Politicians should KNOW that artificial stimulus of the Property market can only end in disaster. However they seem drawn to it as a piece of social engineering despite this knowledge and it is remarkable that they cannot learn from the past!

Sir Mervyn King has sounded the alarm over the Chancellor’s home-buying plan, suggesting it could trigger a US-style economic crash. The outgoing Bank of England governor said George Osborne’s Help to Buy scheme was ‘too close for comfort’ and could damage the mortgage market if allowed to continue for too long. He urged ministers to get back to a ‘healthy’ system of competing high street lenders rather than one in which the Government guarantees home  loans to get first-time buyers on the property ladder.

For once, King is right. Osborne is showing unbelievable stupidity and his “Help to Buy” scheme will cause great misery in times ahead.

You would need a heart of stone not to smile at the sheer bleeding heart liberal stupidity of this;

Harsher taxes should be introduced to stop ‘townies’ buying second homes in the countryside and ‘gutting’ rural communities,  the head of the Campaign to Protect Rural England has said.  Former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion – who took over as president of the CPRE last year – said  the tax on second homes should be ratcheted up to discourage city workers from snapping up countryside properties to use as weekend retreats.  He said too many second home owner fail to contribute to the life of rural communities and simply ‘scoot down’ for the weekend before returning to London ‘in time to catch the 10 o’clock news on Sunday night’.

I am writing this from my second home! So, I have a take on this one.

For starters. I already contribute extensive rates to the local council. I spend my money in local shops. I eat out in local restaurants. I use local workmen and professionals to maintain my property.  The harsh fact is that without people like me … “townies” (even though I live in the Country) little villages like I live in would fall into economic ruin.

The former poet Laureate fails to understand that the laws of supply and demand apply EVERYWHERE and in his quest to preserve some sort of rural idyll all he will do is impoverish the very communities he claims he wants to protect. Taxing those who seek to own second properties is pure socialist envy politics. Motion was USELESS as a Poet and he now shows his lack of talent did not stop there.

Prick a liberal and you will uncover a heartless covetous creep;

Nick Clegg, the Deputy PM, has  suggested that a home owner hit by the Liberal Democrats plan to tax high value homes should sell his house before they die. Mr Clegg told LBC Radio listener who had lived in his home with his family for 20 years should consider selling his property. During his weekly Call Clegg radio phone-in, the Deputy PM told the listener, known as John, that he would indeed be better off if he chose to sell up and move out.”Because you paid very little for it – how can I put this? I’m obviously not urging you on selling your home but if you were, as your children get older and so on, to decide to sell your home, you would be millions of pounds better off because you’ve got a small mortgage from 20 years ago and that is in a sense, pure profit,” he said.

In another sense, Mr Clegg, this is revealing the hatred that the left carry for those who have invested sensibly and have now got an asset that they covet. The Lib-Dems want to soak anyone who has a home that is NOW worth a lot of money. Labour support this idea. They WANT to bully and cajole these people – many of whom are elderly – into SELLING their properties as the only means of realising the cash required to fund the so-called “Mansion Tax”. It’s class war, pure and simple.

I should be on BBC Sunday Sequence tomorrow morning debating the above issue with a Priest who think is is IMMORAL to buy a repossessed house. What do you think? I reckon it is a faux argument and in fact I will argue that moral good comes from repossessed property. In the first instance, a house is ONLY repossessed when the owner has demonstrated a total inability to meet his financial commitment. This is not a moral failure – there may well be good reasons for this failure - but it is quite obviously a financial breach of contract which will eventually trigger the lender of the mortgage to instigate proceedings leading eventually to repossession. In my view, Banks hate this because it means they will offload in a depressed market and so they will lose out. In this way, the sale of a repossessed house is morally neutral. However, and this is the clincher for me, it actually has a morally positive benefit. When a repossessed house is sold, it tends to go at below market value. This means that it may be possible for a family who could not otherwise own a home to find a place of their own. That is a moral good.

Furthermore, if one took the view that buying such a property is immoral, then it follows that such houses should sit around empty. At a time when people are looking homes, isn’t THAT immoral? Why should we think it moral to have a land bank of empty homes? If buying a repossessed house is immoral, does that logic extend to buying a repossessed car? Shall we close down pawnbrokers? How about discount stores who sell product obtained from distressed manufacturers?

The proposition being put forward by my opponent is utopianism and cannot apply. We live in a world where we ALL seek financial advantage and so long as this is legally obtained, I think it is perfectly GOOD and MORAL.

This is what the Conservative-led Govenment sees as a priority…

Everyone who owns a home worth £1 million or more will be targeted in  a new ‘anti-affluence’ crackdown by the Coalition. A beefed-up squad of computer and legal experts will pore over their property, savings and income. If they think the individual is not paying enough tax, they will have the power to knock on their front door and force them to account for every penny. The move is part of a tax-dodging purge on the rich forced through by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

This is rampant totalitarianism and an outrage. It shows how success is now hated in Britain and how those who work really hard to build wealth – and YES – buy expensive properties – are seen as TARGETS.

