first-time buyers to get 20%

[Croutons]

Yes Tories, that's a great way to try and steer the internet generation to vote for you while your old men get their wangers out and email pics to some randoms.

is it just me or is the volume of daft promises starting earlier this time round?

next they'll say they'll can the ECHR's influence. Oh hang on Dave, you've had 4.5 years to do that and haven't bothered,why worry about it now?

[blueg33]

I dont understnd the logic

1 - brownfield land is more expensive to build on than greenfield
2 - there isn't 20% of the cost of a new house in legislation like sustainability (Code 3 is worth about £7k per unit and code 4 about £10-15k
3 - it will only work if public sector land is used as the land owner will have to take a hit

Not convinced at all

Mind you I am even less convinced about Labour and their desire to take control of land banks. They have no idea they really don't

[Mobile Chicane]

sugerbear said:

Chris Type R said:

Seems a very odd commitment.

Could the under 40 limitation be at odds with EU law ? It seems rather like discrimination.

I thought the same, being over forty this does smack of vote buying and discrimination.

Fair enough if you want to block foreign (non eu) buyers or people who already own property but to discrinate on age along seems very unfair.

Not that I would want to buy a new build :-) and not that this will ever happen if the conservatives get back in.

Won't happen.

This policy reminds me of the sign one sometimes sees in fish and chip shops: credit will only be given to those aged 85 and accompanied by both parents.

The average age of the FTB nowadays is something like 35+, at least in the South East, since it takes that long while renting to save anything like the deposit required.

[anonymous-user]

princeperch said:

On the cusp of exchange on my 1 bed flat. Agreed sale price is 435 and I paid 250 for it nearly exactly
3 years ago. Not done a thing to it.

First time buyers are delighted to be buying it from me apparently and have just under a 130k deposit and can't be any older than 25/26.

I'm in the wrong job...

London is screwing the whole south east, it is like a different world when you get outside the South East bubble, or even just outside the city itself.

This is where the problem is happening, You work locally in the home counties and you earn 25k/30k in an admin job with no bonus. You have pretty much had it, the money is in London. As London prices go stratospheric, the lower income city workers on 40k, move further out into neighbouring towns. This then pushes up prices and wipes any "local wage" workers out of the market. For example I have seen admin jobs on City jobs in the last few weeks around 40-45k.

Edited by anonymous-user on Sunday 29th March 16:13

[rover 623gsi]

the government will not be building these 100,000 homes. All they will be doing is releasing land for developers with the hope that the developers will take up the offer and build them - whilst agreeing to sell them at 20% less than market value.

it is not clear whether these homes will be in addition to existing housebuilding (which is approx 120,000 units per year) or whether it's just ringfencing that particular number for first-time buyers under 40. Nor is it clear what timescale is being proposed, nor whether it's going to be a national, regional or local scheme.

i welcome new housebuilding so long as it's on top of current numbers but this latest wheeze is a bit of a nonsense. Deep down, even the tories know that the country needs a massive program of new social housing but they don't want to admit it publically.

[Sir Humphrey]

rover 623gsi said:

the government will not be building these 100,000 homes. All they will be doing is releasing land for developers with the hope that the developers will take up the offer and build them - whilst agreeing to sell them at 20% less than market value.

it is not clear whether these homes will be in addition to existing housebuilding (which is approx 120,000 units per year) or whether it's just ringfencing that particular number for first-time buyers under 40. Nor is it clear what timescale is being proposed, nor whether it's going to be a national, regional or local scheme.

i welcome new housebuilding so long as it's on top of current numbers but this latest wheeze is a bit of a nonsense. Deep down, even the tories know that the country needs a massive program of new social housing but they don't want to admit it publically.

Why can private enterprise not do this and make the houses that individual customers want at a price they are happy to pay rather than forcing everyone else to pay for other people to have somewhere to live?

[rover 623gsi]

Sir Humphrey said:

Why can private enterprise not do this and make the houses that individual customers want at a price they are happy to pay rather than forcing everyone else to pay for other people to have somewhere to live?

I think I know what you are implying

so - to clarify. Social housing is not free - but it is rented out at less then private renting. Furthermore, by far the biggest cause of the growth in housing benefit is the increase in rent in the private sector and since 2010 most new recipients of HB are the low-paid employed renting privately.

building new social housing - rented cheaper then in the private sector - will help to reduce the housing benefit bill.

[Sir Humphrey]

rover 623gsi said:

I think I know what you are implying

so - to clarify. Social housing is not free - but it is rented out at less then private renting. Furthermore, by far the biggest cause of the growth in housing benefit is the increase in rent in the private sector and since 2010 most new recipients of HB are the low-paid employed renting privately.

building new social housing - rented cheaper then in the private sector - will help to reduce the housing benefit bill.

