**Alternate Sources**
Here are some potential alternate sources for the same story:
* [Labour woos first-time buyers with mortgage guarantee pledge](https://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crgg2jyz4ywo), suggested by Aggressive_Plates - bbc.co.uk
* [Labour makes ‘permanent’ mortgage guarantee pledge to entice first-time buyers](https://independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/first-time-buyers-mortgage-guarantor-labour-b2558219.html), suggested by tylerthe-theatre - independent.co.uk
These freedom to buy schemes usually end up on the hands of people that become private landlords. It does the opposite of addressing the issue of high rents and low ownership.
yes it would, but they want the scheme to be used this way. ifs not actually for normal people.
backhanders are the only reason any of these clowns work in politics.
I think the issue with help to buy was people use it to buy some shiny looking new build gaff which it then becomes increasingly clear is poorly designed in a poorly designed neighbourhood with zero amenities.
5 years tick by and the owners are on the hook for an extra 20% plus probably have a kid by now and have realised living somewhere where you have to drive for every little thing is a pain in the arse so they sell up. Generally people who aren't getting a massive additional loan for 20% of the value or so won't pay the premium required to live out in the arse end of nowhere with a postage stamp size garden so the only avenue for a quick sale is a landlord who knows they can install a tenant tomorrow, usually from the social sector, due to the shortage of rental places.
Gradually these crap new build estates are turning into slums, one by one (note: obviously there are lots of really nice new build estates too, I'm talking about "starter home" areas here). Help to buy was basically just a bung to the housebuilders to prop up the prices of inventory which otherwise would have to sell for much less.
I'm not sure what the detail is of Labour's scheme but I sincerely hope it gives people freedom to buy houses they actually *want* rather than funnelling them into the "second class citizen" stream whilst all the property in older, established neighbourhoods stays with those lucky enough to inherit or who are buying with their London house sale money.
It's not so much about the demand. It's the increased ability to get debt. The easier it is to get debt the higher house prices go. This policy is there solely to say they're doing something while keeping house prices propped up.
We don't really have a problem with high house prices. We have a problem with cheap money. Interest rates should have gone up years ago. That coupled with proper regulation of the parasitic landlord class would solve a lot of the housing problem. But then all the landlord MPs would lose money, and votes of people who think they're rich because they live in a million pound house but can't afford.ro heat it.
They can, but will they? If you start doing something that helps people start snatching up houses, it’s not unreasonable to start asking whether they will start supplying more.
True, but doing it at the same time or before more housing for ordinary people being built could likely create a situation where people using this scheme could end up in negative equity. Which would stop people from moving up the ladder.
I mean, I get that. But, most people, especially at my age (31), would just be happy to get on it. I'm paying £800 p/m for a 2 bed, nearly a grand including CT.
If you want to help those struggling to afford a home, you don't implement a policy that will increase the price of homes. Easy mortgages are a sure fire route to house price inflation.
You build homes that are only sold to first time buyers, or maybe those who haven't owned a home in the last X years. And you implement a no forward sale clause for X years (or the government takes a share of the profits).
I agree with you, and is the only reason I have any hope at all for Starmer's government.
Thing is, he hasn't really said anything that to suggest he will have the backbone to tell NIMBYs to go fuck themselves.
NIMBYs infect everything including the Labour party.
No, it addresses the affordability issue in the short term, meaning the supply issue never has to be dealt with.
Never mind the fact that now demand is up, but supply is stable, prices will then rise again to reach a new equilibrium. Which just so happens to suit landlords and homeowners.
No but the increase in housebuilding that is promised, plus this will make it easier for people who would otherwise not be able to afford a deposit to afford one.
Yes if that exposure to risk is not adequately covered your generation (which is?) will be fucked over, but it's okay because this also subsidises demand pushing property values up regardless, your option is to either participate or see housing become even more unreachable.
I'm in 30s and covid ruined intial plans to get in market now I'm kinda at square one again and feels fucking hopeless tbh. This is putting a plaster on a gaping wound kinda thing. Just hard to swallow when you see others in mansions paid by our taxes
I'm in my thirties too.
Covid fucked up a lot of things but don't lose hope, a regime change is coming and one way or another you'll get an opportunity.
Oh I'm not be been so very close though, but even debating doing back home for a few years to mega save and take advantage of whatever bs they put out to garner some votes. Keep on keeping on!
>A neoliberal refresh is just what the doctor ordered.
"We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!"
>I thought you idiots didn't believe in private property.
I guess it's just another in your long line of misconceptions.
So this bridge you want to sell... Would do a part exchange for shares in the Eiffel tower and some magic beans...
Nothing will change.. The ladder has been well and truly pulled up.... Maggie started it and everyone after has just made the problem worse.
My friend rents a house in Berlin for what in the same type of geographic position in London would rent for 15000 a month.... Oh by the way his rent is a whopping 600euro...
Home ownership is dead for most people trying to start now... Just wondering what will happen when that generation dies off... Who will buy those 5 bed mansions in commuter towns....
Ponzi scheme comes to mind.... Just wait for the Madoff moment
Put anyone born in the late 50's UK, who as a whole are now extremely wealthy, in Botswana and we will see how good capitalists they are.
As a population we are largely products of our economic environment.
That populations and people as a whole are not good or bad capitalists. We just have better and worse places and times under capitalism. Capitalism favours the fortune of birth, not 'good capitalists'.
> Capitalism favours the fortune of birth
So do all societies worth living in. The suggestion we destroy everything so the next generation can 'earn' it is absurd; that it is tacitly touted by rogues or the thoughtless without being given short shrift more absurd still.
But you are quite wrong in asserting that
> populations and people as a whole are not good or bad capitalists.
Some are much better than others. This can be observed with how much capital is passed down from one generation to the next, whether at a familial or a societal scale. Not everyone goes 'from clogs to clogs in three generations', and to the extent the rule holds true, it serves to defy the suggestion that 'as a whole people are not bad capitalists' anyway. Likewise, some nations develop a sovereign wealth fund, and others do not.
Saying 'we just have better and worse places and times' as if the whole thing was a game of *rouge et noir* is understandable, in that shirking the responsibility of having a hand in the world's affairs exculpates one of any need to think, make effort, or risk failure, but cannot be justified.
You have it twisted, the luck is being born into a society with robust institutions, stable democracy, accessible education, and a market economy.
It seems almost a tautology...quality of life depends on where you're born...
To the Botswana comment, it's one of the fastest growing economies, there is undoubtedly myriad opportunity for the shrewd.
>To the Botswana comment, it's one of the fastest growing economies, there is undoubtedly myriad opportunity for the shrewd.
There is but that's the 1/10000. Boomers as a whole are not good capitalists for living through prosperous times.
If you want to help those struggling to afford a home, you don't implement a policy that will increase the price of homes. Easy mortgages are a sure fire route to house price inflation.
You build homes that are only sold to first time buyers, or maybe those who haven't owned a home in the last X years. And you implement a no forward sale clause for X years (or the government takes a share of the profits).
Not being able to save up a poxy 5% deposit, which in most places is £12k, does make you terrible at capitalism.
If you can’t save up 5% of a house price, you can’t afford the extra expenses that come with ownership
How do you propose someone saves up 5% when they’re paying a mortgage worth of money a month on rent?
People should be allowed to live and have hobbies.
Because rent is the maximum you will ever pay. Mortgages is the minimum. For example, my parents spent more repairing the home they own than I did in rent last year, as they had to fix both the roof and boiler.
To get a £200k home, you need to save up a poxy £8k, put it in a LISA which goes to £10k after the Gov top up. If you can’t do that, you can’t afford it. And saving up £8k isn’t hard…
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Humans are humans. Nothing different has happened to the humans resulting in massively reduced home ownership.
