“Officials at the Dept of Finance warned that the controversial Help to Buy scheme was “regressive”, “inequitable” and could further fuel house prices weeks before @Paschald opted to renew it for another year”.

10 comments

1. In other words, it worked as intended….

2. They don’t want prices to fall, a house is an investment in their eyes. We are in a bubble and it’s going to burst, when everyone is priced out then who’s left? And how much taxpayers money is it going to take to fix it in the end? Sinn Féin mean higher taxes but there are costs building either way, so do you want fine gael blasting you in the ass or sinn fein blasting you in the ass?

3. Help to buy is bad for the same reason why we now prevent banks from being allowed to give large mortgages.

   It’s a harsh reality that if people cannot afford to buy that helping them to do so with a dig out actually exacerbates the problem.

4. We have lending caps in order to stop people with mortgages from getting destroyed by increased interest rates, and subsequently taking the banks with them.

   We also have such low housing stock that rent has been pushed to an unsustainably high level that people cannot afford to save enough for deposits for houses because their buying and saving power is being nuked by the market.

   So far as I can see, in absence of a massive and comprehensive state building plan, the HTB is practically the only equitable thing about the housing market (or life in Ireland in general) because it’s the only tool that facilitates someone to lower their cost of living by being able to buy a house.

5. We knew this well before it was implemented, it was already in the UK , and they knew it too.

   They’re intention was to increase house prices, not lower them

6. Help To Buy is a grant for Builders, to be able to get them to keep building, without the prices going up so much that Joe Soap starts complaining. So the prices went up, but the Government gave the grant to Joe Soap to make it look like they were helping.

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   It was never anything else. This is why it doesn’t apply to second-hand houses (thank god!).

7. As a first time home buyer.. I cant afford a second hand house and then bring it up to a reasonable spec. I can afford a lovely new build or a second hand home that is a basically in a livable state. I dont think blaming the first time buyers grants for house price increases is remotely correct

8. The problem with housing is almost exclusively lack of supply which then becomes a much more layered issue involving a poor planning system, lack of different housing types, land hoarding, mistrust of apartment living and piss poor building/infrastructure planning.

   Also, while the HTB scheme largely worked to just increase house prices, I bought a house last year that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to buy if it were not in existence. Being able to afford Dublin rent and save an astronomical amount for a deposit is insanely difficult. We easily qualified for the mortgage we wanted but there was no flexibility with deposit and neither of our families were in a position to help. HTB let us bridge the gap and we now have a lower mortgage repayment than we were paying in rent

9. It just makes all the new houses 30k more expensive

10. “Good, please proceed”