Help to buy - industry sledging has clouded consumer perception
Under the Help to Buy scheme, the state will guarantee up to 15% of a mortgage on homes worth up to £600,000. A second strand will see new or existing homeowners able to borrow a further 20% - if they raise a deposit of 5% - from the government on an interest-free basis. In total, £12bn worth of lending will be guaranteed by the government, but do those it is designed to help know about it?
We asked the first five people we came across in Newbury for their view on the scheme. Everyone had heard about it, but none had a clear idea of how it worked. Opinion was divided over whether it was a good or bad thing, with sledging from either side of the argument about whether it will create a property bubble clearly obstructing the key points of how the service works from percolating through.
“It sounds like the government is using taxpayers’ money to prop up the property market at a time when banks don’t have a lot of confidence in it and encouraging even more people to jump into an overvalued market. I don’t think it’s a good idea as it will just maintain high prices, making life a misery for many and a wonderland for a few.”
John, aged 47, from Sutton
“I think it’s really good that the government are doing something to get the housing market moving again because we’re stuck in a situation where we need the bottom of the market to free up so we can move up the market ourselves. At the moment there seems to be very little movement to enable us to do that.”
Stuart, aged 35, from Berkshire
“It is a great idea to give people help to buy a house. It is getting to the point where it is so expensive that nobody was going to be able to buy a house without some kind of help.”
Fiona, aged 41, from Newbury
“I don’t really know that much about it because I bought my house a long time ago, but I was talking to someone last night who said the bubble is going to burst in London. They are helping everyone to buy and they are going to come unstuck with it. But I think if they want key workers in these big cities, like London, then they need to help them.”
John, aged 67, from Windsor
“There seems to be so many different schemes at the moment. I have heard of this Help to Buy scheme, as my son is looking into it. He has been looking at several of these types of things but they end up working out to be so expensive that he would never get his money back when he went on to sell the house.”
Gloria, aged 65, from West London
So, what does this show us? For such schemes to succeed, they need to have a clear marketing message. The problem with this scheme is that it has created such a divided opinion and the industry is still arguing over whether it is a good idea or not. Unfortunately this is the negative message that people have picked up on, not the benefits or the opportunities.
Just imagine how much more successful these schemes would be if we all got behind them and concentrated on letting people know what is available to them and how they can access it, rather than dominating press coverage with negativity and doubt, stifling success from the very start.
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