Liberal Conspiracy
Vince Cable (who else) has suggested that one way to keep the number of house repossessions down might be to allow councils and RSLs to buy out home owners who’re in serious difficulties, either entirely or as part of a shared equity deal. In principle that looks to be an idea that’s worth exploring, at least as far as figuring out what the bottom line might be in terms of cost and whether or not that could realistically be financed without relying on another round of large-scale government borrowing or an increase in taxation.
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...one thing that would help first-time buyers and people on low-ish incomes get on to the property ladder, and help to get the housing market moving a little, but which has been almost entirely absent from the mortgage market, is long-term fixed rate mortgages.The commercial mortgage lenders haven’t developed these products because they don’t generate the kind of short-term profit that can be screwed out of variable rate mortgages and that means they’ve not been a priority. But now the rules of the game have changed and the priority for the government in maganing out Northern Rock and the Bradford and Bingley isn’t about short-term profit and shareholder value its about the taxpayer taking as small a hit from defaults as possible.
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how about we start by looking at a policy of offering long-term fixed rate mortgages to sitting tenants if their landlord defaults on a buy-to-let mortgage, especially as we’ve already quite a lot of those (buy-to-let mortgages) on our hands thanks to the Bradford & Bingley.
