“All we are saying,
Is give press releases a chance.”
MI reviews the most ‘important’ release of the week.
Your after-dinner speaker’s in the dog
After-dinner speakers. There’s a lot of them about, they charge the earth and most of them are rubbish. Having sat through countless after-dinner speeches and been at the sharp-end of having to pick them, I can appreciate that you don’t always get value for money (John Inverdale anyone?).
So, it was interesting to learn that mortgage packager em-financial has been scouting about for an after-dinner speaker with the necessary wit and gravitas to hold court at its charity golf day. Obviously, no one stepped up to the mark as em- has opted for football nutcase and former manager of ‘The Posh’, Barry Fry.
Although on reading the release I wonder if I have the right Barry Fry – this one is refered to as ‘a distinguished after-dinner speaker’. Is this the same Mr Fry who was seen regularly losing it with his players in the dressing-room in a television documentary? A man who could battle it out with TV chef Gordon Ramsay over the use of expletives? Too ’effin right it is.
But, because MI are media partners for the event and it’s all for charity, I will say no more. Instead I will leave you with some of Fry’s quotes – the man is barking mad.
“Look at that, there’s no one at the back post. [more agitated] There’s nobody on the back post. [screams at players but it’s too late] There’s nobody on the bleeding back post. [GOAL]. I told them, I bloody told them.”
“My players think a tackle is something you go fishing with.”
“Stan Flashman wouldn’t know the difference between a goal-line and a clothes line.”
“Once I threw a plate of sandwiches at players and everyone was covered in rubbish. Mind you, the sandwiches were horrible.”
Hero to zero
Each issue we ask an industry expert to pick out the good and the bad in the industry. The ugly know who they are. This week John Webster of Preferred dishes out the brickbats and bouquets
Hero
My hero this week is the government and Gordon Brown in particular. A controversial choice perhaps but Brown deserves recognition for following his earlier decision to increase the starting level of stamp duty with another policy designed to help first-time buyers step onto the property ladder.
Brown has recently unveiled the government’s newest shared-ownership scheme: the Open Market Homebuy Scheme (designed following discussions with the Council of Mortgage Lenders) which introduces private finance into the equation.
The scheme allows individuals to take a mortgage of between 50-75 per cent of the property price, with the remaining equity being shared equally between the government and the lender.
The individual pays a nominal rent (reportedly no more than 3 per cent) on the proportion of the property they don’t own. They also have the option to increase the amount they do own as their financial situation improves.
Unlike the majority of existing shared-ownership programmes, this scheme isn’t restricted to key workers or housing association tenants or to properties owned by housing associations; it is open to any first-time buyer and any property available on the open market so long as the individual is ‘deserving’ – a decision to be made by the lender. Unfortunately this is where the Zero thoughts come in.
Zero
As pleased as I am that the government is committed to helping first-time buyers, Brown’s announcement still raises more questions than answers. Will lenders be given criteria for determining which individuals are ‘deserving’ and which aren’t?
Why would lenders want to provide half the equity on the remaining share? Will there be a panel of lenders or can all lenders get involved? Can individuals with minor credit problems apply? Most importantly, will the scheme actually work?
There has been much discussion about this in the national press, a lot of it negative. Most of the economists quoted expressed their concerns about encouraging first-time buyers to invest in what one commentator called ‘an already inflated asset class’ as it could actually have a negative effect in the long-term.
It is all very well offering first-time buyers a chance to step onto the property ladder but, unless a considerable amount of new houses are built to meet the demand, the long-term effect could actually be an increase in house prices, resulting in more problems for first-time buyers in the coming years.
Even the CML has said the scheme needs to be ‘accompanied by increased housing supply’ but many economists think the government’s plans to build affordable housing on ex-NHS sites will simply be too little, too late.
Hopefully when Gordon Brown releases more details about the scheme he will answer at least some of these questions and then we might know whether his plans are really more Hero than Zero.