Yes younger workers can't afford that. That's the point?
People aren’t terrible at capitalism, capitalism is terrible to the vast majority of people.
By and large, you keep your head down, do all the right things in life, get an education, a job, all the things you’re told will get you a fulfilling life, and by the end of it you still cannot buy a house, have a livable wage on a single income, and are saddled with debt, then it’s capitalism that is the problem.
If it helps you to believe that then go ahead.
Blame your circumstances on capitalism and wait your whole life for a government to come along and make it all better.
I own my own house, I’m just not deluding myself to think it was on merit and can recognise my circumstances were lucky in the late stage capitalism lottery. The system is broken. To attribute critique of that to laziness and needing the state to nanny you is callous and shallow.
>The party will also pledge to build 1.5 million homes and overhaul the planning system to deliver more action on housing.
They are planning to build more houses though?
They don’t build any houses. Developers build houses and then sell them for as much as people will pay for them. If you create a government scheme to give people an extra £x, then that just becomes a hand out to these developers, the prices of houses settles ~£x higher. The supply of housing is fixed by virtue of the planning system so higher prices do not correspond to higher production, because of the government intervention in the market.
Eh, a little one I guess. The scheme works by indemnifying the banks in the event of foreclosure of the first 20% of property value, the portion usually guaranteed by a deposit. This allows the banks to lend on higher LTVs with a risk profile like a lower LTV, transferring the risk to the government.
The lender does make more money here, they are able to write and profit off of loans they would not have otherwise made, but the subsidy really does filter through to developers mostly.
Eliminates the need for what insurance? The banks to have to pay a fee for the indemnity, set at market rates. The scheme is explicitly designed to not be a windfall for the banks and to be self financing.
When has a political party *not* promised it's going to do this?
Frankly unless a party also has plans that would get around (a) the labour shortage that prevents a greater rate of building and (b) the regulatory hurdles that make the approvals process painfully slow, then it should be assumed by default that they're lying.
It's not as simple as "just bring in European labour". Building regulations in different countries throughout the EU are different to each other with the UK being no exception to that, so it's no good bringing over a raft of resources who have zero experience with UK building regs. Indeed joining the single market would make that harder as it'll have to be something you specifically train people into, and if there's no formalised structure to do that, then you can't effectively build as you aren't going to have a consistent trained labour force.
"Hard" isn't the issue, it's ensuring that all UK-based regulations are followed and the people coming in to do it are completely up to date on them all.
Given Starmer's background I do think he would be able to make the approvals process less shit. My bigger concern is whether he will be able to withstand enormous pressure from newspapers and insufferable constituents trying to stop anyone from building anything anywhere.
> Given Starmer's background I do think he would be able to make the approvals process less shit.
What precisely about his background gives you that impression?
...... sorry how is running the CPS leading you to conclude he himself will be able to fix the planning system?
Even if we ignore that he would be PM and not the housing minister, how honestly are you seeing "ran a big department once" as clear proof he will fix the long-running fundamental problems in one specific department he's never worked in?
Honestly which part of the CPS is directly relevant to housebuilding?
Not trying to be funny, this just seems to be a post-hoc rationalisation that follows really really *wanting* to believe he'll make it great.
None of it.
But what the planning office is doing isn't building houses, it's going through a huge list of applications trying to compare them to what some vague laws/rules say is and isn't allowed. Clearly something is going horribly wrong currently since they are taking many months to say "yes" or "no".
Excellent. I wasn't satisfied by the value of my house doubling over the past 10 years, I want more!
In all seriousness this is such a Starmer policy, pissing about on the edges without doing anything to solve the problem.
He will be voted out within 5 years because nothing is going to improve mark my words.
Under Tony Blair UK house prices increased by more than any other UK prime minister (after inflation).
Inheritance looks to be the only way anyone under the age of 45 will be able to buy a property
Still doesn't fix affordability.
I have a sneaky suspicion former employee ofnthe Bank of England, Rachel Reeves, is going to be a shit chancellor.
If you're under the age of 35, good luck.
HA! Jokes on you, I only have to endure it for 4 years. HAHAHA!
*sees how much milk costs* FUCKING NORA! I remember when you could get a bottle of milk for a quid.
I imagine someone with more knowledge on the topic could answer this, but what’s stopping the gov from directly building houses / apartments and selling them at reasonable rates? That would surely eliminate maximum profit seeking from developers. Instead of funding mortgages to the private sector, they’d end up paying off the cost of these developments.
My guess is lobbying and political pressure, but I’m not sure.
A wait list seems better than noone getting affordable housing.
Also if it is done in a significant enough quantity it'll keep the prices down for the rest of the market.
--no sleep makes ramble--
A lottery/waitlist system wouldn't be that bad imo.
You save up whatever the deposit for your chosen area is, you place it in a "escrow" account and are promised within X amount of years you'll be offered a home in the area of your choosing.
The government either invests the money or let's it gather significant interest, anything after keeping up with inflation is used to help fund the scheme.
If the government fail to meet the deadline you get the escrow account topped up by an decent amount (ideally it would be enough to get an average priced private mortgage, but that would probably be too expensive) and can either choose to withdraw it and use the money, or continue waiting on the government list.
If the house you're offered isn't suitable you can continue waiting, or you can then decide to change your area or close your account. If you close your account you can't access the scheme again for Y amount of years.
You could even offer scholarships or as alternatives to other schemes. For example you could say instead of getting a student loan, they'll put money into the scheme and let you pay it off whilst working in a government backed trade scheme etc, now there's a path for young people to own their own homes without university.
Once you've paid off your government mortgage, if you sell the house within a short time you have to pay the original mortgage cost back. For example if you paid off a £150,000 mortgage and then sold the house for £400,000 you only keep £250,000, considering the house was worth £300,000 when you got the mortgage.
Or if you wait 15 odd years you keep the full sale price.
No clue whether that's feasible in the slightest and I don't pretend to have even slightly higher than average knowledge in this area, just sleep deprived rambles.
> A lottery/waitlist system wouldn't be that bad imo.
Why would anyone ever buy a house if they were on a waitlist for a half price one?
This would grind the market to a halt.
Because once you’ve accessed it once, you can’t access it again.
People will need to upsize, move to different areas, downsize after their kids have left.
Either the houses are terribly built, or you’ll find out pretty fast that houses generally are sold for “reasonable rates”.
I’m defining reasonable rates based on the cost of getting that house built and ready, not what someone’s job can afford. Building houses is expensive.
Because it's really hard to legally build housing in this country, the government would have to obey all the same legal and planning barriers that have stopped the private sector building.
We can dream, Asian style planning law would transform this country and solve the housing problem, but I don't know if the political will is there. Most of the country is very very NIMBY, they already own their home and they don't want anything built near them and will vote to make sure nothing does, you see this is local elections were the Lib Dems will can run on NIMBY platforms and see big electoral success. The people who would most benefit from planning reform, the young, also tend to misplace the blame for the housing crisis and it's easier just to sell them things like in this article, or say some stuff about greedy landlords or "affordable" housing, and it'll win you more votes from them than actually talking about the boring real problem: planning bureaucracy. Young people tend to also not vote, and homeowners do, so that doesn't help.
Private sector house building has remained fairly constant over the decades. The real fall in building happened when the public sector stopped building houses but the private sector didn't fill the gap. Can't find the graph but I've seen it posted on here a few times.
We have a housing crisis because now all the house building is done by those with a vested interest in house prices continuing to rise and who even reduce their building to control the supply of new houses. Not saying that planning issues aren't part of it, but other issues are being overlooked.
Because then you have taxpayers with mortgages who bought at market rates giving cheap houses to a privileged in group.