..for they shall receive the housing stock! Did you read that up to half of all social housing lets are given to those born abroad. At the same time, nearly five million families are languishing on waiting lists for subsidised housing in England.

According to figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government, in 2010/11 8.6 per cent of new social housing tenants were foreign. But in London – where the waiting list has soared by 60 per cent  to 362,000 in the past decade – up to half of such housing was handed over to immigrants.

‘For years we have been told that British people on the waiting list for social housing are getting a fair deal,’ Mr Field said. ‘Yet, when the situation in London is examined, we find that, in reality, nobody has any idea how many new lets are going to foreign nationals and how many to British citizens.’  ‘This scandal must stop. I have a bill before parliament that will ensure that those citizens who have made most contribution to society, who have paid their taxes and whose children have not caused trouble, for example, will have first choice of any housing available.”

Excellent idea. British houses for British people. Not a bad starting point.

Having enabled the UK property bubble to rise – and then burst – Government once again demonstrates a lamentable understanding of what to do next;

Up to 100,000 people will get Government support to buy homes worth up to £500,000 in a Coalition move to revive the middle-class dream of home ownership, ministers will announce. David Cameron will today formally open the NewBuy Guarantee scheme, where the Government guarantees part of a homebuyer’s mortgage, allowing them to take out much larger loans than they might otherwise be eligible for. The guarantee will allow people buying new-build properties to borrow up to 95 per cent of the value of their new home.

So, rather than let the market take care of things and encourage young people to SAVE, Government tries to artificially boost the market, again.

Now, WHAT can go wrong with that? When the State tries to manipulate or control the property market, only bad things can come from it but then again – hey – it’s YOUR money they are using.

Nice to see our liberal Coalition starting the year with another declaration of class war;

In England and Wales, about eight million people currently live in four million council or housing association homes. The government wants to give local authorities powers to force wealthy tenants, who earn over £100,000, to pay rents nearer to market rates. If they refused, they would face eviction. ”The number involved is believed to be relatively small – just 6,000 – but they are symbolic of what ministers believe is a key failing in social housing,” said our correspondent.

What sort of logic is this. If you choose to live in a Council house, you pay the due rent. What is being proposed here is that there will be a form of rent apartheid introduced so if you live in an identical council house to your neighbour but you earn £100,000 then you will pay a premium because of what you earn. Of you refuse, they will throw you out of your home. This is socialist engineering, spitefully targeting those who earn more. That a Government with a large “Conservative” element in it could seek to introduce this legislation suggests that we do no have a Conservative government in ANY sense of the word.  Then there is the question who exactly will get the houses that the successful are thrown out of? Could it be that those illegal immigrants that our Judiciary demand we retain in the UK even when they have no right to be here?

A very pleasant lady from the Land Registry Department visited me this morning. She was out to measure up a few extensions we have put onto our house over the past few years – all fully approved by the Council and relevant department. Why? She said that our next set of rates would reflect the added size of our property.

Alright, I asked, and what is the formula for gaining new (and therefore higher) rates bill? Answer – all new rates will be based on 2005 property evaluations. Now, I seem to recall that between 2007 and 2011, property prices have dropped by 50% so why is the Government extorting money from us using false base figures? I did put this point to her and her response was that IF Government used current capital evaluation, the Council  would have much less money to spend so they would have to put rates up anyway!!!!!!!!!

Unbelievable. I informed her that Council must learn to live within budget like everyone else; that the 2005 capital evaluation plan is a massive and obnoxious rip-off (as I told the Minister who introduced it at a public meeting in 2004) and that once again the State comes looking to squeeze even more cash out of us to lavish on preferred client sectors.

Here’s a simple lesson in how the free market adjusts to reflect reality. It will undoubtedly cause deep anxiety for the central planners but that’s a good thing!

A Dublin father yesterday bought his ideal family home for €65,000 — three years after walking away from the three-bed house when the asking price was €380,000.

“We looked at that exact house three years ago and it was €380,000,” the man — who didn’t want to be identified — told the Irish Independent as he left the Merlin Property auction in Dublin. ”It’s unbelievable; I thought that when I went in I wouldn’t get it. It is the best value I have ever seen. ”I will go home to tell my wife now; she’ll be over the moon. Now it’s about trying to get in for Christmas.” The attractive, three-bed terraced home in East Wall, Dublin, sold for €65,000. But the previous owner was happy enough to sell the house he had grown up in with his parents.

The price drop seems extraordinary BUT the price bubble was also extraordinary, anchored in naked greed and corruption. Some of those people who bought at the top of the market back in 2007 may well end up spending the rest of their days in negative equity. That’s a tough lesson, I fully understand, but the old adage remains at all times – caveat emptor.