Boris Johnson reveals plans to cut deposits in bid to boost home ownership
The Prime Minister has announced plans to help millions of Britons onto the housing ladder by allowing home-hunters to buy a property with a smaller deposit.
Speaking at the Conservative Party conference today Boris Johnson said he wants to turn “generation rent” into “generation buy” by reforming the UK’s planning system.
The government is planning to allow people to buy homes with a five per cent deposit in a bid to boost ownership, particularly among the under-40s.
It wants to create 2m more homeowners – the biggest expansion of home ownership since the 1980s, he said, according to the Guardian.
“We need to unleash the urge not just to build but to own. We need to fix our broken housing market,” Johnson said during a speech to the Conservative Party’s annual conference, which is being held virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“For most people it is still true the overwhelming instinct is to buy, and many of them simply can’t, not because they can’t afford the mortgage but because they can’t afford the deposit,” he said.
Johnson also addressed speculation that he is still suffering the long-term effects of coronavirus, saying reports were “drivel”.
“I’ve heard a lot of nonsense recently about how my own bout of Covid has somehow robbed me of my mojo,” he said.
“And of course this is self-evident drivel, the kind of seditious propaganda that you’d expect from people who don’t want this government to succeed, who wanted to stop us delivering Brexit and all our other manifesto pledges.”