Help to buy - again

[Moonshine]

I have just had and email through from a volume house builder encouraging me the use the help to buy scheme again as my 5 year interest free period may be coming to an end, and by moving I could get on the help to buy scheme again and have another 5 year interest free loan.

 

Two things I find concerning, one I have never been on help to buy, the second is that it had never occurred to me that people could use the scheme multiple times, it's not so much help to buy, but seems like kicking the repayment down the road a bit longer, and also keep the new house sales up, and elevating prices. 

 

Help to buy seemed like a half decent initiative, but i feel it's getting used in a way it wasn't intended as it doesn't seem to have limitations on its use.

[ProDave]

It is a terrible scheme designed to shift new houses at the expense of making it harder to sell second hand houses that do not qualify.

[Jeremy Harris]

Just read this in the news: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48610977

 

Pretty damning.  It looks like nearly two thirds of those using the Help to Buy scheme didn't need to in order to buy their first home and that 4% of those using the scheme had an income of over £100,000/ p.a.

 

Doesn't really surprise me, as I've long suspected that Help to Buy was lobbied for by developers and the mass building industry, and was a thinly disguised subsidy to support house building companies.  Meanwhile, in other news, the construction industry is way behind every other manufacturing industry: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/business-48340929/why-is-building-so-slow-and-expensive

 

Could there be a link?  Seems plausible.  We know that the construction industry is pretty resistant to change, and not very efficient.  Perhaps the lobby pushing for a subsidy in the form of Help to Buy were just trying to get government to pay for their own inefficiency.