Private Ownership; Labour Despises It…

…for other people, naturally:

The era in which all Britons aspire to own their own home may be coming to an end, according to the Housing minister, John Healey. In a controversial speech, he suggested that Britain may be moving towards a European model, with renting on a roughly equal footing with buying. He said home ownership had fallen from 71 per cent of households in 2003 to 68 per cent today, noting that this trend began in 2005, well before the recession. "I'm not sure that's such a bad thing," he said.

Rent your own house, do you, John?

You certainly rent a flat in Lambeth, don’t you? Or rather, we, the taxpayers, rent it for you:

A minister of state at the Department for Communities and Local Government, John Healey claimed parliamentary expenses for his flat in Lambeth, where he has spent thousands of pounds on renovations.

Mr Healey’s mortgage interest payments stood at £691 per month in 2008, when he was also making regular claims for food, utilities, phone bills and cleaning.

In 2007 Mr Healey claimed £1,431 to replace his front door. The taxpayer even picked up the £16 bill for two days’ worth of Congestion Charge payments made by his locksmith.

You wonder how he can pontificate on the costs of renting vs owning without shame, don’t you?

At least, until you realise these creatures have no sense of shame whatsoever…

Mr Healey, a close ally of Gordon Brown, challenged the assumption behind housing policy under both the Tories and Labour since Margaret Thatcher introduced legislation to allow council tenants to buy their homes 30 years ago this month. It led to two million homes being sold to tenants. "You don't need to be a grocer's daughter to know it is not a good idea to have all your eggs in one basket," Mr Healey told the Fabian Society. "Yet not even a drop in the housing market can convince people not to use their home as a store of wealth."

That might be because your ‘close ally’ totally screwed their pensions, and housing is probably the only stable thing they still possess…

He said almost a third of people rely on their home to top up pensions. "The property piggybank is unsustainable and unfair," he added.

Ahhh, the perennial cry of the closet socialist; ‘It’s not fair!’

It’s not fair that other people, having worked all their lives, have something that other people, who may not have worked all their lives or may not have invested wisely, do not have. An outlook championed by a man living high off the hog on the taxpayer.

It’s enough to make you vomit…

"Increasingly, those without the property-funded 'Bank of Mum and Dad' are finding it hard to buy homes of their own," Mr Healey said. The gap has widened in the recession, during which the average age of first-time buyers getting parental assistance has stayed the same but the average age of a first-time buyer without parental help has risen from 33 to 37. "As housing wealth is passed from parents to children, inequality is compounded over the generations," he said.

Leaving anything to your kids, John? I bet you are.

Mr Healey stressed that a similar status between forms of housing tenure did not mean hostility to home ownership, and emphasised a need to find new ways to support those who wanted to become homeowners.

This is the ‘Oh, but don’t worry *wink* we don’t really mean it *wink* please keep voting for us. You dummies..’ message…

A new model with greater flexibility is needed, he argued, allowing people to change from buying to renting without moving home. "Not all or nothing, but a flexible system which suits the different stages in people's lives," he said. "In the future, I'd like to see it be just as easy to sell equity in your home back to the council, housing association or co-operative, allowing people flexible tenure in the same property that adapts to their circumstances. People may choose to release equity whenever it suits them and build it back up when they can and if they want."

In other words, we want to make it easier for people to buy care from the council when the time comes and they realise what a hellish pyramid-scheme con National Insurance was…

This being the ‘Indy’, a case study was used to back up this report:

Owen Armstrong, 27, rents a property in Dalston, east London. The projectionist agrees that many people no longer aspire to buy a house, because the costs involved make it little more than a pipe dream

Or in other words, all the people that a 27 year old projectionist in Dalston knows. And that’s the whole world, right?

"Trying to find something suitable in a large city, especially if you have a young family in tow, is very prohibitive. In order to afford something, you have to rely on someone else's income and move out towards the fringes of the city, which I would not like to do. In certain areas you are looking at £500,000 to buy somewhere; even then you are not always even getting a whole house. I don't want to lay out that kind of money for part of a house."

I fancy a Ferrari, but I don’t want to pay that kind of money for a car. Where’s the Minister to take up my case and insist someone else pays for it?