General Chat

The one thing the Tories are doing right is getting house prices moving in the Tory heartlands. That will have a huge impact on retaining their seats. And I agree with Merlin - senseless tax that just makes prices artificial at the banding levels.

If they can get the younger middle classes feeling more affluent - and buying a house for £400,000 that you can sell a year later for £500,000 makes you feel good - they will keep their core vote.

Miliband and cronies have not yet realised that 3m people in Britain are living under a Labour Government that is pretty socialist in the pre-Blair meaning of the word. It might help the cause of Miliband, Balls, and Umuna if they took a much keener interest in what is happening in the devolved political areas in Wales - legal, education, health, recycling, renewables, leisure (coastal paths, cycle tracks). I live in Wales, am not a Labour supporter, but am fairly impressed with what Carwyn and his team are achieving. Tories and their mates UKIP are a highly vocal but insignificant minority in Wales, and that will always be so. Learn from Carwyn, Ed.

Grand Theft Auto 5 may well be the near future.
It certainly costs a few bob to upgrade a machine to run it.

"Minority Report", "Blade Runner" and "I, Robot" are probably a better road map than Aldous Huxley or Geo Orwell.

Most people I meet are real enough, it is the apparatchiks and politicos who live in a parallel universe.

My opinion They should get rid of the Stamp Duty paid on property when buying,that would make some difference to buying and selling.

I think it was the book Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley that talked about "soma" to keep the chattering classes in check.

This has become a reality in our politics and also social networking and computers. We get sucked in, we think we have a voice, we think people like and love us across their screens :-( :-(

We are not the real people that our grandparents were. We are a pale reflection. Anyway, back to PlayStation3 and Grand Theft Auto 5. That is the nearest thing to real life :-)

Politicians are for the most part in the snake oil business peddling dreams to the under 30 somethings.

Any strategy which will help win a tight election is a success from that point of view regardless of the consequences.

The £ is slowly and surely rising in value as the markets price in the inevitable rise in interest rates. Those who take out a £ 400 K mortgage and two years down the track will find 5% rate a real thrill not to mention the B2L landlords who won't be able to refinance or raise rents enough.

No matter if Gorgeous George ( his Gr George St moniker ) is in power he will blame the retrenchment on a sensible government. If not it will be the reckless antics of Milliband and Balls destroying the housing market.

Politics never changes and people never learn.

sic transit gloria mundi

In my opinion governments of any persuasion should not intervene in the mortgage market, it is dangerous and risky and could lead to another sub-prime mortgage crisis when interest rates rise. As a result many borrowers may find that they have difficulty meeting their repayments and to make the situation worse they may have negative equity in the property they bought.

All Chancellors of the Exchequer have a track record in creating boom situations when a general elections is lurking on the horizon, as they are more interested in saving their job than they are in acting in the best interest of the country.

I would have thought that the current Chancellor George Osborne, if he is as prudent as he would like us to believe, would look back in history to some of his predecessors.

Reginald Maudling had his "Dash for Growth" in the run up to the 1964 general election and that lead him to leaving a note to James Callaghan his successor saying, Good luck, old Cock - Sorry to leave it in such a mess.

As you said RolloTheRed, their was also Anthony Barber's famous "Barber Boom" in the run up to the 1974 general election, he allowed a major relaxation of the banking system which lead to a boom in lending in speculative and risky property markets.

No wonder it is said that history repeats itself - when will they ever learn from past mistakes?

The scheme is not meant to fix 1st time buyer problems whatever it says on the tin. The objective is to create a short term boomlet before the 2015 election. Osbourne believes that this will prove the recovery is for real.

Pushing funds into property hot spots such as London, Poole, Brighton will be more effective than lending a hand in Pontypridd.

Remember the Barber boom and its aftermath ?

Looking at what I believe are the main points of the Help to Buy Mortgage Guarantee Scheme, I would liked to have seen the maximum purchase prices for a property set nearer £350,000, to avoid to much going to fuel the London property market. In the area covered by Orpington where I live, you can buy reasonable 2/3 bedroom properties for between £250K to £350K.