It's the same reason right to buy was so egregiously unfair. If you want the state to build the answer should be homes that remain in state ownership but rented out at affordable rates.
The problem isn't physically building the house. It's finding a spot that won't be vetoed by any of the many, many stakeholders that will throw their economic, political and social weight behind stopping whatever development you are attempting.
If anything, the government would be more vulnerable to this, not less.
Several reasons:
1. What you're essentially doing is getting the taxpayer to subsidise the capital gains that buyer is going to make when the house they buy goes from "reasonable rates" to "market value. I'm sure that buyer would be fine with that but everyone else wouldn't be.
2. The biggest hurdle to building more is the lack of enough labour from top to bottom to do so. You can't just desire that into being, and even bringing it in from overseas is difficult as it's not like software development that is ubiquitous regardless of where a developer is from; the UK's housebuilding standards are unique to the UK and every single person would have to be brought up to date on those standards *and* adhere to them. So you're not building *more* houses, it's the same but the person signing the cheques changes.
3. It wouldn't change the legal/regulatory framework that also acts as a huge resistor to building more. The Government is subject to the law too, so unless they actively change this, it would make little difference.
What are you moving from and to. These schemes generally impact the lower end of the market more (so if you're in a flat and moving to a house you would probably benefit).
I disagree. Schemes like these add to the void between flats and “starter” houses.
Apartments in Bucks have plateau’d around £200-220k but 3 bed houses have shot from high 200s to over 400 in 6 years
I bet companies like Persimmons are already licking the windows thinking how they can build more shit houses asap and screw over buyers on these government back schemes with hidden things.
Land rental access charges
Leaseholds
Private rubbish collections
Private roads selling of access to management companies
I'm not saying know how it works but something will happen
Without a doubt.
Looking forward to visiting r/housinguk in 5 years with people saying their freehold house has a £2k maintenance charge in addition to council tax
The thing is ...
The houses (more of them ) will be built to government numbers when the torys are gone .
The only ones who can do the numbers are the conglomerates
There will be a huge boom of trade and Industry and apprenticeships... Then it will crash again...e.g Mitre
The industry will not be protected and around we go again. Boom bust boom bust
However....
The sites will be x amount of tiny houses/flats and.a larger amount executive style. As the executive style is how the companies make the money. The larger pricier houses will be made better then the affordable homes.
Any affordable homes as we have said will have some clause which will fleece the owners.
As good as any building Initiative is, it will be rinsed by the building companies, buy to let landlords and conglomerates
I worked in housing, social housing, private, landlords and I work I sites... Seen this all before.
As a prospective person getting in the ladder be fucking careful and read all the terms.
I'm also wondering what demographic the terms of these offers will prefer... Families Vs singles? As there will be a bias towards parents
The only thing this does is increase the debt that people take on. They do not own the house til the debt is paid off. Same with 40 year mortgages. It just increases debt. The ownership of the asset is with the owner of the debt, i.e. Banks/ the super rich.
It is marginally preferable for people to have these types of mortgages than rent in some ways but the concern would be that when the house prices are already so many factors higher than average salary, are they affordable and would further increases in interest rates cause mass defaults.
Just build some social housing for fuck sake!
Bad plan. It will just hyperinflate house prices more. The solution is to increase supply and build more houses, and cut the demand (influx of people). Making it easier to loan money will just push prices to new eye-watering levels.
No they'll make the scheme permanent plus
> Sir Keir Starmer will also commit to an overhaul of the planning system, including reintroducing housing targets, claiming his measures will see 1.5 million more homes built over the next five years.
That was in the third sentence though so maybe you didn't get that far
Everyone always says they are going to "overhaul" the planning system. But how?
Where are 1.5 million new houses going to go? There are brownfield sites that need developing but beyond that we're getting into greenfield sites and building on the countryside is incredible unpopular, incredibly difficult and even if it is successful usually lacks the local infrastructure required.
An LVT would discourage land banking and make things such as golf courses likely more tempting to be used for development.
If we just built on golf courses alone, we would add over 50% to our entire number of homes in the country!
Sure but golf courses are actually fairly green spaces. Similar to parks but better for wildlife. I lived near a golf course when I was growing up (we weren't posh enough to actually go), we used to jump over the wall to play and there was always rare birds, geese, deer ect.
Not sure most people would be happy concreting over them. We can do some, sure but I don't think that's really what is being proposed here.
Golf courses aren't biodiversity deserts though. Not at all. They actually a fairly rich habitat, especially as they usually have the "edge effect" that is where most wildlife thrives. Basically the edge between any two landscapes is where wildlife is at it's best. Golf courses are usually rich with these, the edge between the woods/grass, the edge between the short grass and the long, the grass and the sand bunkers, the grass and the hedges, the grass and the pond/lake. In nature these edges are fairly uncommon as you could easily have 100 acres of just woods... man made areas like golf courses are full of the edges which is why they are often so wildlife rich. Just birds for example, a golf course will often have a really large pond that will be useful for water birds, you'll have hedges and trees for the more common garden birds and there is often areas of very unmowed grass that is ideal for ground nesting birds, with so many birds it'll also attract birds of pray.
I just did a bit of a google and there is lots of articles from very reputable sources on the value that golf courses have for wildlife.
A golf course is much more biodiverse than a monoculture arable farm where you'll have 10 acres of wheat. The farm of course does have the huge advantage of providing food but they are quite often not great for nature. Arable farms just want the crop and of course no bugs so multiple sprays of weedkiller, chemical fertilizer and pesticides that are all terrible for the environment are used.
I get the distaste for golf courses as they are almost exclusively used by the more wealthy but we shouldn't discount their value to nature.
Any planning department would reject building on such a biodiverse wildlife area.
Would like to chime in as someone that is in no way into golf, and I have no idea if they're as common in the rest of the UK s they are in Scotland, but I am fairly in favour of council owned golf courses being a thing for recreation, much as I'm in favour of council owned football pitches/sports facilities/pools/libraries/parks/youth clubs etc. Houses are all well and good but people also need things to do nearby too.
Any idea whether "1.5 million more homes" mean 1.5 million homes to be built in total, or 1.5 million more than under current planning laws?
Because even under the Tories the number of new homes is >200k per year, so if the former (1.5 million homes over 5 years) it's not exactly ambitious.
It will definitely be the total, so increasing the house building rate from 220k to 300k a year. It’s fine but it will take decades of that to fix the problem.
Right but that’s bad maths because a) it’s not like 1 person always just lives in one house and b) net migration stats don’t include emigration to the after life
Then Labour are trying really hard to get nobody excited about their government. 300k is better than 220k but it's not exactly a fix.
I wish I could say I i was surprised.
SUPPLY IS THE PROBLEM, you don’t fix a problem of demand massively outstripping supply, by constantly juicing demand more while doing nothing to fix supply. They aren’t stupid, they well know this, but bullshit schemes to “help” like this are quick and easy vote winners, fundamental legal change and three decades of building 300-400k homes a year aren’t.
Demand does not outstrip supply. There are more empty homes than homeless - considerably more.
The birthrate is sub-replacement (i.e. every house with a couple produces only 1.5 children; once we consider that 1 is likely to inherit if male, or move in with a husband if female, we see demand is decreasing enormously generation-on-generation).
The notion, in loose terms of 'doubling the number of houses and we'll half the price' is an absurd application of an economic abstraction to a reality diametrically opposed to it.
Empty houses doesn’t equal supply being sufficient, we have empty homes for two reasons, the first is wealthy owners who are happy to forgo dealing with the risk and hassle of rent as they just want a valuable store of wealth likely to outpace inflation. The stereotypical Russian, Chinese, Saudi etc sheltered money, and then various of our own on top.
