Sunday, Jul 13, 2008
Attempt to buy votes?
Guardian: Credit crunch: Emergency scheme to help cash-strapped homeowners
Homeowners struggling to meet their mortgage payments would be able to sell their homes to the local authority and rent them back as tenants under radical proposals being considered by the government to prevent the misery of repossession.
Posted by quiet guy @ 08:12 AM (906 views) Add Comment
18 Comments
- If you do not have an admin password leave the password field blank.
- If you would like to request a password allowing you to add comments and blog news articles without needing each one approved manually, send an e-mail to the webmaster.
- Your email address is required so we can verify that the comment is genuine. It will not be posted anywhere on the site, will be stored confidentially by us and never given out to any third party.
- Please note that any viewpoints published here as comments are user's views and not the views of HousePriceCrash.co.uk.
- Please adhere to the Guidelines
1. Life's Short said...
Buying houses as close as possible to the top of the market. Another example of the government bending over backwards to make best use of taxpayers money.
2. Nocibomber said...
And in time I suppose they’ll “have the right” to buy them back at vastly reduced rates.
3. Sold My Soul To The Never Never Never said...
A "Right to Let" scheme?
4. sosoon said...
They may use unmarked white vans, but the tea drinking will confirm your neighbour now lives in a council house.
5. David Smith Aged 17 And A Quarter. said...
I always thought that there would be no fall in prices.
6. Orwell said...
Any actuaries who can say whether this is possible and also whether it is properly costed or not. ?
7. last_days_of_disco said...
This is a sensible idea. Its much better than giving cash to banks.
The joke is that the re-acquisition of the council houses will be presided over by the Tories in all probability.
8. japanese uncle said...
Look! the properties bought up from those poor folks will eventually be resold dirt cheap to the private financiers that dictate politician, labour or Tories under the plausible name of privatization.
9. cyril said...
Great idea if they could afford it.
Flogging off council houses made the Gov (Mrs Thatch) more money that all the other privatisations put together. Don't expect anything except a few tiny schemes in marginal seats.
10. Cheekie Charlie said...
Great, ooffer them 50% market value and any shortfall payed back with the monthly rent!
11. musn't grumble said...
I thought councils were strapped for cash - where is the money going to come from? And again, are Labour really going to initiate this whilst prices are vastly overinflated?
12. icarus said...
I wonder how these houses will be valued for this purpose. If they're marked to market the local authorities will buy them cheaply and many of the former owners will become tenants in negative equity and liable for the difference between what they paid and what the LA paid - I don't think it will be politically or economically feasible for the LAs to pay July 2007 top-of-the-market prices. And will dodgy EAs and valuers run rings around the LAs?
It's nice to know that the government is "disappointed" that the BoE's £50bn didn't achieve much.
Country landlords building cheap houses for their serfs - that will really help. Let's suggest that one to the Americans.
Like the idea that now it's time for a sense of community to take over. When fear trumps greed let the 'community' of yesteryear come to the fore.
13. Ghw22 said...
OK so long as ex-council right-to-buy properties are bought back at the price they were sold for, adjusted for inflation. Otherwise our taxes have simply gone to pay for some lucky g*t's profit.
14. it_is_going_with_a_bang said...
Great idea and planning - not.
Don't make any real effort to provide housing for the population for 10 years, happily allow prices to shoot up to ridiculous levels and then .... quite possibly buy properties at the most expensive levels they have ever been for social housing provision.
There is not enough social housing/ council houses / etc in the country and has not been for years. Council house lists have been in excess of 7 years in this area for 8 years. Whilst the problem may not have been their making entirely, they have been in power long enough to provide a solution. The unwillingness and inability to do so means they are not fit to govern this country - full stop.
This government - more importantly - Gordon Brown, has used house prices and associated credit to run his economy to the point where he has no idea what else to run this country with.
People will say there is "no shortage of housing" - which is true to a point. There are physcially enough houses. But there are not enough houses available at reasonable rents i.e. council houses etc. There would be no explosion of BTL if people had other options. Afterall, who is going to pay a landlord £800 + a month when a council house is £480 a month.
I don't accept the idea that Thatcher sold off all the council houses and thats the problem. Many of those areas have flourished and changed from being Sh*tholes into nicer areas. What has stopped this government from building more houses to meet the needs? Nothing whatsoever. I don't accept the idea that this government can spend Billions of pounds on wars and stuffing money into bankers pockets but are unable to meet the most basic requirements that people need.
Completely disgraceful.
15. Newdman said...
I know from being invloved in a similar scheme in the last crash that without government money these mortgage rescue schemes simply don't work as the rent turns out to be higher than the mortgage.
16. Ccamper said...
So the tax payer pays the price from the peak (Otherwise this would be no use to people facing reposession).
Then they live in a secure (council) house paying social rent.
Then after two-three years they buy back (under the right to buy legislation) at the bottom market price less a 40% discount.
SO SCREW ALL THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN PRIVATE RENTED WHO REFUSED TO OBTAIN A MORTGAGE BY DECEPTION.
SCREW THIS COUNTRY
17. p. doff said...
In this area, Council houses were incompetently undervalued for years by the Local Authority for 'Right to Buy' purposes, and a substantial further discount was then applied. (often £16000). It is known as the 'great council giveaway' of taxpayers money.
I trust if people are to be bailed out by this proposed 'buy to rent' scheme then the purchase price will be similarly undervalued then discounted. Let's hope lettings will be at market rent too.
18. Davip said...
I don't understand -- if all these shortsighted people whose short-term mortgage interest rates are about to increase must somehow be saved from their own incompetence, why don't the lenders simply increase the length of their term -- an increase in the length of the mortgage proportional to the percentage reset? This wouldn't cost the taxpayer or the mortgage provider anything and would keep these people in their homes -- which seems to be the main consideration; it would of course cost the homeowner more in the long term, but when you contract to buy a house for n hundred thousand pounds, you should expect to have to repay that sum
Make this system 'dynamic', i.e., make the length of term flexible so that the length (rather than the monthly repayment) fluctuates with changing interest rates and no-one should lose out -- and those of use who were unable to buy houses won't have to pay for the folly of those who thought they were.