Flat-liner home sales need new life
0 Comments | Daily Post; Liverpool (UK), Feb 19, 2010 | by Anonymous
LDP TODAY’S latest set of figures from the transmogrified housing market make for sobering reading. Gone are the days when 100% mortgages were commonplace – or, indeed, even available – and with them have gone the chances of first-time buyers actually getting onto the housing ladder any time before reaching middle age.
An analysis carried out by the National Housing and Planning Advice Unit reveals that almost three-q uarters of young families in Liverpool cannot afford to buy a home.
And, in boroughs around the rest of Merseyside, the picture is almost as grim, with no more than a third of families under 40 able to snap up their own property.
The current situation, where lenders are demanding near- impossible deposits from young buyers who cannot even be certain that their jobs might be safe in the short to medium term, means that thousands have been condemned to rent property – or even remain as a burden to their parents – until such time as they have the necessary money in the bank.
So many financial advisers have said so often in the past that rental money is “dead money”, that it is not funding a future lucrative asset for anyone paying it out.
But, nowadays, with houses selling slower than Jedward downloads, is there any realistic alternative? Surely, if there is anything that might unite the political parties in the run-up to the general election, it is the importance of increasing the supply of affordable housing, and getting the market moving again
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