With a currently high price you have a lot of people wanting to enter the market, a lot of houses would be built and the supply would increase, dropping the price.
If you have the government build them the housing benefit bill drops but the bill for building the houses goes up and you stop the incentive for private investment by lowering the price of housing. Do you get to choose what your house is like or are you just expected to be grateful for what you are given?

[crankedup]

Croutons said:

Yes Tories, that's a great way to try and steer the internet generation to vote for you while your old men get their wangers out and email pics to some randoms.

is it just me or is the volume of daft promises starting earlier this time round?

next they'll say they'll can the ECHR's influence. Oh hang on Dave, you've had 4.5 years to do that and haven't bothered,why worry about it now?

Quite, the Tories haven't got a clue when it comes to real world. Why? because they have never have, nor need, to live in it. To55sers the lot of them, representing themselves they are good at. Labour are no better.

[anonymous-user]

crankedup said:

Quite, the Tories haven't got a clue when it comes to real world. Why? because they have never have, nor need, to live in it. To55sers the lot of them, representing themselves they are good at. Labour are no better.

Indeed, Labour were just incompetent, believing that boom and bust was gone and you didn't need to worry about tight regulation of banks/financial institutions.
The Tories have intentionally stoked the housing market for their own gains and to appease their core voters. Before mid 2013 there were loads of houses around my way for sale. Since Help To Buy came on line, the floodgates opened, and prices rocketed (reportedly in Basildon by 19% in one year, which I can believe) and suddenly there is a housing shortage. There was no mention of housing crisis/shortage before HTB2?

The problem is there are too many people making money from the housing market, it is not now just a place to live, it is now an investment opportunity, an income, an alternative pension fund. You have people working their arses off and not getting on the ladder whilst there are others with a portfolio of 20 houses rented out to the local authority, sitting back in their 500k houses in early retirement. In time I think you will get a marked two-tier society, the richer/more affluent house owners, and the renters that will forever be paying off someone else's mortgage/into someone else's retirement fund.

This is likely to be Osbourne and Calamity Cameron's lasting legacy.

[7mike]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I quite agree with this. But, if you think it's a legacy of the last five years you're living in cloud cuckoo land.

[anonymous-user]

7mike said:

I quite agree with this. But, if you think it's a legacy of the last five years you're living in cloud cuckoo land.

In a way you are right, it was rising under Labour 2004-2008, the mind-set of borrowing many multiples of income, liar loans, interest only loans etc, certainly led to the first bubble.

When it came to the financial crash, instead of the house prices fully correcting in 2009/2010, low interest rates stopped it dropping further.
The mind-set of high house prices, "back to 2008 levels are good" have been perpetuated by the Tories through the Help to Buy schemes, which instead of making houses more affordable, have done the opposite, just allowing people to borrow more, and get into more debt. As prices go up, the buy-to-letters and investors then jump on the bandwagon and push prices even further north. If HTB2 and all the other levers hadn't been pulled in the last year, would we still be seeing 19% rises in house prices, and an affordability crisis?

Edited by anonymous-user on Sunday 28th September 20:06

[blueg33]

My business builds lots of social housing, even though one of our non execs is a tory peer very active at ministerial level in housing, no one has asked us how we would do it.

They havent asked the HBF either and they havent asked the large Housing Associations that we know either.

We do know that they are looking at publicly owned land, but they are forgetting public procurement process, it takes a minimum of 12 months to get a land disposal for social housing development through that process, then you have planning circa 6 months, then build, and a 100 unit site will take about 2 years to build. So for the first sites, if they start in january, the first houses wont be avialble until 3rd quarter 2017.

The reality is that the land wont come througfh that quickly, Councils etc will have to identify what is avialable for development, they will have meetings and committee's and cabinets. And, we are talking brownfield sites, depending upon whats in the ground it can take months to decontaminate. I did a former ceramics factorey (sparkplugs) with very mobile hydrocarbons in the ground from degreasing and it tok 18 months of pumping water intothe ground, pumping it out, and treating it.

[crankedup]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I agree with much of what you say, even though I have taken advantage and took early retirement myself, I don't feel guilty over it though.
The housing market has been an investment opportunity for the past 45 years, ever since the first major house price inflation bubble of the mid 1970's. However, each decade has seen price escalation increase with the occasional short lived correction which is soon amended by another restorative bubble. The past 8 years have seen interest rates for savers at such a low level that to invest cash is to lose money, so where is a better bet to be had, kinda obvious really and that has added to the current bubble. Cash is only saved as a relatively small 'rainy day pot' by the people fortunate enough to have some spare cash.
I believe there has been an inherent housing shortage since the 1950's when so many 'prefabs' were thrown up in an attempt to house homeless people. Then we bare witness to the 'New Town' developments and the growth of suburbia. None of this fully satisfied the housing demand in terms of numbers required, as other posters have mentioned it is not in the developers interests to saturate the problem with new builds.

