Do you think its a good idea for the uk gov to encourage people to buy houses the cant afford?

Question

by dropping stamp duty on "cheap" houses, how will this help most people i know who have bought house are struggling to pay for them, not because of stamp duty but because the are paying to much for the house, what is this British obsession with buying a house you cant afford?

Answer 1

My guess is you are not a home owner yourself. Therefor you wouldn't appreciate the pride in buying your own home. Almost all house buyers 'struggle' to buy their first home. But that is the point, you achieve through effort. Regarding paying too much for a house. If you bother to look at the long term you will see that over time house prices rise. Only the get rich quick and buy to let merchants will get their fingers burned.

Answer 2

People should know their limits anyway.

Answer 3

Firstly we are not obsessed with purchasing houses for anything other than an investment purpose, quite simply, houses in the UK, are rented out at not much more than a mortgage would cost you per month, so at least when you own your own home,  you will have something to show for it at the end of the agreed  tenure.

Secondly, the government are trying to curry favour with the british public by temporarily abolishing the stamp duty, they think that we are stupid.

What they failed to mention was- that in London alone, their are only 3,000 properties available that fall within the house prices they have put a ceiling on..............Leading us to believe, that once they have all gone, our economy will be back on track again...Gordon brown is a total idiot, the banks got us in this predicament (UK + US) so let them sort it out, but not at our expense........Rant over.    

Answer 4

I have got no idea, its absolutely insane. I bought my property with my fiance two years ago. We were quite young at the time and I'd just finished uni so we had no savings behind us. However, like most people in this country, we were obsessed with getting on the property ladder! So we got a huge mortgage and an unsecured loan to pay the deposit which seemed like a great idea at the time with the house prices on the up. Now though, we find ourselves in negative equity paying interest rates that are through the roof on a mortgage we couldn't afford to begin with.  We actually worked out that because we are paying so much in interest, we are paying almost nothing off the mortgage so in actual fact, we would have been better off renting because at least that way you don't have any debt! So I think I'm living proof that it is totally an utterly pointless getting mortgage you can't afford for the sake of owning a house!!!

Answer 5

its a bad idea, and house buying is another scam by the government to create employment in the building trade etc. It

dosent matter about the poor old house buyer who goes bust or cant afford the next payment on the mortgage. also there are the estate agents and banks on the bandwagon, all making money at the buyers expense, its a sad state of affairs!

Answer 6

Firstly, the British government is not encouraging people to buy houses they can't afford.

The whole housing problem in the UK has, in large part, been brought on by people buying houses that they can't afford but this has been brought on by the banks being happy to lend money to every Tom, d**k and Harry as opposed to limiting lending to those who can afford.  It is true that the government could have interfered with this and stopped it but they certainly haven't encouraged the problem.

I'm not really sure where the point about Stamp Duty comes into it.  I can't imagine that the recently announced "holiday" will encourage anyone to buy - I know it certainly doesn't make a difference to me (since I live in London and there aren't any homes here that cost under £175,000).  Even if it does make people want to buy, the banks have now quit lending money to those people who aren't in a good financial situation so it doesn't mean that they're going to be able to buy.

Answer 7

People have stars in their eyes and want a fantasy home, rather than the more modest one they can actually afford. In past years this worked out because there was no housing bubble, there was the more boring plodding increase in value and increase in expected income.

For now, those days are gone. But people still want the best right away and don't want to slowly work towards it.