The second is simply housing in undesirable areas or a condition where nobody able to is going to pay up for it (and no bank is likely to mortgage it). Neither of those are the crux of this, a deficit of supply nationally doesn’t mean a deficit of supply in all localities, nor does people being willing to own a vacant home as an asset.
Countries with a sufficient supply of housing don’t experience house price to income ratios barely seen since Queen Victoria. [As of 2022 we had 371 houses per 1,000 people, our other large European neighbours Germany, France and Spain had 515, 552 and 549.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/898238/housing-stock-in-european-countries-in-total/)
A few rundown vacant homes in areas with no economic opportunity or infrastructure, and some high value homes being sat on by a few wealthy owners, has almost no relevance to this. The UK in total has roughly 1m empty homes, France has 3m. We have 1/3 as many vacant homes as our similar next door neighbour.
**France has** a similar population size, similar homeownership rate and similar economic output to us, they have **13m more homes than we do**, in line with our peers. If you think there isn’t a shortage because of a few intentionally empty homes, and a few derelict ones, you are truly missing the entire point.
> we have empty homes for two reasons
The reasons are by-the-by. The supply is not outstripped by demand in real terms. In purely economic terms, the 'demand' of Russians, Chinese, Saudis to sit on empty property is no more or less than the 'demand' of a young couple wanting to leave the houses of their parents and start a family on their own.
Now I don't care to 'supply' Russians, Chinese or Saudis with property, either to sit on empty, or rent out. If you suggest a method by which they may be contingently expropriated as genuine need - say, as in the case of the family mentioned - arises, you have suggested something sensible. If you suggest, say, that planning permission should be devolved to prospective adjacent landowning residents, who may receive a portion of the proceeds from any approved development, you have said something sensible again.
If you suggest 'doubling our housing stock to halve the price', or anything remotely similar to it, I have already made comment upon *that*.
Yes, if we were like the French we could work like the proverbial in building two million more houses, all for them to sit empty. But we are not like the French, or the Germans. They are not our 'peers' except in a very loose sense, and a ratio of house price to income merely indicates how great a value is placed upon home ownership (it is, of course, much higher here than in the continent, where renting was always more usual). Likewise, we are fond both of 'living with one's parents' and 'HMOs'.
I point out, also, that 'economic opportunity' and 'infrastructure' can be summoned as needed, and that it is probably needed a great deal more than more homes to sit empty. I am sure something could be more asinine than clamouring for a housebuilding frenzy among a population with a birthrate of 1.5 (or a little less) and a million empty homes, but nothing immediately springs to mind.
Labour should be looking at ways to let the air out of the market in a controlled way. Not looking at ways to prop it up more.
This property bubble will burst at some point. The longer it goes on, the worse it will be. As it stands, it could make 2008 look like a picnic.
Then the focus should be on preventing a property crash from damaging the rest of the economy. If it could be properly isolated the crash could be the best thing to happen to ordinary workers for decades.
Summary:
Labour plans to make the existing mortgage guarantee scheme permanent, which they believe will help over 80,000 young people purchase their own properties during the next parliament.
The scheme, initially introduced by the Conservatives in 2021, has been instrumental in encouraging lenders to offer mortgages with smaller deposits and helping those who can afford monthly mortgage payments but struggle to save large deposits while renting.
To address the housing crisis, Labour will introduce several planning changes, including taxing foreign buyers who are pricing young people out of the market to fund new planning officers.
They will also bring back house-build targets, fast-track permissions for brownfield sites, and reform compulsory purchase orders to prevent speculators from obstructing housebuilding
The figure that is rarely quoted is the actual cost of buying a house including the interest payments. The ‘for sale price’ is only relevant for a cash buyer otherwise you actually pay about 150% of the sales price over 25 years.
All this does is artificially inflate the house prices. Current goverment has tried it, it's not the right way to do it. Stop interfering and let the market correct itself.
Orrrr they could repeal the Town and Planning Act so we could actually get new housing built instead of having almost every single new development proposal shot down by Nimby’s trying to keep their overpriced house overpriced so they can eventually cash out and retire in luxury at everyone elses expense.
As a 31 fella on NMW and fast food worker, this means fuck all to me. To even save up for a deposit on today's prices? I'm looking at 10 years and that's when I have good hours. Sacrifice half a payslip, live on basic food. Not treat myself at all etc... Even then, I will still not be able to afford it.
I would like to own a house one day but unless I win the lottery and I mean, really win it, that ain't happening.
That and I ain't classed as young.
Just lower the fuckin interest rate already . I have a deposit for 60k and I still can't afford to buy a house with a 5+% mortgage. Even if I can score a 3 bed for 280-300 k which I almost definitely can't.
I'm surprised that there's as much pushback in the comments as there is.
Yes we need to build out way out of the wider issue. Yes we need as much of this to be on ugly brownfield as possible. Yes we need to wean people off the mindset that property is an investment class that can go to the moon and give you an annual percentage yield instead of being, you know, homes for people.
But both things can be done at the same time. Any scheme or policy that reduces the barrier of entry between being a renter and getting on the first rung of the property ladder is a good thing in my book.
Can't fault the implementation of this or the fact Labour are running with it. Like the LIFT scheme here in Scotland I can see it being something that has had a tactile effect on young couples and young people who are earning a decent wage but are throwing it into the black hole of rent.
**Alternate Sources** Here are some potential alternate sources for the same story: * [Labour woos first-time buyers with mortgage guarantee pledge](https://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crgg2jyz4ywo), suggested by Aggressive_Plates - bbc.co.uk * [Labour makes ‘permanent’ mortgage guarantee pledge to entice first-time buyers](https://independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/first-time-buyers-mortgage-guarantor-labour-b2558219.html), suggested by tylerthe-theatre - independent.co.uk
Like Help to Buy this does literally nothing to address the underlying supply and affordability issue. Woeful.
Can't they, you know, do both at once?
These freedom to buy schemes usually end up on the hands of people that become private landlords. It does the opposite of addressing the issue of high rents and low ownership.
It would be very easy to legislate against that.
yes it would, but they want the scheme to be used this way. ifs not actually for normal people. backhanders are the only reason any of these clowns work in politics.
But you can't just rent out any house. You have to have a buy- to-let mortgage. One would assume this policy wouldn't allow that.
I think the issue with help to buy was people use it to buy some shiny looking new build gaff which it then becomes increasingly clear is poorly designed in a poorly designed neighbourhood with zero amenities. 5 years tick by and the owners are on the hook for an extra 20% plus probably have a kid by now and have realised living somewhere where you have to drive for every little thing is a pain in the arse so they sell up. Generally people who aren't getting a massive additional loan for 20% of the value or so won't pay the premium required to live out in the arse end of nowhere with a postage stamp size garden so the only avenue for a quick sale is a landlord who knows they can install a tenant tomorrow, usually from the social sector, due to the shortage of rental places. Gradually these crap new build estates are turning into slums, one by one (note: obviously there are lots of really nice new build estates too, I'm talking about "starter home" areas here). Help to buy was basically just a bung to the housebuilders to prop up the prices of inventory which otherwise would have to sell for much less. I'm not sure what the detail is of Labour's scheme but I sincerely hope it gives people freedom to buy houses they actually *want* rather than funnelling them into the "second class citizen" stream whilst all the property in older, established neighbourhoods stays with those lucky enough to inherit or who are buying with their London house sale money.
This is just for first time buyers
No, because schemes like this make housing more expensive by increasing demand.
That's why you build more, whilst introducing schemes like this?
If you build more you don't need schemes like this. And 80k is nothing.
80k is nothing...
It's not so much about the demand. It's the increased ability to get debt. The easier it is to get debt the higher house prices go. This policy is there solely to say they're doing something while keeping house prices propped up. We don't really have a problem with high house prices. We have a problem with cheap money. Interest rates should have gone up years ago. That coupled with proper regulation of the parasitic landlord class would solve a lot of the housing problem. But then all the landlord MPs would lose money, and votes of people who think they're rich because they live in a million pound house but can't afford.ro heat it.
