Passing the buck
Posted: June 26, 2014 Filed under: Buy to let, Help to Buy, Housing market, Mortgages | Tags: George Osborne, Mark Carney Leave a commentGeorge Osborne has spent so long outsourcing responsibility for the housing market to Mark Carney that it’s easy to forget the Bank of England’s actual brief.
Far from controlling house prices, or tackling affordability or making the market less dysfunctional, the Bank’s Financial Policy Committee (FPC) ‘is charged with a primary objective of identifying, monitoring and taking action to remove or reduce systemic risks with a view to protecting and enhancing the resilience of the UK financial system’ and a secondary objective ‘to support the economic policy of the government’.
So the measures the FPC announced today on high loan to income (LTI) mortgages and a slightly strengthened stress test on lending are about preventing future house prices from increasing household debt to a level that poses risks to the financial system rather than tackling current price levels and affordability.
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
In our blood
Posted: May 29, 2014 Filed under: Help to Buy, Housing market 1 CommentOn a first glance at today’s new figures, the Help to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme is failing to live up to the fears of its critics or the hopes of ministers.
The figures released by the Treasury show 7,313 sales in the first six months of the scheme. Of these, 72 per cent were for homes valued below £250,000 and 80 per cent were to first-time buyers.
Those completions account for around 1.3 per cent of mortgages over the six months so it’s hard to see how the Help to Buy 2 mortgage guarantee (HTB2) on its own can have contributed much to rising property prices.
Doubts about Dave
Posted: May 20, 2014 Filed under: Help to Buy, Housebuilding, Housing market, Planning | Tags: David Cameron Leave a commentHow do David Cameron’s claims this morning about home ownership and new housing in his own constituency measure up to scrutiny?
It’s a measure of the growing political importance of housing took top billing in his Today programme interview sandwiched between reaction to the conviction of Abu Hamza and Britain’s relationship with Europe. Listen again here from about 1:30 in.
The interview was notable for me for two things: first an unequivocal claim to the old Tory mantle of the ‘property owning democracy’; and second a denial that Tory councils are nimbys made with specific reference to West Oxfordshire (Cameron’s Witney constituency has the same boundaries).
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Eric’s ladder
Posted: May 15, 2014 Filed under: Buy to let, Help to Buy, Housebuilding, Mortgages | Tags: Eric Pickles, Kris Hopkins 1 CommentThe boast from ministers is that Help to Buy really is getting Britain building – but is it enough?
The narrative according to Eric Pickles is that the coalition ‘inherited a situation where builders couldn’t build, buyers couldn’t buy and lenders wouldn’t lend’. Now, thanks to Help to Buy and the reinvigorated Right to Buy, ‘we’re ensuring that anyone who works hard and wants to get on the property ladder will be able to do so’.
Not to be outdone, housing minister Kris Hopkins said the housebuilding figures for the March quarter of 2014 were the result of a ‘massive government effort’ and even took credit for a 23-year high in council house building. And the DCLG press release comes complete with a statement from Stewart Baseley of the Home Builders Federation that the extension of Help to Buy 1 ‘is allowing the industry to plan ahead, rebuild capacity lost in the downturn and deliver the homes the country needs’.
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Help or hindrance?
Posted: April 13, 2014 Filed under: Help to Buy, Housebuilding, Housing market Leave a commentSo a year in to Help to Buy, who has it helped and what has the impact been so far?
Those are the questions I set out to answer in my feature in this week’s Inside Housing. It concludes that the limited number of Help to Buy transactions seen so far cannot have been enough on their own to account for what’s happened in the market in its first year. What’s been far more significant is the impact on the behaviour of buyers, sellers and housebuilders of a signal from the government that it will do everything it can to generate a housing market recovery. That, combined with a range of other government policies (and non-policies) and the favourable environment of record low interest rates, has duly produced one.
Why registration is the key for private renters
Posted: March 30, 2014 Filed under: Help to Buy, Private renting | Tags: Generation Rent, voter registration 1 CommentCan the votes of private renters swing the next election and move their concerns up the political agenda in the process?
The huge shift in housing tenure seen this century suggests they can. In 2000 just two million households in England were private tenants. According to the English Housing Survey, that had doubled to almost four million by 2012/13. Add another 500,000 in Wales and Scotland, allow for another two years of growth and, with 1.8 people of voting age per household, you have nine million potential private rented votes at the next election.
Polling by Generation Rent, the recently relaunched National Private Tenants Organisation, suggests that the votes of private renters could be decisive in 86 seats in England. Of these, 38 are currently held by the Conservatives, 32 by Labour, 15 by the Lib Dems and one by the Greens. The results here could be enough to deliver an overall majority for David Cameron, make Ed Miliband the leader of the largest party or give Nick Clegg a major say in a new coalition.
Buy, buy, bye?
Posted: March 11, 2014 Filed under: Help to Buy, Housing market, Mortgages | Tags: George Osborne Leave a commentAs George Osborne prepares for next week’s budget, even the people who’ve benefited are calling for changes to help to buy. But is he listening?
A survey out today finds that most mortgage lenders and brokers now believe that help to buy 2 – the more controversial mortgage guarantee element of the scheme – will be scaled back or scrapped before the official end date of 2016.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Equity moans
Posted: March 6, 2014 Filed under: Help to Buy, Housebuilding | Tags: National Audit Office Leave a commentIn the furore over the Help to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme, its equity loan counterpart has escaped much scrutiny. A report out today changes that.
Help to Buy 1 started in April last year. Equity loans worth more than £500 million households were made in the first nine months of the scheme to almost 13,000 households. Another 9,600 loans were in the pipeline. If everything goes to plan over the next two years, 74,000 households will eventually benefit from equity loans worth £3.7 billion.
Today’s report from the National Audit Office (NAO) makes you remember that although it is small by comparison with the £12 billion of mortgage guarantees offered by its more controversial sibling, Help to Buy 1 is significantly bigger than the FirstBuy scheme that it replaced.
Appearance and reality in the 2014 housing market
Posted: January 5, 2014 Filed under: Buy to let, Help to Buy, Housing benefit, Housing market, Labour market, Private renting | Tags: David Cameron, Fergus Wilson, housing benefit, Sharon Ray 3 CommentsCombine one ex-PR man prime minister with one lucky homebuyer who’s also an estate agent, then add one ex-teacher turned buy-to-let mogul. Welcome to the New Year recipe for housing, where perceptions are everything.
David Cameron used Help to Buy as a metaphor for the Conservative message about economic recovery and opportunity for all when he took part in a photo op in Southampton with a young mum and her toddler and had tea in the new home she’s just bought through a government scheme.
It seemed standard, if rather awkward-looking fare, until this post appeared on the internet claiming that the young mum, Sharon Ray, was actually Sharon O’Donnell, a sales director with the estate agent that allegedly sold the home. That was followed by a typically sexist story about the ‘attractive blonde’ in the Mail and this corrective about some exaggerations and errors in the original post. Cue a Twitterstorm and debate between those seeing the whole thing as an example of Tory fakery and those outraged by the hounding of a young woman who’d done nothing wrong.
Jules Birch 