ingermany

It's not that houses are worth more. It's just that the stuff they're denominated in is worth less. same goes for electricity, gas, petrol, food. Have BoE printed enough new money yet? I suspect not.

Not embarrassing at all. This is what they wanted. It's just a little early in the electoral cycle. We may even see a coalition break up and early GE if this continues. This sort of headline is practically a guarantee of success for the Tories. And you can bet that Clegg will be fighting to get some credit for helping to create the bubble.

Yes, those do look like the most credible reasons for the problem.

Maybe they could withdraw the money they put into the "lend a hand" mortgage schemes. There are some things councils should not be doing. One of those is singling out a handful of lucky residents and giving them a cash bribe to buy an overpriced house in the area.

True. Government has given the BoE permission to ignore the inflation "target". They have deliberately created more inflation. It is a bit hypocritical to whine about rising energy prices that their own policies have helped to create. As someone has already said, raise the base rate to maintain CPI at 2% for the first time in 5 years.

Incredible. It's like the pilot of an A380 calling half a dozen residents of Slough on his mobile phone to ask how his approach to Heathrow is going. Is it not obvious that now they have introduced 100% mortgages with base rate 2.5% below inflation and having indemnified the banks' lending risks ( and only for home purchases), there is just the slight chance of a house price bubble? Are they so f@**ing stupid that they can't join the dots without sending a few old duffers into the local community to ask what's going on?

So either wages have to rise, or we have HTB x n where n tends to infinity, with taxpayers guaranteeing a larger and larger chunk of personnel debt. It's got to be collectivised. HTB is really just another tranche of bank nationalisation. I could understand if the taxpayer was funding enterprise or energy infrastructure, but instead they are backing the property speculators, and doing it so heavily that if that speculation fails, then the State fails with it. It's a banana republic without the fruit.

Then what? HTB3? I'm holding out for HTB13 personally because the terms will get better and better.

This is a "treasury spokesman".....these are the guys charged with running the nation's budget. And they believe that having to pay more and more for the same basic essential item is good news. So much so that we need policies in place to make prices rise even faster. We are truly f****ed.

Only credible if they really want to see German tanks on the streets of Brussels.

Well, they are at least giving a clear message. House prices need to be pushed up, and this is official treasury policy.

You're dead right there. You can no longer become wealthy by working. Government has nationalised the national property lottery, and decided you have to be in it to win it. Taxpayers will have to fund the capital gains of homebuyers.............until they can't.

1. It creates buyers out of people who currently cannot raise a deposit to buy. More buyers without more supply= increased price. This is a "help to sell" scheme devised to allow folks trapped in negative equity to sell for a profit. 2. Tne bank lending criteria are predicated on whether they can recoup losses in event of default. If 20% of loan is guaranteed by government, the bank can lend proprtionately more without risk. 3. I agree that HTB1 is more of a worry in that provision of interest free loans should not be a government activity (students pay RPI+3% for example). it is really unprecedented for government to give money away like this for the benefit of a small cabal of builders and land owners. 4. As for HTB2, this is just a measure to reduce banks' risks when they indulge in risky high multiple lending. If HTB2 had been in force in 2008 we would still have Bradford and Bingley, Alliance and Leicester, HBOS etc. It is a device to prevent the market from punishing irresponsibility. It takes us back to 2007, but this time the bailout is happening up front.

I agree. This is a scheme to make houses "affordable" by means of taxpayer subsidy. Prices will rise and bigger subsidies will be needed to maintain "affordability". It is insane to use public money in this way. Eventually they will cause a massive crash by withdrawing the subsidy or be perpetually bound to increase it, as it eats up a bigger and bigger share of the public spending. It will be more expensive than the NHS, and no more effective.

Same as the BoE when Cameron changed monetary policy because he decided that houses needed to be made more expensive. Nothing.

Stella English Seems to be saying she is trying to claim housing benefit despite owning 3 homes. I wonder if the 3 BTL properties are also occupied by housing benefit claimants? Can you clain LHA if you have 3 homes already? Sounds like the benefits system in UK really is designed to benefit the rich.

Not totally sure on this, but I think it's not the house price that goes into the measure. It's the monthly repayment. Now, if the government were to introduce a scheme that gave the home buyer an interest free loan for the house purchase they could make the repayments cheaper and HPI would be negative as far as inflation indices are concerned.

Have saved enough to buy for cash. Managing to save from income at rate of 30-40k a year. However, if this fails to keep pace with HP rises then I am no better off. I might as well buy a house and retire early and stress free. At least I avoided the urge to buy in 2007, but am now getting to the point where I will probably throw in the towel and buy. Hopes: systemic economic failure leading to a real and overdue house price correction. Fears: systemic economic failure leading to confiscation of savings (Cyprus style).

I don't suppose anyone in Downing Street remembered to check his CV and take up references?

Real Estate is the new public sector. It is financed by central government via subsidies to the banks, the builders and the agents. At least the hiring boom in the sector has offset the decrease in numbers of doctors and nurses in A and E departments. Should help when the influenza epidemic arrives in about 6 weeks time. Centralised economic planning at its best.

And the councils are directly financing cheap home loans, in order to push up prices, which in turn pushes up the housing benefit bill. It's what Cameron calls a virtuous circle".

Even by the standards of the 2nd century Roman Empire, the unelected powers representing the vested interests of the property owners have presided over an unprecedented and draconian re-alignment of public policy that has left much of the population without hope, and in many cases under dire threat of homelessness. These measures have been taken in order to protect the paper value of the investments of the few, many of whom are themselves part of the policy making clique. In the 50 years I have spent on this planet (thankfully most of it spent outside the UK) I cannot recall any period more marked by a malicious exercise of authority against the poor for the benefit of the rich. That much of this damage was inflicted by a government calling itself socialist, and now (partly)liberal just heaps irony on top of tragedy. In the end the policy of artificially inflating the price of housing will fail. It is every bit as evil as a government deliberately setting out a policy to benefit those who hoard basic foods, whilst deliberately increasing the prices.

FLS and Help2Buy is the principle of Common Agricultural Policy applied to the UK housing market. How much would olive oil cost if the price of olives wasn't fixed at an artificially elevated level by EZ taxpayers? The Tories rant about this sort of price fixing, but quickly used the same process to fix the UK housing market. I don't doubt that planning restrictions play a part, but aren't we forgetting the MASSIVE taxpayer subsidy given to potential house sellers in order to enable them to sell at a profit? Mortgage nationalisation (N Rock B&B, A&L, RBS, HBOS) QE, FLS, HtB 1 and 2, LHA, SMI. All these devices are just old fashioned subsidies the sole purpose of which is to keep prices isolated from those damaging market forces. Can't possibly have the free market determining value.

Like a virtuous circle of increasing food prices in the Weimar Republic?

The whole student loan debacle is just another ruse to shed 20 billion from public spending and re-label it as an asset. Effectively, an instant 40 billion improvement in the deficit. It has allowed them to throw more money at the house price stagnation crisis in order to "get the market moving" again. Significant that they fund help to buy with interest free loans, whilst government finance to train doctors and engineers is charged at RPI +3%. When mortgage rates were as high as that it was described as an existential national emergency, the banking industry was taken over by government, and 375 billions of newly printed money was created to bring rates down artificially. And in the process they deliberately drove RPI/CPI up to double the government target. So students are doubly at the mercy of government's fiscal irresponsibility. RPI and therefore student loan interest rates are being deliberately inflated, in order to keep mortgage rates down, and house prices up. University education anyone? Property Ponzi takes priority over long term investment in the next generation. Thanks, libdems for making this all possible and cheering from the side-lines.