We already see a distinct two tier Society in terms of wealth distribution imo. This is not always acknowledged by some and positively disagreed with by others, fair enough. My lad is building a small property portfolio on a BTL basis, not because he is an overly aggressive Capitalist but he wants to build an equity pension pot, another landlord! He would have much rather simply rely upon the cash investment into his works pension but his salary dictates that the % affordable to invest is inadequate, and like me, he has a deep mistrust of the financial sector with his money. Like he say's 'I want to be responsible for my own future by making my own decisions'. He is an electrical engineer by trade.

You mention Basildon, said to be the barometer of which way voting is likely to take and a key seat for the Tories, we will have to wait and see which way its swings this time around. Sit back and see the election bribes come thick and fast from the big three.

[JagLover]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I agree with allot of this.

The housing bubble was deliberately reinflated.

What the economy needed was more houses being built and changes in government policy so this could occur. What we got was a deliberate restoking of the housing bubble to impoverish a generation to keep the boomers happy.

[Hoofy]

PurpleMoonlight said:

I would much rather the Government built homes to rent to people at reasonable rates.

The 'must own' mentality just increases prices.

Yeah - your suggestion could be an interesting way to solve the problem. Introducing more rental properties means landlords will be forced to keep prices down which could make things less profitable or just not worth it at all resulting in more properties becoming available to buy. Could. Supply and demand, again.

[Adrian W]

vote for me, I'll promise you the world!

[MercuryRises]

Adrian W said:

vote for me, I'll promise you the world!

Strange how people keep falling for that one.

[Hackney]

TLandCruiser said:

What bothers me is when people say they can't afford a deposit, my wife and I saved for our deposit by cutting everything, sky tv, smart phones, eating and going out and funny enough we saved up for it...the same with our wedding which cost 14k. The problem is people today have a expectation of entitlement and it should be given to them when really they need to work for it and are unwilling to save up and just say they can't, when they can do the following;

Don't buy a car on finance/lease
Cancel sky
Don't get the latest smart phone
Cut the gym and run in a park instead
Don't go up the pub and restaurants etc

Out of interest:
When did you buy?
Where?, and
For how much? Or how much was your deposit.

3 days ago the Land Registry said the average house price was £177k. But I live in London.
According to Rightmove:

"Last year most property sales in London involved flats which sold for on average £432,895. Terraced properties sold for an average price of £569,906, while semi-detached properties fetched £532,569.

London, with an overall average price of £504,682 was more expensive than nearby South East (£314,917), East of England (£253,229) and East Midlands (£168,279). The priciest area within London was Central London (£1,339,646) and the least expensive was East London (£340,706).

During the last year, sold prices in London were 9% up on the previous year and 21% up on 2011 when the average house price was £417,936"

So even based on a 95% mortgage I'd need to save £21,644 to buy a flat.
Even if I moved to East London I'd need to save £17,000

But wait, property went up 9% last year, so assume it's the same again and I can save that deposit in two years.... that means I'd have to save £20,197 for the East London place or £25,715 for the "average" flat.
That's assuming a 95% mortgage, if I could only get an 80% mortgage I'd need to save £86,579 *today* for an average flat.

And don't forget the other costs, Rightmove tells me that moving into that average flat would cost me £17,280 (stamp duty, legal fees and other costs).
So in total, to buy an average London flat I need to have £40,000 in the bank.

I'd need to cancel SKY for 83 years to save that!

Don't buy a car on finance/lease - I have to, I need it for my job. Putting 20,000 on an old banger is a recipe for losing my job frankly.
Don't get the latest smart phone - new iPhone, £185. Selling old iPhone £145. Yep, that's made all the difference. My London flat edges ever closer....
Cut the gym and run in a park instead - I'm not a member of a gym
Don't go up the pub and restaurants etc - we don't, nowhere near as much as we did. We're having a baby in Feb so saving money for that.

I'm 42 so above the "young" threshold for CMD's frankly idiotic plans to help first time buyers. I'm not one to use the term discrimination lightly but why give all this so-called help to 40 year olds and below yet not first time buyers above that age?

Apologies to TLandCruiser for sounding like I'm having a go at you personally, I realise my reply has got angrier but it's not directed at you. Honest.

Edited by Hackney on Monday 29th September 14:50

[s1962a]

Why not try and fix the actual issue, which is the use of houses as an investment tool rather than for people to live in?

I propose a land tax on each and every property in the UK per year. Something equivalent to the council tax on a property, with no exceptions on who the owner of the property is (private or company). If the property is your main home you get 100% rebate. The money resulting in this to be used to build new homes and for social housing.

If you want to be in the buy to let business, then be prepared to pay a land tax that compensates the state for taking away property that could have been bought be someone as a private home to live in.