Re: Is the government "dithering" deliberately over stamp duty?

On Sat, 09 Aug 2008 15:40:02 +0100, Maria <oldwoman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

abelard wrote:
On Sat, 09 Aug 2008 12:57:48 +0100, Maria <oldwoman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:40:37 +0100, Maria <oldwoman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

MM wrote:
Suppose the powers that be (Bilderberg etc) decided that the world's
populations need a big lesson taught them and that lesson involved
(re)learning how to be frugal, then the housing market in Britain
needs to fall off a cliff, doesn't it? It shows all signs of doing so,
but with the latest on/off, will they/won't they over stamp duty,
further confusion has been spread, as if deliberately, in order to
make that descent off the cliff even more certain. Caroline Flint made
absolutely no attempt on The World at One to stop the dither, but
blathered yet more about stamp duty being something the government is
looking at. Estate agents are finding now that people are pulling out
of agreed sales because they might be in line for a £15,000 stamp duty
"holiday" if they wait until the autumn.
Well it's one way to address the issue of 'affordable housing',
Exactly my thought. "Good day to bury bad news" could find a
reflection in "Who cares if a few thousand get their homes
repossessed?"
Well according to the comments posted on the dailies comments sections,
only greedy bastards who were trying to make loadsamoney will suffer.
Nobody seems to believe that people mostly buy houses because they need
somewhere to live anymore. Some of those affected will be people who
never had a dog's leg of a chance of buying before because no-one would
lend to them and/or because the last decade has seen huge growth in
employment and so some people who had not had job stability enough to
buy a house were now in a better position. Those are the ones I feel
sorry for - they thought they had finally made it as a 'proper person'
only to find their dreams shattered when the jobs started vapourising.

As a pretty useless person myself, all my life has been a struggle just
to keep what these days is a relatively small mortgage going. I have see
all my peers lose their homes, first in the early 1980's, and then again
in the early 1990's. The benefits to buying are there in this paragraph
- if I had not bought, I would probably never ever be able to buy in my
life now, and I wouldn't even be able to afford to rent my own (modest)
house as I don't earn enough. I would have been destined for council
accommodation and the lack of choices therein. That is why people buy,
whether the prices are high, low, or whatever - because one day they
want to be able to stop struggling. They buy to try and break the
pattern of class immobility, to cross that boundary between having no
choices and some choices. I was raised in rented accommodation and
victim to greedy landlord - my other family lives in council houses - no
choices or mobility when it comes to being flexible about work. There
was no way I was going to tolerate that. It's been very hard - I had to
move north away from my family to buy in the first place, and commute 50
miles a day to work, my first house never went up in value, my second
was in negative equity for so long that I was as immobile as a council
house tenant. I have never made a penny profit on any property. But at
least I can now afford my housing cost, and in 10 years it will be paid
off so if I only have basic pension, I will survive.

Yes, I feel sorry for them - they don't deserve this.

have you any proposals for solving this what you see as a problem

To be honest, I don't know enough about the reasons why they are being
repossessed to address that.

simply because they can't meet the commitments to which they
contracted...

A couple of points -
1) if they are in rented accommodation, Housing Benefit is payable
immediately on losing their job. Mortgage interest is not payable for 9
months. This makes no sense to me.

it does to me....
it discourages chavs from taking out mortgages when their
intention is to grab the mortgage and then dump it on the
productive workers (otherwise often called 'the state')

I'd guess the idea was to force
people into taking out mortgage protection, but such policies do not
address the new flexible labour market with frequent job changes and
agency work (the greatest amount of this in Europe apparently) as such
people tend not to be covered. Also not covered are the self-employed,
and there are an increasing number of these. To me it makes no material
difference if the state pays for the cost of renting a house, or the
cost of buying it, and so I would like to see the end to the 9 month
period.

i wouldn't...see above

Special cases can be made for people living in inappropriately
luxurious accommodation, just as they are for those who rent.
2) Much of the effects of the credit crunch will be blamed on lending to
people who can't pay back, and so those facilities which have recently
been made available to self-employed, irregular paid, temporary,
short-term contract workers,have been withdrawn once again.
I think this is wrong.

fully agreed....i think the buyer is in *by far* the best position to
assess their own capacity to meet a contract

The problem seems to have been not *who* they
have lent to, but *how much*. Both 'sub-prime' and regular mortgagors
are losing their homes simply because they were lent too much money to
be affordable at all. Tony Blair being a prime example. ;)

the banks are in the business of risk management....
unfortunately the banks are backed by the government printing
presses....

Therefore I would like to see a return to sensible and responsible
lending,

if there is no real cost to the banks....there is no strong constraint
on 'foolish' lending...
in fact there are very strong motives for the banks to take what
would, in a healthy environment, be ridiculous risks

but it isn't the place of banks to save fools (or the unfortunate)
from the consequences of their mistakes....

the main recent problems in the uk are right at the clown's front
door...
but the system itself contains a goodly dash of moral hazard....
removing that moral hazard has other associated costs as
long as you have a government cartel in money printing

but also an end to the inbuilt prejudice against people who are
not in full-time permanent 'acceptable' employment. Such practices
assist in the stifling of entrepreneurialism since people will not risk
going into business and becoming unable to get a mortgage.

agreed...as above...i believe in self-assessment...
and i am in favour of those who misassess paying a penalty....
banks and buyers as relevant


if anything above is not sufficiently clear to you....
i request you please iterate

regards....

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