

dadsgoneshopping

We have a whopper of a mortgage- so need house prices to rise, so that we have a decent sized lump sum to downsize and use as a pension in retirement. We are on our second home, our first, a flat increased in value by £40,000 in two years. We bought this house thanks to this, and recently the local prices started to fall, it is now worth exactly what we paid for it a year ago, according to the estate agents Hopefully, (selfish me) their will be a huge rise in house prices until we sell, followed by a massive fall

buglawton

I would vote for the Home Counties and London to fall and the rest to rise. But would like to sideways-size out of the Home Counties first!

Cakeguts

Chrysalis wrote: »

Its already happening but a slow gradual process.

Before LHA was introduced. Housing Benefit worked that on every new claim an assessment was carried out manually by the rental officer to determine if the rent is reasonable for the area, if it was yes, then the full rent would be covered by the state providing there is no excess income.

LHA has now replaced housing benefit for private rental, LHA has gradually became stricter in the limits it will cover. As is right now LHA will provide a fixed amount of money to cover the rent, this is regardless of what the rental costs actually are, if in the very unlikely situation the rent is lower than LHA, then LHA will be reduced, but if rent is higher, it will "not" be increased. In recent years LHA has been changed to only do an average of the bottom 30% of rents in the area, that sounds ok, but it includes social rents, social homes are not available on the market for the most part, so LHA is based on rents that the average person has no access to, this means that generally LHA does not cover rental costs, even if you dont have excess income. In addition LHA rates have long stopped been reviewed and as such no longer track inflation, meaning the gap each passing year is increasing.

So yes the government has realised that rents are out of control, the way they decided to try and mitigate the cost to the taxpayer was simply to cap the amount of help they will provide to vulnerable people. Washing their hands of the problem so to speak. Obviously this is not sustainable tho, eventually the gap will cause noticeable increases in homelessness which will probably force a social attitude change, but that could be a decade or more away.

People are pretty out of touch here it seems.

Increasing housing benefits to track rental increases has these problems.

1 - It sends a message to landlords that the government is willing to accept their behaviour and will always pay up on increases. This would probably lead to even higher rental increases at cost to the taxpayer.
2 - Increases the risk of fraudulent benefit claims where e.g. someone is not actually a paying tenant but can pretend to be for the purpose of weeding money from the state.
3 - Doesnt solve the lack of security problem, and costs associated with LA's.

Regulating rents so they always "lower" than mortgage costs, and closer to social rent costs has these problems.

1 - Landlords would effectively quit, you take away their money gravy train, they will just stop letting out. So instead of a social housing shortage it would be a social AND private housing shortage, much worse for the government.
2 - Goes against the principles of capitalism.
3 - Doesnt solve the lack of security problem, and costs associated with LA's.

The only "viable" solution is to build en masse a load more social homes. These would be to serve the needs of those who for whatever reason cannot get a mortgage, such as those on benefits, unemployed, low inconsistent income, bad credit etc. The principle of the right to "secure affordable home" will be the justification in the policy.

1 - The policy would eventually pay for itself long term, as the 10s of billions now shifted to private landlords would diminish if all those tenants became social tenants.
2 - People would not need to use LAs.
3 - People would have security in their home.
4 - More homes would be empty on the private market and prices would come down as a result helping first time buyers.

The only downside sadly however is a political nasty one, hence this solution not been pursued by governments.

1 - Falling house prices would likely be considered unacceptable by existing home owners who see homes as a financial asset, in addition those making money from BTL also wouldnt be happy.

This is basically a conflict of interest between the haves and have nots.

I am not convinced about the social housing thing. I have for a long time thought that social housing should be there for people who can't get housing any other way. So people who are disabled or who have long term illnesses that stop them from getting work. I am not sure that it is the state's job to provide housing for people who can't be bothered to get a job or who want to have more children than they can afford. There has to be some responsibility on the part of people about which choices they make in life.

I am old and luxuries to me include this. A television, holidays, bought toys rather than made ones, iphones, computer, takeaway food, satelite television, fizzy drinks etc. You cannot expect to get all this stuff provided by our young people's taxes. My generation was brought up without any of the things. If you want to educate your children there is nothing better than the local library and it is free. Fizzy drinks are rotting the teeth of our young children water is much cheaper to drink from the tap. What is not a luxury to me is somewhere to live which is a roof over your head a bed and somewhere to sit. If you are healthy and could work then to get the rest of the stuff you do that. You don't rely on someone else to pay for it.

There is not enough social housing for young single disabled people the people with no choices. We should not be providing more social housing for the people who want to live in areas they can't afford or who want to live in luxury being paid for by other people. It seems to me that there are rules for working people that don't apply to social housing. For example there are a lot of working people who can't afford to buy a house in the most expensive areas of large cities and yet some of these areas have social housing so if you want to live there you have to find a way to get social housing which makes it more attractive to take a poorly paid job or not to work at all. Social housing should be there for people in emergencies not for people who can't be bothered. For all the others private renting is good because it means that they can downsize quickly if they need less space.

MobileSaver

Chrysalis wrote: »

hence this solution not been pursued by governments ... Falling house prices would likely be considered unacceptable by existing home owners ... in addition those making money from BTL also wouldnt be happy.

You mean all those pesky people who pay most of the taxes in this country that make everything else possible? Yeah, absolutely shocking that the government would want to keep them on side...

buglawton

Yes the government has this annoying habit of taxing those who actually have money.

GreatApe

To those who say we need more social housing, how much social housing do we currently have and how much do we need? What about the areas with lots of social housing already did the mass social housing fix any of the problems you think more social housing will fix?

To those who say prices are too high, in which areas are they too high and in which ares are they too low? There is at least a factor of 5x between the cheapest to the more expensive areas.

To those who say we have a housing shortage, how do you square this with the fact we have more space per capita than ever?