Tag: Help to Buy

Further leverage in the housing policy debate?

I’m not sure quite how I missed it the first time around. Most probably because, like many policy commentators, I’m inclined to focus too closely on the relatively parochial and the marginal shifts in domestic policy position. As a consequence of this failure to look sufficiently far beyond the […]

Housing pathology and paralysis

A few weeks ago Janan Ganesh in the FT described the UK housing market as an ‘institutionalised pathology’. The problems that the housing market is causing for the British economic and political system seemingly become ever more apparent by the day. There is an increasingly strong coalition of […]

Bittersweet sympathy

Much of the media reporting of today’s IPPR briefing note on the economic recovery focused on the alarm it sounds about the rapid increase in household debt – in particular the risk that Help to Buy II will further increase house prices. The economy may give the appearance […]

Help to Buy and the death of Keynesianism

When I first studied macroeconomics the Stagflation era of the 1970s and the death of Keynesianism were still being quite hotly debated. They were still contemporary events. Well, they were contemporary events in the way that the election of Tony Blair is a contemporary event for us today […]

Forward guidance and managing the housing market

Mark Carney’s importation of the forward guidance approach has been all over the mainstream and social media. But how significant is the announcement that the Bank of England is planning on keeping nominal interest rates as they are until after the next General Election? The comment it has […]

The perversity of the politics of housing

The abject failure of housing policy is among the biggest challenges facing this country yet it barely gets a mention on the hustings or in any political debate. (Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard, 28/05/13) There was a time when the stance taken by the major political parties on housing […]

The political economy of Help to Buy

When the Chancellor announced his two-part Help to Buy scheme in the Budget last month it was met with a chorus of disapproval. Representatives from the mortgage and construction industries – who, of course, have a financial interest in seeing the scheme implemented – were positive about it. […]