Behind the headline grabbing stamp duty changes announced yesterday was a whole raft of other measures designed to steady the housing market and provide help to those affected. 

These include:

•  Interest free five year loans of up to 30% of a property’s value for first time buyers of new homes in England.
• The extension of powers for councils and housing associations to be able to pay off debt for homeowners who can no longer afford mortgage payments and then charge rent.
• The shortening from 39 weeks to 13 weeks the period before Income Support for Mortgage Interest is paid.
• And finally, bringing forward spending from future years to encourage more social housing to be built. 

Under the new loans system, called HomeBuy Direct, households in England earning less than £60,000 will be offered loans free of charge for five years on new properties, co-funded by the state and developers. 

Once the five-year interest free period is up, homebuyers will be asked to pay a fee, the Department for Communities and Local Government said - although no more detail of this was provided.

The idea is that not only will HomeBuy Direct help first-time buyers but it will also help the house-building industry weather difficult conditions. Two birds with one stone, but it remains to be seen if it will actually work.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 8:10 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.