License rounds – the future for first time buyers?

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Rig Writer
02/16/2010

I had the most fantastic day today. I have finally, after months of excitement, frustration and more than a few tears, exchanged contracts on my first house. If you read my blog last week you will know that I can now officially call it mine without my other half muttering disapprovingly under his breath.

Now, I don’t mind admitting that I am not the youngest fish in the pond and I have been saving for this moment pretty much as long as I can remember. For those of you that have ever tried to buy your first house in London you will understand exactly why. Not only are house prices exorbitant but when you add stamp duty on top it basically prices any first time buyer straight out of the market. It is little wonder that anyone manages to buy in London at all!

Now, before I bore you all with more talk of my house let me assure you that there is a point to this excited rambling. I have been closely following the license rounds both in Norway and the UK over recent weeks and an idea struck me… could license rounds be introduced by the UKgovernment to solve the issue of first time buyers not being able to get a foot on the ladder?

Through the"Promote" licensing rounds with it’s less demanding terms and the fallow acreage initiative, where non-active licenses have to be relinquished the UK Government have really kept up activity on the UKCS. Could this be the same in the housing market? Could less demanding ‘terms’ be brought in to allow first time buyers onto the ladder? The recent scrapping of Stamp duty was a start, but I am not sure how many London-based first time buyers that actually helped.

I have no idea how we would implement a fallow initiative… but I’d certainly like to see what happened!

By Jen Draper

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