Help to Buy: how one first-time buyer household earning over £100,000 a year defends scheme

One of the surprises that last year had to offer was the number of ‘wealthy’ households using taxpayer-backed Help to Buy.

Out of 108,620 first-time buyer households, around  a third – about 36,000 – had incomes of over £50,000 and a further 3,858 had incomes of over £100,000.

The scheme has been a significant help to developers and some critics say should be more accurately called Help to Sell.

Yesterday, Henry Pryor tweeted that he was still “struggling” with the number of first-time buyers earning over £100,000 who had used the scheme.

He soon had an answer from someone who said: “My household earns over £100k a year. We can’t afford a house (no money from parents for deposit), why shouldn’t we be entitled to Help to Buy, given the sole intent of the Government is to drive house prices up?”

Pryor tweeted in response: “Anyone . . .? Not sure I have the self control to answer this myself and leave myself with any dignity.”

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6 Comments

  1. AgencyInsider

    You can’t blame people for taking advantage when it is presented to them on a plate. The people who need blaming are the stupid civil servants and politicians who created the feeding trough in the first place.

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    1. PeeBee

      I would suggest that there is no-one more eminently qualified to debate feeding trough issues than Mr Pryor.

      His knowledge of bacteriology and pond habitat biology, however, leaves much to be desired.

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  2. Kyle

    This whole website is an Henry Prior fanzone

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    1. Robert May

      I’m not sure that’s quite true. Henry regards us as pond-life who have nothing of value to contribute or have nothing that warrants respect.

      The Editor can be a bit of a minx and will throw in the occasional Quirk or Pryor to help with the read and comment scores.

      Peebee obviously hasn’t seen this story otherwise we’d at least have; Dignity, what dignity?  I’ve seen more dignity on Naked Attraction.

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  3. femaleNeg8804

    To be fair it is an outrage that someone/couple earning at least £8,000 after taxes between them can’t save for a deposit in order to buy their own property in the private sector, imagine how working families earning £50k between them feel and them you take the shared ownership away from them by not making them a priority. Perhaps they should be put on a list in future if people in need don’t snap up the units for sale before freely handing out to people who could make sacrifices and easily save over £100k in 5 years by making sensible cut backs. What a joke!

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    1. PeeBee

      femaleNeg8804You may have missed the right hullabaloo recently when a swanky Agent dared to offer advice to Milennials on how to scrimp and save – like the generations of old f@rts (like me) that did for our deposits ‘back in the day’:
      http://www.propertyindustryeye.com/make-your-own-sandwiches-agents-advice-for-first-time-buyers-to-make-sacrifices-backfires/
       

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