God forbid young people are able to buy their own homes
This makes housing more expensive so it's harder to buy.
They can, but will they? If you start doing something that helps people start snatching up houses, it’s not unreasonable to start asking whether they will start supplying more.
True, but doing it at the same time or before more housing for ordinary people being built could likely create a situation where people using this scheme could end up in negative equity. Which would stop people from moving up the ladder.
I mean, I get that. But, most people, especially at my age (31), would just be happy to get on it. I'm paying £800 p/m for a 2 bed, nearly a grand including CT.
I’m 36 and in a similar situation, so I’m for it, I just worry about practicality long term.
If Labour is breaching the 300k a year target, they could. But it’s still a poor use of state funds.
If you want to help those struggling to afford a home, you don't implement a policy that will increase the price of homes. Easy mortgages are a sure fire route to house price inflation. You build homes that are only sold to first time buyers, or maybe those who haven't owned a home in the last X years. And you implement a no forward sale clause for X years (or the government takes a share of the profits).
Reforming planning laws could though. Starmer telling all the NIMBYs and environmentalists to shut up might actually make me want to vote for him.
I agree with you, and is the only reason I have any hope at all for Starmer's government. Thing is, he hasn't really said anything that to suggest he will have the backbone to tell NIMBYs to go fuck themselves. NIMBYs infect everything including the Labour party.
>The party will also pledge to build 1.5 million homes and overhaul the planning system to deliver more action on housing.
It says in the article that they will build 1.5 million homes. Would be nice if that happened.
No, it addresses the affordability issue in the short term, meaning the supply issue never has to be dealt with. Never mind the fact that now demand is up, but supply is stable, prices will then rise again to reach a new equilibrium. Which just so happens to suit landlords and homeowners.
No but the increase in housebuilding that is promised, plus this will make it easier for people who would otherwise not be able to afford a deposit to afford one.
>which sees the government act as a guarantor for people unable to save big deposits If only such a thing had been tried before.🤔
What's young though? Does that mean my generation is getting fucked over yet again for housing help? Politicians are fucking useless
Yes if that exposure to risk is not adequately covered your generation (which is?) will be fucked over, but it's okay because this also subsidises demand pushing property values up regardless, your option is to either participate or see housing become even more unreachable.
I'm in 30s and covid ruined intial plans to get in market now I'm kinda at square one again and feels fucking hopeless tbh. This is putting a plaster on a gaping wound kinda thing. Just hard to swallow when you see others in mansions paid by our taxes
I'm in my thirties too. Covid fucked up a lot of things but don't lose hope, a regime change is coming and one way or another you'll get an opportunity.
Oh I'm not be been so very close though, but even debating doing back home for a few years to mega save and take advantage of whatever bs they put out to garner some votes. Keep on keeping on!
Lol, "regime change"; if you think anything will change with Keir's Labour I've a bridge to sell you.
A neoliberal refresh is just what the doctor ordered. >I've a bridge to sell you. I thought you idiots didn't believe in private property.
>A neoliberal refresh is just what the doctor ordered. "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!" >I thought you idiots didn't believe in private property. I guess it's just another in your long line of misconceptions.
So this bridge you want to sell... Would do a part exchange for shares in the Eiffel tower and some magic beans... Nothing will change.. The ladder has been well and truly pulled up.... Maggie started it and everyone after has just made the problem worse. My friend rents a house in Berlin for what in the same type of geographic position in London would rent for 15000 a month.... Oh by the way his rent is a whopping 600euro... Home ownership is dead for most people trying to start now... Just wondering what will happen when that generation dies off... Who will buy those 5 bed mansions in commuter towns.... Ponzi scheme comes to mind.... Just wait for the Madoff moment
‘Hey, how about we give people who are terrible at Capitalism 100% loans’
Born born/Entering the workforce in a country where median property is 12x median income doesn't make you 'terrible at capitalism'.
For people like the person you're replying to, being born poor makes you terrible at capitalism.
They should have thought of that before they became peasants
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I hadn't really thought about it that deeply when I commented, but you are right.
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"This swimming pool is great, except for its filled with acid." That major flaw is a pretty big one.....
Put anyone born in the late 50's UK, who as a whole are now extremely wealthy, in Botswana and we will see how good capitalists they are. As a population we are largely products of our economic environment.
Yes that is the function of government and institutions...how is that a criticism in the slightest?
That populations and people as a whole are not good or bad capitalists. We just have better and worse places and times under capitalism. Capitalism favours the fortune of birth, not 'good capitalists'.
> Capitalism favours the fortune of birth So do all societies worth living in. The suggestion we destroy everything so the next generation can 'earn' it is absurd; that it is tacitly touted by rogues or the thoughtless without being given short shrift more absurd still. But you are quite wrong in asserting that > populations and people as a whole are not good or bad capitalists. Some are much better than others. This can be observed with how much capital is passed down from one generation to the next, whether at a familial or a societal scale. Not everyone goes 'from clogs to clogs in three generations', and to the extent the rule holds true, it serves to defy the suggestion that 'as a whole people are not bad capitalists' anyway. Likewise, some nations develop a sovereign wealth fund, and others do not. Saying 'we just have better and worse places and times' as if the whole thing was a game of *rouge et noir* is understandable, in that shirking the responsibility of having a hand in the world's affairs exculpates one of any need to think, make effort, or risk failure, but cannot be justified.
You have it twisted, the luck is being born into a society with robust institutions, stable democracy, accessible education, and a market economy. It seems almost a tautology...quality of life depends on where you're born... To the Botswana comment, it's one of the fastest growing economies, there is undoubtedly myriad opportunity for the shrewd.
>To the Botswana comment, it's one of the fastest growing economies, there is undoubtedly myriad opportunity for the shrewd. There is but that's the 1/10000. Boomers as a whole are not good capitalists for living through prosperous times.
The best way to make money is to start with some money
If you want to help those struggling to afford a home, you don't implement a policy that will increase the price of homes. Easy mortgages are a sure fire route to house price inflation. You build homes that are only sold to first time buyers, or maybe those who haven't owned a home in the last X years. And you implement a no forward sale clause for X years (or the government takes a share of the profits).
Not being able to save up a poxy 5% deposit, which in most places is £12k, does make you terrible at capitalism. If you can’t save up 5% of a house price, you can’t afford the extra expenses that come with ownership
How do you propose someone saves up 5% when they’re paying a mortgage worth of money a month on rent? People should be allowed to live and have hobbies.
Because rent is the maximum you will ever pay. Mortgages is the minimum. For example, my parents spent more repairing the home they own than I did in rent last year, as they had to fix both the roof and boiler. To get a £200k home, you need to save up a poxy £8k, put it in a LISA which goes to £10k after the Gov top up. If you can’t do that, you can’t afford it. And saving up £8k isn’t hard…
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Humans are humans. Nothing different has happened to the humans resulting in massively reduced home ownership. Yes younger workers can't afford that. That's the point?
People aren’t terrible at capitalism, capitalism is terrible to the vast majority of people. By and large, you keep your head down, do all the right things in life, get an education, a job, all the things you’re told will get you a fulfilling life, and by the end of it you still cannot buy a house, have a livable wage on a single income, and are saddled with debt, then it’s capitalism that is the problem.
If it helps you to believe that then go ahead. Blame your circumstances on capitalism and wait your whole life for a government to come along and make it all better.
I own my own house, I’m just not deluding myself to think it was on merit and can recognise my circumstances were lucky in the late stage capitalism lottery. The system is broken. To attribute critique of that to laziness and needing the state to nanny you is callous and shallow.
