More Than Half Of All Graduates Say They Cannot Afford To Buy A Home
A Scottish Widows survey reported on the BBC website today that home ownership was moving further and further out of reach for many ex students, with 1 in 10 of them believing that this is a long term problem they will have to face. But if you're not in your early 20's trying and failing to buy your first home, why should that affect you?
The truth is that it affects us all. The first time buyer is the fuel that keeps our property market moving. Now I don't mean that through some filtration and much grinding we can turn the students of today into the kindling of tomorrow, but without someone to buy at the bottom of the ladder, the people they would buy from cannot sell, and the domino effect of a stagnating market moves scarily fast through the flat/apartment strata to the small houses and millionaires row in the clouds. This is a little over dramatic, but put simply, the few people that can afford to buy the fewer homes will be sold.
That's fine, so we all stay in our homes a little longer and wait it out. But it's not quite that simple. The property market is a major player on the poker table of the British Economy. So many businesses are reliant on the flow of people from property to property, that without this perpetual movement many would fall on hard times, estate agencies, mortgage lenders, builders and property developers, architects and surveyors, removal firms and many more would have to suck it in and make plans to ride it out. Maybe there would be redundancies, certainly there would not be recruitment and another industry is affected. The only thing determining whether the property market grinding to a halt causes a ripple or tidal wave is how long it is before we come out the other side.
Now I for one do not want to see any of the above happening and recognizing the scale of the problem is a big step in the right direction. Thank you Mr Brown for doing just that with your promises in the last budget to help Key workers and first time buyers with the Government's HomeBuy scheme to share the ownership of property and keep the bottom of the ladder moving, but it's not nearly enough as the funds can only stretch so far. That is where the inventiveness of British enterprise steps up to the crease. Rising up to meet the threat are a number of initiatives. Included in these of course is the growth of the co-buying sector, lead by SharedSpaces.co.uk, but a recent addition to the fight is the First Time Buyer Group that because of it's relationships with many new home builders offers all first timers their deposits, stamp duty, legal and financial arrangement fees as well as their survey costs returned to them. As these costs are one of the biggest hurdles in the way of anyone's first purchase we expect to see a huge take up on this initiative, and hope that through initiatives like these that we can change the fate and property perceptions of today's students who are of course tomorrow's home owners.
The truth is that it affects us all. The first time buyer is the fuel that keeps our property market moving. Now I don't mean that through some filtration and much grinding we can turn the students of today into the kindling of tomorrow, but without someone to buy at the bottom of the ladder, the people they would buy from cannot sell, and the domino effect of a stagnating market moves scarily fast through the flat/apartment strata to the small houses and millionaires row in the clouds. This is a little over dramatic, but put simply, the few people that can afford to buy the fewer homes will be sold.
That's fine, so we all stay in our homes a little longer and wait it out. But it's not quite that simple. The property market is a major player on the poker table of the British Economy. So many businesses are reliant on the flow of people from property to property, that without this perpetual movement many would fall on hard times, estate agencies, mortgage lenders, builders and property developers, architects and surveyors, removal firms and many more would have to suck it in and make plans to ride it out. Maybe there would be redundancies, certainly there would not be recruitment and another industry is affected. The only thing determining whether the property market grinding to a halt causes a ripple or tidal wave is how long it is before we come out the other side.
Now I for one do not want to see any of the above happening and recognizing the scale of the problem is a big step in the right direction. Thank you Mr Brown for doing just that with your promises in the last budget to help Key workers and first time buyers with the Government's HomeBuy scheme to share the ownership of property and keep the bottom of the ladder moving, but it's not nearly enough as the funds can only stretch so far. That is where the inventiveness of British enterprise steps up to the crease. Rising up to meet the threat are a number of initiatives. Included in these of course is the growth of the co-buying sector, lead by SharedSpaces.co.uk, but a recent addition to the fight is the First Time Buyer Group that because of it's relationships with many new home builders offers all first timers their deposits, stamp duty, legal and financial arrangement fees as well as their survey costs returned to them. As these costs are one of the biggest hurdles in the way of anyone's first purchase we expect to see a huge take up on this initiative, and hope that through initiatives like these that we can change the fate and property perceptions of today's students who are of course tomorrow's home owners.
posted by Richard @ Friday, October 06, 2006
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home