As to household income, I have to admit I am a bit puzzled as some reports say this must not exceed £150K, however on the government web site it says there is no limit on household income, maybe someone will clarify that - either way I would like to see a limit somewhere nearer £80,000.

I believe the amount set aside that was announced in the budget for this scheme is £12 billion and the treasury estimate this will allow lenders to fund £130 billion of mortgages.

I would also like to see that £12 billion split between first time buyers and those moving up the property ladder - say two thirds to first time buyers and one third to those moving up the property ladder.

In my view, the scheme as it stands at present, will probably see a very large chunk of the £12 billion going to fuel the property market in London. It will do nothing to alleviate the housing crisis, so perhaps instead of spending upwards of £50 billion on the HS2 rail link to cut 20 minutes of a train journey - if this was spent on a massive social housing programme, some stability would be brought to the housing market.

https://www.gov.uk/affordable-home-ownership-schemes/help-to-buy-mortgage-guarantees

£ 600 K won't take you very far in great swathes of London ...

Thousands of couples in London no more than 2/3 years out of uni have a joint income well over £ 150 K but nowhere near the readies to cover a 20% deposit. Hence the ever rising cost of rentals and the near total disappearance in some areas of family housing as they are all divided into flats by the B2L crowd.

Whether forking out £ 500K for a flat in, say, Dulwich is a good idea only time will tell. However if people take on a 95% mortgage in a frothy market and plan to sell a couple of years later should consider the risk of an unsympathetic Ed Balls. He and the BofE may end up dealing with a UK version of Freddie and Fannie Mae.

At any event it will make it possible to have a new series of Grand Designs based on what you can do with a 150 m2 plot in South Clapham ( aka Brixton ).

Blair pulled up the ladder behind him - anybody picked up he has bought his first private jet £ 20 M ?

To be fair a couple looking in the area of London where my friend lives, might be looking at £500,000 for a not especially big end of terrace two bedroom house.

Round here the same house would be closer to £160,000.

I expect some are, OFITG. £600,000 seems a lot of money to the feckless and workshy majority like myself, but some hardworking families are earning fabulous money now.

Take all those people you watch on Breakfast News or hosting TV progarmmes. Proving a joint income of over £200,000 for a mortgage of over £500k is probably no problem at all. My daughter and her husband (in quite ordinary jobs but well paid) are looking at spending about £400,000 on their FIRST house. Thye have rented for last 6 years (and probably very sensible to do so) but have decided it is now a good time to dip their toes in. Yes, a huge dip - but they are certainly not alone.

Bit different down in Valleys where I live. Persimmon have drawn a red line through Pontypridd. To the north they sell a 3 bedroomed for £120,000; to the south they get £160,000 and can achieve margin required of £15,000 per house.

So no more Persimmon homes to be built in the Valleys for the foreseeable. :-(

How many ordinary hard working people do you know who are first time buyers trying to get on the property ladder that are looking for a £600,000 house?

Maybe I am I missing something as I do not know many ordinary working people who are first time buyers trying to get on the property ladder that are looking at buying a house costing anything near £600,000 :-S

A controversial scheme allowing people in England to take out 95% mortgages will be launched next week - three months earlier than planned.

PM David Cameron made the announcement as the Conservatives gathered in Manchester for their annual conference.

He told the BBC's Andrew Marr show the market was "recovering from a very low base" and first-time buyers needed help to get on the housing ladder. He also rejected fears that the Help to Buy scheme will fuel a housing bubble.

I am confused again, as here am I thinking that it was precisely this sort of thing, the Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac scenario in the USA, that was responsible in a large part for the financial crisis that we are presently recovering from and in my opinion when interest rates start to rise there is going to be trouble :-S

Under Help to Buy Scheme, the government will give home buyers equity loans of up to 20% of the price of a property worth up to £600,000.