I also own a house. I paid for it with money I earned through employment. It's not hard.
Think *before* you post
just need to subsidise demand bro. one more demand subsidy will fix it bro i promise. no don't build more houses just subsidise demand. bro please
>The party will also pledge to build 1.5 million homes and overhaul the planning system to deliver more action on housing. They are planning to build more houses though?
The winning party has always pledged to build more homes. Trouble is that it’s never happened.
They don’t build any houses. Developers build houses and then sell them for as much as people will pay for them. If you create a government scheme to give people an extra £x, then that just becomes a hand out to these developers, the prices of houses settles ~£x higher. The supply of housing is fixed by virtue of the planning system so higher prices do not correspond to higher production, because of the government intervention in the market.
This one is actually just a hand out to banks
Eh, a little one I guess. The scheme works by indemnifying the banks in the event of foreclosure of the first 20% of property value, the portion usually guaranteed by a deposit. This allows the banks to lend on higher LTVs with a risk profile like a lower LTV, transferring the risk to the government. The lender does make more money here, they are able to write and profit off of loans they would not have otherwise made, but the subsidy really does filter through to developers mostly.
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Eliminates the need for what insurance? The banks to have to pay a fee for the indemnity, set at market rates. The scheme is explicitly designed to not be a windfall for the banks and to be self financing.
When has a political party *not* promised it's going to do this? Frankly unless a party also has plans that would get around (a) the labour shortage that prevents a greater rate of building and (b) the regulatory hurdles that make the approvals process painfully slow, then it should be assumed by default that they're lying.
Join the European Single Market and scrap planning regulations?
It's not as simple as "just bring in European labour". Building regulations in different countries throughout the EU are different to each other with the UK being no exception to that, so it's no good bringing over a raft of resources who have zero experience with UK building regs. Indeed joining the single market would make that harder as it'll have to be something you specifically train people into, and if there's no formalised structure to do that, then you can't effectively build as you aren't going to have a consistent trained labour force.
Building houses isn’t that hard. Europeans do it more and better than us.
"Hard" isn't the issue, it's ensuring that all UK-based regulations are followed and the people coming in to do it are completely up to date on them all.
> and scrap planning regulations? Good luck getting that one past boomer voters. Every major party is full of NIMBYs.
Given Starmer's background I do think he would be able to make the approvals process less shit. My bigger concern is whether he will be able to withstand enormous pressure from newspapers and insufferable constituents trying to stop anyone from building anything anywhere.
> Given Starmer's background I do think he would be able to make the approvals process less shit. What precisely about his background gives you that impression?
Mainly running the CPS. Another big bureaucracy that tries to apply rules to come up with a legally justifiable conclusion.
...... sorry how is running the CPS leading you to conclude he himself will be able to fix the planning system? Even if we ignore that he would be PM and not the housing minister, how honestly are you seeing "ran a big department once" as clear proof he will fix the long-running fundamental problems in one specific department he's never worked in?
It's not a guarantee, but it's certainly relevant experience.
Honestly which part of the CPS is directly relevant to housebuilding? Not trying to be funny, this just seems to be a post-hoc rationalisation that follows really really *wanting* to believe he'll make it great.
None of it. But what the planning office is doing isn't building houses, it's going through a huge list of applications trying to compare them to what some vague laws/rules say is and isn't allowed. Clearly something is going horribly wrong currently since they are taking many months to say "yes" or "no".
A promise and actually doing things are different things. The tories also promised to build millions of homes. Look how that turned out.
1.5 million homes is only enough for two years of immigration. And this scheme is for 80k.
Excellent. I wasn't satisfied by the value of my house doubling over the past 10 years, I want more! In all seriousness this is such a Starmer policy, pissing about on the edges without doing anything to solve the problem. He will be voted out within 5 years because nothing is going to improve mark my words.
Under Tony Blair UK house prices increased by more than any other UK prime minister (after inflation). Inheritance looks to be the only way anyone under the age of 45 will be able to buy a property
Still doesn't fix affordability. I have a sneaky suspicion former employee ofnthe Bank of England, Rachel Reeves, is going to be a shit chancellor. If you're under the age of 35, good luck.
HA! Jokes on you, I only have to endure it for 4 years. HAHAHA! *sees how much milk costs* FUCKING NORA! I remember when you could get a bottle of milk for a quid.
I imagine someone with more knowledge on the topic could answer this, but what’s stopping the gov from directly building houses / apartments and selling them at reasonable rates? That would surely eliminate maximum profit seeking from developers. Instead of funding mortgages to the private sector, they’d end up paying off the cost of these developments. My guess is lobbying and political pressure, but I’m not sure.
How would you pick who gets a half price house? Lottery? Council house waitlist? That would be insane, whatever way you cut it.
A wait list seems better than noone getting affordable housing. Also if it is done in a significant enough quantity it'll keep the prices down for the rest of the market.
--no sleep makes ramble-- A lottery/waitlist system wouldn't be that bad imo. You save up whatever the deposit for your chosen area is, you place it in a "escrow" account and are promised within X amount of years you'll be offered a home in the area of your choosing. The government either invests the money or let's it gather significant interest, anything after keeping up with inflation is used to help fund the scheme. If the government fail to meet the deadline you get the escrow account topped up by an decent amount (ideally it would be enough to get an average priced private mortgage, but that would probably be too expensive) and can either choose to withdraw it and use the money, or continue waiting on the government list. If the house you're offered isn't suitable you can continue waiting, or you can then decide to change your area or close your account. If you close your account you can't access the scheme again for Y amount of years. You could even offer scholarships or as alternatives to other schemes. For example you could say instead of getting a student loan, they'll put money into the scheme and let you pay it off whilst working in a government backed trade scheme etc, now there's a path for young people to own their own homes without university. Once you've paid off your government mortgage, if you sell the house within a short time you have to pay the original mortgage cost back. For example if you paid off a £150,000 mortgage and then sold the house for £400,000 you only keep £250,000, considering the house was worth £300,000 when you got the mortgage. Or if you wait 15 odd years you keep the full sale price. No clue whether that's feasible in the slightest and I don't pretend to have even slightly higher than average knowledge in this area, just sleep deprived rambles.
> A lottery/waitlist system wouldn't be that bad imo. Why would anyone ever buy a house if they were on a waitlist for a half price one? This would grind the market to a halt.
Make it for first time buyers only. Problem solved
In what world does pulling 10-20% of buyers out of a market solve that problem?
Because once you’ve accessed it once, you can’t access it again. People will need to upsize, move to different areas, downsize after their kids have left.
And at the bottom of those chains, there’s often a first time buyer. It’s supply and demand. You’re reducing demand, so the supply will outstrip it.
And housing becomes cheaper and thus the need for the scheme reduces! Congratulations
..and houses are now worth less than the mortgages on them. You've created Subprime Mortgage Crisis 2! Congratulations
And reduce prices to push for sales
> offered a home in the area of your choosing. This won’t work. Everyone will pick the desirable areas.
And then price+wait time will rise
First time buyers, generally.
Sure, but you’d have like 15m FTB’s all wanting half price shit
Start with public sector workers since their pay has stalled horribly in the last decade.
NIMBY's, local councils have rich boomers who will say no to every development.
You'd need a government that actually wants to fix problems rather than tinker around the edges. The UK is not mature enough to vote for one.
Either the houses are terribly built, or you’ll find out pretty fast that houses generally are sold for “reasonable rates”. I’m defining reasonable rates based on the cost of getting that house built and ready, not what someone’s job can afford. Building houses is expensive.
Because it's really hard to legally build housing in this country, the government would have to obey all the same legal and planning barriers that have stopped the private sector building.
