FirstBuy: flawed, and such small portions

If the market tanks, and the place is sold at a loss, I suppose the builder and the Government will get paid out first so that the poor FTB can be leveraged into oblivion?

It has nothing to do with helping the first time buyer; it is all about propping the builders up.

It is very akin to a wolf in sheep’s clothing, the wolves being the builders and the Government. They are obviously in it for whatever they can get out of it, the sheep being the first time buyer.

Beware of the Government baring gifts; they will never be anything other than a Trojan horse.

You have to be aware that if it was a foreign country, the Government would throw billions of OUR money at them and it really would be a GIFT.

Surely the govt could find a better use for £250m than propping up the house market. There are plenty of potential house buyers who are financially solid but lack the ability to raise a 15% plus deposit; why are these people paying for the reckless lending policies of the past. A 5-10% deposit should be enough.

When I first bought a property, in 1978, mortgages were impossible to get - in my case my mortgage broker had to call in a favour to get me accepted - and despite having a Halifax savings account since I was 16 they would only let me have a 75% mortgage, when I needed 90%. What's so different today? We just accepted it.

Funny how the share prices of all the builders have risen today . . . .

The scheme is fundamentally flawed. Leave the market alone and it will collapse to its proper and sustainable level. All we are doing here is conning the first time buyer into thinking they have a bargain and artificially propping up prices. Any first time buyer foolish enough to buy into this scheme will in my opinion make a loss with the house developers cashing in on vulnerable people who don't understand the system.

Agree totally with Maverick.

When we first bought in 1980 we had been saving with at least six different building societies for five years or more. When we attempted to get a mortgage, all of them refused to lend!! Only after I had a vitreolic exchange with the Halifax did they eventually relent - and the deposit, well it was a mere 33%!!

Enough of supporting a moribund house market. House prices must reach a level that makes them affordable with respect to income. So until this heavily over priced market returns to house values of 3.5x income then we should not be wasting tax payers money.

Property is for living in and not for speculation with the hope of making a fast buck!!

Anne-E, like many dreamers of a market collapse, thinks it would be foolish to buy into this scheme. But real foolishness woul be to confuse get-rich-quick ploys with domestic arrangements. The real reward of home-ownership is the emotional payoff: it makes one feel secure and empowered and it supports family cohesion, and for those reasons the govt scheme however small and skewed its benefits can only be applauded. Buyers who take it up will incidentally find home-ownership is generally a safe long-term financial investment: even if houseprices dip temporarily, they will more than rise to compensate over a lifetime; but buying a home to make a fast buck is as misguided as marrying for money...

Anon 1 is correct in pointing out the advantages of home ownership. But there is no security in a 4 or 5 x joint income mortgage when inflation is rising and interest rates will follow.

5 x joint income mortgage at 6% costs 66% of take home.

RPI at 5.2% indicates mortgages should above 8.2%.

5 x joint income mortgage at 8.2% costs 81% of take home.

The BoE is doing a stirling job at propping up the housing market. But the rate doesn't attract capital. What capital is available is going to govt borrowing at 12% of GDP, and huge business borrowing at this low rate which lowers tax so they look profitable and gives them a huge capital reserve at low cost.

If the govt was serious about the deficit and growth the first step would be to withdraw the tax write off for interest payments as it would raise the tax take thus reducing the deficit and rid us of business borrowing for the sake of the tax write off. The result would be banks re-learning that old skill, lending to good SMEs that will create jobs and growth.

As the treasury knows the planning law is the deep problem at the heart of 40 years of manufacturing decline and the capital destruction of repeated crashes in bubble house prices. It's gone too far. There is no way out of our troubles without changing it.

The government is also failing to understand the financial dynamics involved. Its very much lik the tax credits. my fiance and i want to get on one of these schemes but because our joint income is £62,500 we don't qualify as this obviously interprets that we have £25-£50 k just stashed away and built up easily.

If you look at the repayment terms you need an income of around ours to be able to afford to stay in the property and eat etc. etc. also the stupid part is if i earnt £58k per year and applied on my own I would qualify and be able to take advantage of the scheme.

Given that most of these sites are in the key urban centres it seems they are obstructing the very people they want to buy the properties.

As we live in london their does not seem to be additional weighting and it seems skewed to be able to let speculative property buyers in with their first purchase thus inflating the market.