ROBINSON wrote:
The government have brought in 'firstbuy', which helps first time buyers financially. The trouble is, it's only available on new homes, which helps no-one except the builders building them. Those properties are empty, so it won't get any chains moving, and therefore won't help anyone trying to sell their homes.
Now if they offered a similar scheme on ALL properties below, say, the average for the area, it would be great. FTB could buy a terraced house, the sellers of which could then trade up to a semi and so on.
I haven't any experience of the new "firstbuy" scheme but three years ago when we were looking at houses on new developments, all of those developments were only possible because they had an element of "affordable" housing on the then Labour government scheme which I think was called "Homebuyer" using shared equity and other schemes to get first time buyers into new housing with minimum deposit and affordable short term repayments - those houses were always sold off plan on all of the developments we looked at, indeed those houses were always the first ones to be built on each site simply because they were sold before the foundations were dug.
I don't know what the difference is between the two schemes but the former was extremely successful during the 07/08 recession and saved many builders and sub trades from failure.
I do agree with your second point though, my kids are of an age now where they are looking at their own house/flat in the next year or so, the friends in their age groups who have already moved out are all renting, they don't know anyone who is buying at all.
