Housing under Gordon Brown - have your say

theres too many houses, not enough green

House prices/ housing is one issue .... the bigger picture things are bad and housing or prices are not the worse of it.... health /education/ taxes / security / transport / environment . Surely a more important debate should be what the hell is the state doing with my hard earned cash .....40% and why are the politicians in Brussels making decisions which impact me directly .... when i have not even voted them in. I thought the UK was a democracy ?? Vote UKIP :)

We are a tiny island with more people than we can currently cope with. We welcome people here from other Countries and no one seems to take into consideration the impact this is having on our services and the environment.

School are failing, hospitals are over stretched and unemployment is only showing as reducing because the Government do not count those on income support and incapacity benefit.

Once migrants from A8 and A2 Countries are here and working they are eligible for social housing and benefits etc. I am a homeless officer and it concerns me that people who are born and bred here have to fight for affordable homes. The time has come when I think we have to say enough is enough and look after British citizens first. If Gordon Brown really keeps to his word and builds more social housing then great but we will always have a housing shortage while our population continues to increase through migration. He also needs to change the legislation immediately to stop the right to buy.

I know I must sound so right wing but it upsets me when I see young kids coming into see me who realistically have no chance of being housed unless they get pregnant.

The main problem with this country is too many people and too little space. This is reflected in the housing market, traffic levels, environment etc.
Added to this Gorgon raids pensions, allows building on back gardens etc etc.

Anonymous is right. The prime motivator of recent years in property investment has been the destruction of British pensions, with property as one of the few viable alternatives.
Brown was utterly and disastrously culpable, as the last in a series of government officials to tinker with pension funds. It is utterly galling that the majority of the populace have still to realise this and hold him accountable.
If he is committed to an agenda of social justice, be must act urgently to rectify the pensions deficit. I also believe that it should be made illegal for foreign investors to buy up cherry picked tracts of the UK - do you know Lands End is in foreign hands? Madonna owns a huge Cotswold estate, and one in Scotland?
The problem here would be EU regulations - but could we not disallow non-EU citizens the right to buy our country?
Finally, the crown and a very small number of the very rich own a massive percentage of the UK. This should be reviewed, to manage the UK for the benefit of all our people, not just those with billions in their bank accounts....

Gordon Brown is a conman. He steals from the weak and vulnerable. He charges First Time Buyers stamp duty, he fuels a rising house market because it is in his best interests yet hides the misery this causes in payments because he chooses to have the cost of mortgages discounted from inflation figures. Furthermore Brown has robbed pensions and savings (except his own which are ring fenced). New planning changes will allow councils to financially benefit for granting planning permission on former agricultural land and therefore who is to say that decisions may be unbiased. If the true position and consequence of house price inflation were widely considered this economy would be shown to be in the mess it really is. The people who can least afford it are suffering at the hands of Gordon Browns diktat.

Stocks and shares were very risky and Pensions proved costly and unpredicable, as did endowments. The result is that people are putting their money into property - hence the huge uptake over the years on purchasing rundown houses, developing then either selling or creating their own portfolios and renting them out. The locals in seaside towns have also been priced out by those earning more in the south-east which has resulted in "ghost towns" in the winter months. We don't need more houses built - we have enough! There should be a policy on how many properties people own - this would surely keep the market much more stable and give those who put their taxes into the country and much more fairer chance of having a decent roof over their head rather than filling in their landlord's pension pot.

It seems crazy that Government pays farmers to set aside land which is no longer economic for farming, while using the planning system to deny the use of it for desperately needed houses. Why not build a few new towns along commuter rail routes on "set aside" land? This would save Government money and local authorities could take a cut of the farmers' profits to pay for new roads etc. Its houses we're short of, not high rise flats in brown field sites in city centres. Families need a bit of space.

If Gordon increases the number of houses being built it will help satisfy the demand and keep prices down. This will in turn reduce inflation and reduce interest rates. The main problem is too many people buying second homes as an investment which drives prices up again.

I cannot believe that the Government has ignored the issue of raising the stamp duty threshold in the light of the obvious house price increases and unaffordability of this tax for first time buyers faced with having to come up with a deposit and legal fees, as well as boosted interest rates.

They are so busy spending money on housing and feeding the countless people who fly in here on the pretence of taking a holiday and then immediately claim assylum. A process which can take countless years to prove as fraudulent, if indeed it is so. Even if assylum is not granted, very often deportation does not take place. If it does, that will also be at our expense. Tighter border controls should be implemented immediately or we will keep on paying the price for 'human rights'.