thirdwave Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 (edited) Here's the breakdown for London boroughs (I've ditched Brent and Camden due to incomplete data). Nice of Mr Cameron to help struggling hardworking families buy 500K homes in Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster. Interesting..I am surprised by the relatively modest number of transactions given the hype and scandal surrounding the scheme.HTB may have done little to help "hard working families get on with their lives" but it's been an unequivocal success when it comes to pushing up prices for the rest of the population(with prices being set at the margins etc) Edited May 29, 2014 by thirdwave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thecrashingisles Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 Nice of Mr Cameron to help struggling hardworking families buy 500K homes in Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster. At 94% LTV! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wonderpup Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 This can't be right- only this morning Cameron was telling us that Help to Buy was there to help the little guy get on the ladder. Maybe he meant that the little guy would be paying for the ladder? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Banner Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 I disagree!! This lot are far worse as they had a chance to correct the 'labour housing bubble' (that they talked about) but instead have gone that extra step and used taxpayer funds to help rich people buy £600,000 houses. Their treatment of the Remploy employees was totally despicable IMHO. And subsequently removed as much evidence as possible of such talk from the Internet (Shapps' idea?), kept their fingers crossed that nobody would remember and changed their rhetoric to "there is no bubble, prices are still below the 2007 peak". Well, Mr Cameron, we do remember, that is why we are all voting UKIP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bloo Loo Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 there isnt a fag paper between Nulab and Conservative Policy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
winkie Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 ....only feathering their own and their cronies nests......£600k is nothing to do with first time buyers.....this policy smells. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ah-so Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 £80k is 98th percentile. £50k is 91st percentile. In other words, if you're in the top 2%, you can just afford to buy in London with taxpayer help! If I remember correctly this would include all household incomes, including retirees, rather than people in actual full-time employment.If you look at the distribution of just those in full-time employment, the numbers are not so extraordinary. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
winkie Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 .....if someone is earning that much and can't afford a deposit, they can't afford to buy the top of the ladder property......the housing market has gone crazy, it's broke. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 Even if we were talking about 'normal' incomes of 30k or so, it's still insanity to have to ask the government for help. An average family should be able to buy a house that suits their needs, and they shouldn't require a 20% bung from the taxpayer to do it. The government throws money at landlords through housing benefit and at homeowners through Help to Buy, inflating living costs and ensuring that the next generation will also require taxpayer help. It seems that no-one can afford to house without government support, not even relatively well-off families earning 50k. Leverage is a wonderful thing. The government ensures a 5% deposit becomes a 25% deposit. The same family spends 5x as much on a house than they would have done otherwise? I spent a decade paying down a (small by today's standards) student loan. You would have to lobotomise me before I got myself in hock to the government again, no matter what terms are on offer. These buyers now face a lifetime of slowly trying to free themselves from the 'deal'. And yes, if your household pulls in 50k what on earth are you doing only putting down a 5% deposit on a 190k house? That's less than 10k, or about three month's net wages. If you find it that difficult to save, how can you be certain that you'll be able to meet the terms of the loan? Jobs for life are a thing of the past. Do we really have millions of debtors living in crippling fear of a change in circumstances, or an interest rate rise? As for single vs dual incomes, my parents managed to buy their house based on a single salary. Having both adults working doesn't appear to have made us any richer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Errol Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 Average wage in the UK is only around 24K I thought. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silver surfer Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 If I remember correctly this would include all household incomes, including retirees, rather than people in actual full-time employment. If you look at the distribution of just those in full-time employment, the numbers are not so extraordinary. Plus, the average person doesn't buy the average house. Roughly a third of the population (and climbing unfortunately) aren't ever going to be property owners. So the average house is bought by the average of the top two thirds of earners. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig_ Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 Confused. They include figures for Scotland, despite the fact we don't have HTB2 up here... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silver surfer Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 As for single vs dual incomes, my parents managed to buy their house based on a single salary. Having both adults working doesn't appear to have made us any richer. You're right. But why is this the case? When you get better off you would expect the percentage of your income that's spent on any particular class of goods or services (food, travel, etc) to fall. But with the UK's restrictive planning laws and NIMBY culture that doesn't happen with property. There's an under supply of houses, especially in the areas where the jobs are, so even though people are slowly becoming better off (I appreciate the last few years have seen this go into reverse, but the long term trend is still for rising living standards) we fight like feral animals to get a share of fixed stock of housing and all our increased wealth gets taken up in this competition. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thecrashingisles Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 Plus, the average person doesn't buy the average house. Roughly a third of the population (and climbing unfortunately) aren't ever going to be property owners. So the average house is bought by the average of the top two thirds of earners. That distinction would only work if you exclude BTL purchases. The non property owners are still living somewhere in a place that's worth something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shindigger Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 Fix bayonets. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Talking Monkey Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 £80k is 98th percentile. £50k is 91st percentile. In other words, if you're in the top 2%, you can just afford to buy in London with taxpayer help! which is why we surely must be nearing the top Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlokeInDurham Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 The video title in that Telegraph link did make me laugh: "PM: We fixed the housing market." Too bloody right you fixed it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wonderpup Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 (edited) The video title in that Telegraph link did make me laugh: "PM: We fixed the housing market." Too bloody right you fixed it... Excellent! I'm convinced now there are two David Camerons- one who believes that free markets are always right so he wants to privatize the health service and anything else not yet in private hands-and another one who believes that free markets can and should be 'fixed' by himself using other people's money. I guess if they ever met in the same spot there would be some kind of matter/antimatter explosion that would wipe out the tories political credibility for ever. Edited May 30, 2014 by wonderpup Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
londislagerhound Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 The trouble with you lot is that you think too much. Your average prole just borrows as much as they can to buy the biggest house they can. We might all be thinking about heads on spikes and the treachery of a bunch of self serving bastards, but those same proles care not one jot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ah-so Posted May 30, 2014 Share Posted May 30, 2014 which is why we surely must be nearing the topThe data is misleading. It includes all incomes whether working or not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MattW Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 If I earned £49k a year I wouldn't need HTB to buy a house. I could just about afford a Victorian terraced house on that. A house that was originally built for manual workers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MARTINX9 Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 (edited) But they want to create and keep Tory voters - what better way than to help their natural constituency and stop them moving to Labour or UKIP. Saying that earning £80k won't buy you much in London these days - people at that income level qualify for shared ownership schemes too (if they are buying 2 or 3 bed properties). Comes to something however when we have to subsidise people in the top 5% of earners to buy a home. Edited May 31, 2014 by MARTINX9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
winkie Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 If I earned £49k a year I wouldn't need HTB to buy a house. I could just about afford a Victorian terraced house on that. A house that was originally built for manual workers. This ^....then you wonder why people bother......many can now only afford if they are able to get help from BOMAD or the state...no deposit required and a debt that will never repaid because they prefer you to never repay it, more money/taxes and interest earned that way......there are good valid reasons why a 10% deposit should be saved from earned income. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dothemaths Posted June 1, 2014 Share Posted June 1, 2014 Haha, what percentile is that? FFS, when people earning in the top 10% of the population need "help" to buy a ******ing house you know the system is ******ed. If you believe Piketty that r > g , then this is just what you'd expect. Property will increasingly be owned by those who inherit wealth. This a stable trend which implies that there will be no HPC. There will simply be a larger number of people renting from a smaller number of landlords who bought property early enough. This will continue for a decade or two until the wealth gets really too obviously concentrated. Then there will be some serious political upheaval. In the meantime there will be protest votes for crazy populist parties but no change to the status quo. Sad really. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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