Adam Offer, managing director of Besley Hill Estate Agents, with 17 offices in Bristol and Gloucestershire, gave a cool welcome to the Government's new scheme to help first-time buyers get on to the property ladder.
He said: "The budget today has offered very little to assist in stimulating the housing market. The FirstBuy scheme announced today will offer 10,000 first-time buyers up to £25,000 each in the form of a loan towards their deposit on any NEW HOME purchase. The scheme will be administered by the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) – who in the past have announced schemes before they were ready to market, producing massive confusion.
"This initiative will encourage first-time buyers to buy new homes at inflated prices on cramped developments with huge inherent parking problems – potentially slums of the future – rather than stimulate the wider housing market where there are many sensibly priced homes. The key is surely in unlocking this end of the market which will ultimately generate more transactions through the chains – stimulating the market as a whole – so it is an opportunity missed in my opinion.
"George Osborne's FirstBuy scheme won’t go beyond scratching the surface of the problem faced by the vast majority of first-time buyers as it’s exclusively for new-build properties and only around 10,000 buyers will benefit - a fraction of the overall number of potential first-timers currently misplaced by the mortgage famine in higher LTV (loan-to-value) deals.
"Although this is a tiny step in the right direction, it's merely window dressing the wider problem of lack of assistance to first-time buyers."
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