Wednesday, 20 March 2013

They own land! Give them money!

From The Telegraph:

The Chancellor said the scheme will be available to everyone who wants to buy a home, old or new, under the Help to Buy scheme from 2014.

He will help people get on or move up the property ladder by offering Government "mortgage guarantees" worth £130 billion in total. This will mean people can afford bigger mortgages with a small deposit.

Many people have struggled to save up enough since banks scrapped their best mortgage lending deals after the financial crisis.

In a separate part of the initiative, the Government will offer interest-free loans for five years if people want to buy new-build homes. The loans will be worth up to 20 per cent of the value of a newly-built homes, with the buyer contributing 5 per cent as a deposit.


I suppose the only good news is that the take-up of these schemes is very low. Ed Miliband pointed out that only 1,500 households had bought a house under the previous wizard wheeze (NewBuy or whatever it was called).

My problems with Not Red Ed are threefold:

1. His lot invented just as many of these stupid schemes to prop up land prices and banks, and the take-up was just as low.

2. He seemed to think that a low take-up was A Bad Thing. It's not, it's A Very Good Thing Indeed, the ideal take-up would be precisely zero.

3. He confused me at first by saying "how thing", which I assumed was groovy txt speak for "How's things?". After a few sentences I realised he was trying to say "housing".

4 comments:

Lola said...

The general twattishness of Millicam Clegg and Osballs Cable knows no bounds.

Mark Wadsworth said...

L, are they twattish? They are keeping their party donors and core voters happy, that's all that matters to them. They'd subsidise cheese on toast if there was money and votes in it.

Lola said...

MW Fair point. But I was thinking of everyone else.

Bayard said...

"2. He seemed to think that a low take-up was A Bad Thing. "

Well, he has to say that, hasn't he, it's all part of the charade. Probably he secretly agrees with you, but he's got to keep the donors and voters happy, as you point out and that means being seen to be trying.