Earn less than £50K? Then you may be renting property for a while longer

Is David Cameron telling porkies with his new promise to create “generation buy”? Did we shamelessly use the term ‘porkies’ because of recent allegations over a special relationship between the PM and a swine? Yes and yes.

Among many talking points to come out of this week’s Tory conference in Manchester, was that Cameron and co outlined a ‘national crusade’ to tackle the housing crisis with a new starter-home scheme, building some 200,000 new houses and aiming to lower the age of first-time buyers.

Well don’t get your hopes up…

Housing charity Shelter was quick to crunch the numbers, stating that at £450,000 per home, you’ll need to earn upwards of £50,000 to be in with a chance of getting one of the starter homes.

Oh and that’s just the UK average – in London, you’d need £77,000 to get a foot on the same property ladder.

And even by that first damning £50K mark, going on the Tory’s minimum wage of £9 an hour in 2020, only homes in two per cent of England’s councils would be within budget. More damningly, Shelter also pointed out that these house prices would still be linked to the market, a market which the Office for Budget Responsibility reckons will see a 35 per cent inflation on homes from now to 2020. So even those on £50K may struggle.

Forget ‘generation buy’, with Shelter’s report – which also calculated that the new scheme will be unaffordable for average income households in six out of ten English council areas – it looks like millions of us will be renting a little bit longer.

[Via: The Independent]