The Lemon Fool

... courtesy of James Brokenshire, who is, God help us all, the Housing Minister - https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/ne ... omes-61703

Has this most incompetent of all governments not learned their lesson from the absurd `Help To Buy' programme, which has merely poured hundreds of millions of public money directly into the coffers of house builders? It would have been far better called the `Help To Inflate The Housing Market' programme.

So to suggest that people should take money out of their (probably) hopelessly inadequate pension fund to further inflate the property market is very close to the definition of insanity.

With an intellect like his I'm just surprised he's not standing for the Tory leadership!

It's already possible for an individual to use his or her pension fund to invest in a commercial property. In fact one of my sons is thinking of doing it. So it is not a huge stretch to expand that to other types of property.

It is essentially like borrowing money from your pension, which is already allowed in the US. The interest you pay on your loan goes back into your pension fund, so you are paying interest to yourself, which appeals to some.

But this being the UK, if we allow this, it will surely end in tears.

Help to Buy is obviously daft and economically illiterate. For that reason any attempt to stop it gets met with howls of anguish from the loud contingent of daft and economically illiterate folks knocking about our sceptered isle.

As soon as it was announced I realised it was going to be a gravy train for my housebuilder shares and personal property investments and so it has proved.

Thanks for the money, Westminster chumps. Keep it coming....

Clitheroekid wrote:
So to suggest that people should take money out of their (probably) hopelessly inadequate pension fund to further inflate the property market is very close to the definition of insanity.

We know intense lobbying goes on in Government, of course, but it's only when we see stark results of such lobbying as this, that we might realise just how beholden to such pressure our Governments truly are...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

As with everything governments (of both parties) does on housing, it sets up a Prisoners' Dilemma. What benefits the individual participating in the scheme is diametrically opposite to what would benefit society as a whole. Yet the individual who fails to participate - either through choice of involuntary exclusion - suffers for it.

I'm right now using money from my SIPP to buy a house. 'Cos - among other things - with no secure income I don't even qualify to rent.

Clitheroekid wrote:
So to suggest that people should take money out of their (probably) hopelessly inadequate pension fund to further inflate the property market is very close to the definition of insanity.

Wait... barely ten years ago, I thought, everyone was saying that their properties were their pensions. So now, they are going to sell their properties to buy property?? Confused...

this most incompetent of all governments

Agree, and warned that this would be the case ten years ago the moment Osborne started prattling on about austerity. About the only sensible thing they have done is ban letting fees.


GS