To think "the government giving £3'000 to peoples first home" isn't s good use of public money

[DyslexicScientist]

With so many essential services cut, doesn't seem right to me to give people money to buy a first house.

Apart from anything the average house price in england has just hit 300k and this is about 12 times the average wage, so prices are in a bubble and unsustainable. This just seems to be adding fuel onto the fire, help to buy as seemed to have the affect of also stoking house prices, making people worse off as they have a loan to repay in 5 years.

Well the situation is that they have to be seen to be doing something about the housing crisis, and they are actually doing more than the previous government in tackling this.

The unpalatable part is that due to demographics it isn't just social housing that needs to built, this means over ruling nimbys and expanding towns and villages, increasing taxes on second home owners and professional/accidental landlords, this will hit many home owners in the pocket personally, and no government wants to be the one in power during a crash/correction.

We can either inflate everyone's debt away and really put the boot in to the younger generation whilst putting us in a wilderness wrt globalisation or we try and soften the blow on a longer curve and hope the can kicking will help us.

Basically, it's political suicide to address the situation head on when we as a country have relied on house price increases for over a decade.

So peole get given money to buy something, given it.
Whilst we have disabled benefits being cut
Social care in free full, they give money away

Tamponlady where on earth was your council house?? Sounds grim! Usually they are built to much higher spec than private housing, they were originally 'homes for heroes' after all, and even modern housing assoc houses on mixed housing estates are usually to a higher spec than the private ones
Nowadays of course a lot of them are private rentals instead

No your trying to simplify the argument, people are getting given the money because the housing situation is a house of cards that started under thatcher and fuelled under Brown/Blair.

We have built our economy on rising house prices for over a decade, its a tangled mess with globalisation/immigration and our recent reliance on becoming a service sector specialist all contributing to the problem.

It's not a Tory bad/labour good issue, it is far too routed for that.

I don't personally agree with it, dla and social care shouldn't be cut, but a common recurring issue with many of our problems can be traced back to putting a roof over your head. It is political suicide to tackle this head on (whomever is in power) as not only the electorate will revolt but globalisation means big business will also. (Iyswim)

It's a can kicking excersise until the demographic shift where the government at the time is forced to do something.

Prices are not fixed! And they will rise if first time buyers can suddenly afford bigger deposits - it all sounds great for the shallow of thinking except for the fact that there are no more houses available, there cannot be an increase in the number of first time buyers obtaining a house yet it will look like the house market is doing just great but it will be growing for all the wrong reasons. Excess demand with limited supply!
We need more houses - why is that simple fact being dodged?

Meanwhile......HB cuts to pensioners.

speye.wordpress.com/2015/12/14/tories-kill-sheltered-housing-landlords-dont-even-notice/

yes we need more house's, but we need ones that people can afford,. not over priced like they are now.
giving people money to buy something is just daft, why should people get 3 grand towards a purchase? the only people who will benefit are people who are selling houses. it won't build more house's.
where is the money coming from?

We need more houses - why is that simple fact being dodged?

Because everyone agrees to more houses being built until the new development is on their own doorstep or it will mean that their own house may not be worth what they think it is. A decade or more of house prices only rise in value is difficult to address.

The banks can't lend the multiples that they once did as it has proven to bring countries to its knees and private companies with land banks that many peoples pensions are indirectly invested in means it's a shit show that no one really wants to tackle head on.

Building affordable housing - who gets the affordable housing, do they get to sell and make a massive profit while they move up the ladder? What makes some more worthy of affordable housing than others? Increase housing stock - prices will adjust accordingly.

I don't know about other areas, but since they removed the 250k stamp duty threshold, houses that were once 249,999 are now 280k and help to buy has pushed up the price of new builds here considerably

And if no one want more houses built in their area no amount of money given to first buyers will fix this problem! We don't have enough houses!!!

The new builds here are really tiny too. They aren't for tall families

I agree with you in a way higge, but house building needs to be concentrated into certain locations. There is no use creating a satellite town in the Lake District when people are wanting to work in Manchester/Leeds.

There is a reluctance of mass house building in the areas it is really needed because of nimbyism and or political suicide, to reduce house prices it will be a bubble effect of targeting the suburbs /satallite towns where the concentration of jobs or people want to live so that it reduces prices so that those moving out have less to play with to displace the local populace.

No one personally wants to take the hit is the real problem.

I live in the South East - I know all about Nimbyism but just because you have got it good doesn't mean others shouldn't be given a chance to succeed.

i watched something on the news that was interesting, it was about building more houses near Lewes and how short of water the south is.
I do wonder if we keep building in the south....what will happen

It will all get too heavy and fall into the sea?:o

We all know why houses aren't being built - it doesn't require in depth analysis....the reasons are common knowledge. But why do we continue to allow politicians to come up with bogus bullshit like giving first time house buyers £3k to fix the house market, it's so insulting to all of us. Not to mention the redistribution of income towards those who choose to relieve themselves of property - they are not necessarily the most deserving.

JustAnotherLurker the govt was able to tackle nimbyism when it came to HS2. They are choosing to keep this bubble inflated.

YABVU. It's the Gidiot's economic plan, and if you believe a word of what comes out of his slimy facehole it's working. Doing the opposite of what respected economists say always works, I find.

Private housing has been a Ponzi scheme since Thatcher got in. Ponzi schemes have to be fed, so expect more help for buyers. Free market my arse.

House prices aren't a bubble its simple demand and supply. We have a shortage of housing and the result is that they are expensive. Population is set to increase further - is the prediction 70m by 2025 so they are unlikely to fall anytime soon.

Justanotherlurker sums it up quite well, housing problems cause a lot of our social issues including the need for benefits. This policy seems like a drop in the ocean but the 'public purse' spending 3k to get a family into good long term housing may well save money in the long term.

I don't know about other areas, but since they removed the 250k stamp duty threshold, houses that were once 249,999 are now 280k and help to buy has pushed up the price of new builds here considerably

That has defiantly happened where ibam also. The whole uk economy is based on ever rising prices as a pp said. It has to crash eventually, they've already devalued the pound massively.

But in terms of stamp duty the issue was that post financial crisis you needed to have this money in cash it couldn't be put onto your mortgage. Therefore it was a significant issue in buying and selling houses just above the threshold.

There is also no simple relationship between the value of the pound and property prices/ state of tyre economy. In fact if the pound is lower property is cheaper for foreign investors to buy.

If the financial crisis only led to a small short term reduction in prices then it will take a hell of a lot for them to collapse. There is no sign of this happening as far as I can see.

This policy seems like a drop in the ocean but the 'public purse' spending 3k to get a family into good long term housing may well save money in the long term. How will this policy get a family into long term housing, it does not involve the creation of more housing or I am missing something? - they are giving £3k to all first time buyers, so now all first time buyers have another £3k for their deposits, all property suitable for first time buyers will increase in price, that's how it works! A Ponzi scheme requires feeding!

But higge the prices increasing does not necessarily make them unaffordable if you can get a mortgage. Not everyone is a first time buyer. Also disincentives have been put in place for btl landlords from next financial year which ate likely to have the opposite effect.

Are likely, much as I dislike btletters eating them is going too far....