What exactly is Help to Buy? (Podcast cut)
This is Money Podcast
This is Money
4.1 • 650 Ratings
🗓️ 3 October 2018
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Budget day, March 2013, Chancellor George Osborne launched a scheme intended to help first-time buyers but was described at the time by This is Money as a 'very good day for builders'.
Help to Buy was seen as just another ploy to prop up the UK housing market by helping first-timers borrow even more money to try to enter the housing market.
It came in for flack then and is in the spotlight again, accused of forcing up house prices, benefiting the rich and trapping some people in homes they cannot afford.
In this short clip, editor Simon Lambert, explains exactly what it is and whether the disaster waiting to happen from 2013, is happening.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is money, brought to you in partnership with NS&I premium bonds, creating millions of reasons to celebrate every month. |
| 0:09.5 | Help to buy. The government's flagship scheme to give a leg up to first-time buyers. Now, it's come in for a bit of flack recently. It's due to run to 2021, but could be extended by another two years. However, it's been accused of pushing up house prices, benefiting the better off and leaving |
| 0:25.4 | some effectively trapped in their own homes. |
| 0:27.7 | Now, the real winners, some say it's the house builders. |
| 0:31.4 | Red Rose founder confirming this view, calling help to buy a godsend, just as his building firm |
| 0:37.4 | prepared to hand him almost |
| 0:38.7 | $22 million in a dividend bonus. |
| 0:42.1 | So Simon, remind us then what exactly is help to buy? |
| 0:46.5 | Well, if we cast our mind back, five and a half years, 2013, March 2013, Budget Day. |
| 0:58.2 | A good day for builders, as I described it at the time. |
| 1:02.8 | Because a certain Mr George Osborne back then was the Chancellor, and he was under fire. |
| 1:08.8 | It's easy to forget quite how much fire he was coming under at that point. |
| 1:12.9 | Austerity was in full swing. Recovery was conspicuous by its absence. And he was getting all kinds of |
| 1:22.9 | bashing from lots of different angles about how instead of austerity, we should be increasing government spending to help the economy |
| 1:29.5 | and doing all these things. |
| 1:30.3 | And he was sticking to his austerity guns. |
| 1:32.3 | But he had tried pretty much everything to try and get economic growth going. |
| 1:37.9 | And we were lagging behind the rest of the world. |
| 1:40.7 | We were lagging behind Europe. |
| 1:41.8 | We were lagging behind the States. |
| 1:43.6 | And I think in what was the last ditch attempt to do this, he rolled the dice on the world. We were lagging behind Europe. We were lagging behind the states. And I think in what was a last ditch attempt to do this, he rolled the dice on the property |
| 1:48.3 | market. And he decided that, because the property market is an easy way to revive the economy. |
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