A recent article in the Daily Mail has highlighted the exploitative scandal of leasehold houses being sold to innocent first time buyers under the governments “Help to Buy” scheme. It estimates 1 in 7 Help to Buy new homes are leasehold. Not only are the home owners being exploited, but the tax payer too.
The article fails to mention the extra bills for estate maintenance all new build home owners face, and the potential long term effect on the value of these homes in comparison to older, truly freehold houses.
The question is – who is Help to Buy really helping? The government is able to tick a box over housing promises and the commercial house builders are being subsidised to rip off ordinary home owners and the taxpayer!
If you have used Help to Buy and find you are being forced to pay for estate maintenance with no accountability or value for money, please either comment here or join our Facebook group.
It’s such a shame that Help to Buy is being abused, as a system which is supposed to help many families, couples etc. to buy their own home, something which is already very difficult in the current housing market. For 1 in 7 of these Help to Buy properties to become leasehold is completely against the aims of the Government project. I read a news article recently that mentioned how plans are being made to ban this practice – even Theresa May commented on the misuse of the scheme. Hopefully they can enforce legislation to prevent this and make sure that people get the incentive they signed up for, after all it’s a good scheme when used properly.