Taxpayer to take on mortgage risks of first-time buyers

[teamsaint]

land could be compulsory purchased by the government , at agricultural land prices .

The money could be found if we stopped fighting wars, and recouped through rents and mortgages.

Negative or reduced equity..........a risk we all take(and I include myself as a person whose only financial asset is a house with a mortgage.)

Guarantees about occupancy? put a house/flat on the market at £10k under the going rate or £100 under the going rent, and it won't be empty long.

[ahinton]

land could be compulsory purchased by the government , at agricultural land prices .

And who is going to sanction a government passing a new set of laws to allow that? Any government that tried to do that in Britain wouldn't last long, would it?! Purchasing land at agricultural prices from its owners - compulsorily or othewise - and then using it for building development would run entirely counter to current law which precludes most such speculation.

The money could be found if we stopped fighting wars, and recouped through rents and mortgages.

Some money could certainly be found that way - and I'm all for such reductions in expenditure - but let's not forget that massive curts in defence spending will put more people out of work and mean that more will be unable to afford to buy or rent their homes. It's not just a matter of finding the funds to purchase the land and build the homes - it's a question of how affordable the end results will be and to how many.

Negative or reduced equity..........a risk we all take(and I include myself as a person whose only financial asset is a house with a mortgage.)

It's a risk that everyone who borrows to buy their home takes, yes - but if, say, some 80% were lopped off the value of the housing market (which would have to happen if housing were ever to become more generally affordable); negative equity would no longer be a mere "risk", it would be a certainty - so how would any of the lenders get back the value of what they'd lent? It's quite simple - they wouldn't - so they woud rfuse to lend the money in the first place knowing that they'd more or less be pouring it down the drain. End result? A stagnant property market with hardly anyone better able to buy or rent their homes.

Guarantees about occupancy? put a house/flat on the market at £10k under the going rate or £100 under the going rent, and it won't be empty long.

My reference to lack of occupancy guarantee referred solely to those who rent; since it's up to each landlord to determine the level of rent he/she will charge - and since many will have b orrowed in order to purchase the properties that they rent out - what likelihood is there that rents will all be reduced to affordable levels and how would those landlords be able to continue to repay their loans on the rental properties?

[teamsaint]

we can argue this all day long.
as I keep saying , doing nothing really shouldn't be an option.

There is a housing shortage, and it won't be sorted by inaction, or hoping that the problem goes away or is sorted by people all of a sudden moving from the south to the north.

It needs investment, by governments and the private sector. (oh and governments could find the money to do ALL of this, if they wanted)
It needs to be a priority , and its not.

[ahinton]

we can argue this all day long.
as I keep saying , doing nothing really shouldn't be an option.

There is a housing shortage, and it won't be sorted by inaction, or hoping that the problem goes away or is sorted by people all of a sudden moving from the south to the north.

It needs investment, by governments and the private sector. (oh and governments could find the money to do ALL of this, if they wanted)
It needs to be a priority , and its not.

It could be argued for centuries to come, but I'm not interested in doing that and I'm sure that you are not either; all that I am putting forward at this point is a handful of questions as to how finance could be guaranteed for the kind of solution that you have put forward and how, once the project concerned is complete, there could be any guarantee that the majority of people for whom such a project would presumably have been intended would necessarily manage to finance the rent or purchase requirements that would pertain thereafter - that's all.