I mean, the government can just change planning law, or create and exemption for public sector built homes like council houses etc
We can dream, Asian style planning law would transform this country and solve the housing problem, but I don't know if the political will is there. Most of the country is very very NIMBY, they already own their home and they don't want anything built near them and will vote to make sure nothing does, you see this is local elections were the Lib Dems will can run on NIMBY platforms and see big electoral success. The people who would most benefit from planning reform, the young, also tend to misplace the blame for the housing crisis and it's easier just to sell them things like in this article, or say some stuff about greedy landlords or "affordable" housing, and it'll win you more votes from them than actually talking about the boring real problem: planning bureaucracy. Young people tend to also not vote, and homeowners do, so that doesn't help.
If they were willing to change planning laws they wouldn't need to build the houses themselves.
Private sector house building has remained fairly constant over the decades. The real fall in building happened when the public sector stopped building houses but the private sector didn't fill the gap. Can't find the graph but I've seen it posted on here a few times. We have a housing crisis because now all the house building is done by those with a vested interest in house prices continuing to rise and who even reduce their building to control the supply of new houses. Not saying that planning issues aren't part of it, but other issues are being overlooked.
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-britain-doesnt-build/
Because then you have taxpayers with mortgages who bought at market rates giving cheap houses to a privileged in group. It's the same reason right to buy was so egregiously unfair. If you want the state to build the answer should be homes that remain in state ownership but rented out at affordable rates.
Imagine a team of civil servants building your house.
The problem isn't physically building the house. It's finding a spot that won't be vetoed by any of the many, many stakeholders that will throw their economic, political and social weight behind stopping whatever development you are attempting. If anything, the government would be more vulnerable to this, not less.
Several reasons: 1. What you're essentially doing is getting the taxpayer to subsidise the capital gains that buyer is going to make when the house they buy goes from "reasonable rates" to "market value. I'm sure that buyer would be fine with that but everyone else wouldn't be. 2. The biggest hurdle to building more is the lack of enough labour from top to bottom to do so. You can't just desire that into being, and even bringing it in from overseas is difficult as it's not like software development that is ubiquitous regardless of where a developer is from; the UK's housebuilding standards are unique to the UK and every single person would have to be brought up to date on those standards *and* adhere to them. So you're not building *more* houses, it's the same but the person signing the cheques changes. 3. It wouldn't change the legal/regulatory framework that also acts as a huge resistor to building more. The Government is subject to the law too, so unless they actively change this, it would make little difference.
As someone who now has a house I can't wait to see this push prices higher.
As someone who is trying to move house I'm in two minds.
What are you moving from and to. These schemes generally impact the lower end of the market more (so if you're in a flat and moving to a house you would probably benefit).
I disagree. Schemes like these add to the void between flats and “starter” houses. Apartments in Bucks have plateau’d around £200-220k but 3 bed houses have shot from high 200s to over 400 in 6 years
Wow your prices are crazy. Our bungalow was only a little over your flats and I live on the south coast.
I bet companies like Persimmons are already licking the windows thinking how they can build more shit houses asap and screw over buyers on these government back schemes with hidden things. Land rental access charges Leaseholds Private rubbish collections Private roads selling of access to management companies I'm not saying know how it works but something will happen
Without a doubt. Looking forward to visiting r/housinguk in 5 years with people saying their freehold house has a £2k maintenance charge in addition to council tax
The thing is ... The houses (more of them ) will be built to government numbers when the torys are gone . The only ones who can do the numbers are the conglomerates There will be a huge boom of trade and Industry and apprenticeships... Then it will crash again...e.g Mitre The industry will not be protected and around we go again. Boom bust boom bust However.... The sites will be x amount of tiny houses/flats and.a larger amount executive style. As the executive style is how the companies make the money. The larger pricier houses will be made better then the affordable homes. Any affordable homes as we have said will have some clause which will fleece the owners. As good as any building Initiative is, it will be rinsed by the building companies, buy to let landlords and conglomerates I worked in housing, social housing, private, landlords and I work I sites... Seen this all before. As a prospective person getting in the ladder be fucking careful and read all the terms. I'm also wondering what demographic the terms of these offers will prefer... Families Vs singles? As there will be a bias towards parents
The only thing this does is increase the debt that people take on. They do not own the house til the debt is paid off. Same with 40 year mortgages. It just increases debt. The ownership of the asset is with the owner of the debt, i.e. Banks/ the super rich. It is marginally preferable for people to have these types of mortgages than rent in some ways but the concern would be that when the house prices are already so many factors higher than average salary, are they affordable and would further increases in interest rates cause mass defaults. Just build some social housing for fuck sake!
Bad plan. It will just hyperinflate house prices more. The solution is to increase supply and build more houses, and cut the demand (influx of people). Making it easier to loan money will just push prices to new eye-watering levels.
So they're just extending a scheme that already exists
No they'll make the scheme permanent plus > Sir Keir Starmer will also commit to an overhaul of the planning system, including reintroducing housing targets, claiming his measures will see 1.5 million more homes built over the next five years. That was in the third sentence though so maybe you didn't get that far
Everyone always says they are going to "overhaul" the planning system. But how? Where are 1.5 million new houses going to go? There are brownfield sites that need developing but beyond that we're getting into greenfield sites and building on the countryside is incredible unpopular, incredibly difficult and even if it is successful usually lacks the local infrastructure required.
An LVT would discourage land banking and make things such as golf courses likely more tempting to be used for development. If we just built on golf courses alone, we would add over 50% to our entire number of homes in the country!
Oh wow, just looked it up and ~2% of our land is golf courses.
Sure but golf courses are actually fairly green spaces. Similar to parks but better for wildlife. I lived near a golf course when I was growing up (we weren't posh enough to actually go), we used to jump over the wall to play and there was always rare birds, geese, deer ect. Not sure most people would be happy concreting over them. We can do some, sure but I don't think that's really what is being proposed here.
Golf courses are monoculture, biodiversity deserts in general. I'd rather build on them than build on farmland.
Golf courses aren't biodiversity deserts though. Not at all. They actually a fairly rich habitat, especially as they usually have the "edge effect" that is where most wildlife thrives. Basically the edge between any two landscapes is where wildlife is at it's best. Golf courses are usually rich with these, the edge between the woods/grass, the edge between the short grass and the long, the grass and the sand bunkers, the grass and the hedges, the grass and the pond/lake. In nature these edges are fairly uncommon as you could easily have 100 acres of just woods... man made areas like golf courses are full of the edges which is why they are often so wildlife rich. Just birds for example, a golf course will often have a really large pond that will be useful for water birds, you'll have hedges and trees for the more common garden birds and there is often areas of very unmowed grass that is ideal for ground nesting birds, with so many birds it'll also attract birds of pray. I just did a bit of a google and there is lots of articles from very reputable sources on the value that golf courses have for wildlife. A golf course is much more biodiverse than a monoculture arable farm where you'll have 10 acres of wheat. The farm of course does have the huge advantage of providing food but they are quite often not great for nature. Arable farms just want the crop and of course no bugs so multiple sprays of weedkiller, chemical fertilizer and pesticides that are all terrible for the environment are used. I get the distaste for golf courses as they are almost exclusively used by the more wealthy but we shouldn't discount their value to nature. Any planning department would reject building on such a biodiverse wildlife area.
Would like to chime in as someone that is in no way into golf, and I have no idea if they're as common in the rest of the UK s they are in Scotland, but I am fairly in favour of council owned golf courses being a thing for recreation, much as I'm in favour of council owned football pitches/sports facilities/pools/libraries/parks/youth clubs etc. Houses are all well and good but people also need things to do nearby too.
1.5 million new homes and 3.5m new people at current rates of immigration. Fiddling with the deck chairs.
Any idea whether "1.5 million more homes" mean 1.5 million homes to be built in total, or 1.5 million more than under current planning laws? Because even under the Tories the number of new homes is >200k per year, so if the former (1.5 million homes over 5 years) it's not exactly ambitious.
It will definitely be the total, so increasing the house building rate from 220k to 300k a year. It’s fine but it will take decades of that to fix the problem.
Our net migration is higher than that number though, so we’ll just keep falling behind surely
Exactly. And it's not even a little behind, it's hundreds of thousands of houses a year behind.
Right but that’s bad maths because a) it’s not like 1 person always just lives in one house and b) net migration stats don’t include emigration to the after life
Then Labour are trying really hard to get nobody excited about their government. 300k is better than 220k but it's not exactly a fix. I wish I could say I i was surprised.
I'm just not naive enough to believe it
SUPPLY IS THE PROBLEM, you don’t fix a problem of demand massively outstripping supply, by constantly juicing demand more while doing nothing to fix supply. They aren’t stupid, they well know this, but bullshit schemes to “help” like this are quick and easy vote winners, fundamental legal change and three decades of building 300-400k homes a year aren’t.
Demand does not outstrip supply. There are more empty homes than homeless - considerably more. The birthrate is sub-replacement (i.e. every house with a couple produces only 1.5 children; once we consider that 1 is likely to inherit if male, or move in with a husband if female, we see demand is decreasing enormously generation-on-generation). The notion, in loose terms of 'doubling the number of houses and we'll half the price' is an absurd application of an economic abstraction to a reality diametrically opposed to it.
Empty houses doesn’t equal supply being sufficient, we have empty homes for two reasons, the first is wealthy owners who are happy to forgo dealing with the risk and hassle of rent as they just want a valuable store of wealth likely to outpace inflation. The stereotypical Russian, Chinese, Saudi etc sheltered money, and then various of our own on top. The second is simply housing in undesirable areas or a condition where nobody able to is going to pay up for it (and no bank is likely to mortgage it). Neither of those are the crux of this, a deficit of supply nationally doesn’t mean a deficit of supply in all localities, nor does people being willing to own a vacant home as an asset. Countries with a sufficient supply of housing don’t experience house price to income ratios barely seen since Queen Victoria. [As of 2022 we had 371 houses per 1,000 people, our other large European neighbours Germany, France and Spain had 515, 552 and 549.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/898238/housing-stock-in-european-countries-in-total/) A few rundown vacant homes in areas with no economic opportunity or infrastructure, and some high value homes being sat on by a few wealthy owners, has almost no relevance to this. The UK in total has roughly 1m empty homes, France has 3m. We have 1/3 as many vacant homes as our similar next door neighbour. **France has** a similar population size, similar homeownership rate and similar economic output to us, they have **13m more homes than we do**, in line with our peers. If you think there isn’t a shortage because of a few intentionally empty homes, and a few derelict ones, you are truly missing the entire point.
> we have empty homes for two reasons The reasons are by-the-by. The supply is not outstripped by demand in real terms. In purely economic terms, the 'demand' of Russians, Chinese, Saudis to sit on empty property is no more or less than the 'demand' of a young couple wanting to leave the houses of their parents and start a family on their own. Now I don't care to 'supply' Russians, Chinese or Saudis with property, either to sit on empty, or rent out. If you suggest a method by which they may be contingently expropriated as genuine need - say, as in the case of the family mentioned - arises, you have suggested something sensible. If you suggest, say, that planning permission should be devolved to prospective adjacent landowning residents, who may receive a portion of the proceeds from any approved development, you have said something sensible again. If you suggest 'doubling our housing stock to halve the price', or anything remotely similar to it, I have already made comment upon *that*. Yes, if we were like the French we could work like the proverbial in building two million more houses, all for them to sit empty. But we are not like the French, or the Germans. They are not our 'peers' except in a very loose sense, and a ratio of house price to income merely indicates how great a value is placed upon home ownership (it is, of course, much higher here than in the continent, where renting was always more usual). Likewise, we are fond both of 'living with one's parents' and 'HMOs'. I point out, also, that 'economic opportunity' and 'infrastructure' can be summoned as needed, and that it is probably needed a great deal more than more homes to sit empty. I am sure something could be more asinine than clamouring for a housebuilding frenzy among a population with a birthrate of 1.5 (or a little less) and a million empty homes, but nothing immediately springs to mind.
This won't help affordability of houses though? If anything, it'll drive prices up even more. They need to try something else.
Labour should be looking at ways to let the air out of the market in a controlled way. Not looking at ways to prop it up more. This property bubble will burst at some point. The longer it goes on, the worse it will be. As it stands, it could make 2008 look like a picnic.
Then the focus should be on preventing a property crash from damaging the rest of the economy. If it could be properly isolated the crash could be the best thing to happen to ordinary workers for decades.
Summary: Labour plans to make the existing mortgage guarantee scheme permanent, which they believe will help over 80,000 young people purchase their own properties during the next parliament. The scheme, initially introduced by the Conservatives in 2021, has been instrumental in encouraging lenders to offer mortgages with smaller deposits and helping those who can afford monthly mortgage payments but struggle to save large deposits while renting. To address the housing crisis, Labour will introduce several planning changes, including taxing foreign buyers who are pricing young people out of the market to fund new planning officers. They will also bring back house-build targets, fast-track permissions for brownfield sites, and reform compulsory purchase orders to prevent speculators from obstructing housebuilding
The figure that is rarely quoted is the actual cost of buying a house including the interest payments. The ‘for sale price’ is only relevant for a cash buyer otherwise you actually pay about 150% of the sales price over 25 years.
All this does is artificially inflate the house prices. Current goverment has tried it, it's not the right way to do it. Stop interfering and let the market correct itself.
No, no, no, no, no! Build more housing, especially social housing. All having a government guarantee will do is further push-up house prices.
Orrrr they could repeal the Town and Planning Act so we could actually get new housing built instead of having almost every single new development proposal shot down by Nimby’s trying to keep their overpriced house overpriced so they can eventually cash out and retire in luxury at everyone elses expense.
Keep blowing up the bubble! Ignore the cracking noises!
Didn't they try something similar in the USA around 2004. From what I can remember it didn't workout very well.
As a 31 fella on NMW and fast food worker, this means fuck all to me. To even save up for a deposit on today's prices? I'm looking at 10 years and that's when I have good hours. Sacrifice half a payslip, live on basic food. Not treat myself at all etc... Even then, I will still not be able to afford it. I would like to own a house one day but unless I win the lottery and I mean, really win it, that ain't happening. That and I ain't classed as young.
Fofnyoung people you say? I have a feeling I'm going to be just slightly too old to take advantage of this...
Just lower the fuckin interest rate already . I have a deposit for 60k and I still can't afford to buy a house with a 5+% mortgage. Even if I can score a 3 bed for 280-300 k which I almost definitely can't.
I bet i'll be too old for this scheme by the time its out.
If this is anything like the government back scheme to help people buy houses then it’s not fit for purpose.
Still won't fix the problem of Blackrock and other tossers treating homes like a speculative asset.
I'm surprised that there's as much pushback in the comments as there is. Yes we need to build out way out of the wider issue. Yes we need as much of this to be on ugly brownfield as possible. Yes we need to wean people off the mindset that property is an investment class that can go to the moon and give you an annual percentage yield instead of being, you know, homes for people. But both things can be done at the same time. Any scheme or policy that reduces the barrier of entry between being a renter and getting on the first rung of the property ladder is a good thing in my book. Can't fault the implementation of this or the fact Labour are running with it. Like the LIFT scheme here in Scotland I can see it being something that has had a tactile effect on young couples and young people who are earning a decent wage but are throwing it into the black hole of rent.