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A clearing house for the housing market

“A non-profit, public estate agent to buy and sell homes, avoiding the nightmare of endless chains and manipulative estate agents.”

2. How does it fit with Compass’ core beliefs of equality, solidarity, democracy, freedom, sustainability and well being?

Regulating the housing market so that it serves the interests of society is central to achieving equality, sustainability and well being. We all need homes, and most of us live in owner occupation, but information in this market is weak and there is almost no regulation about how homes are bought and sold. Most of us only buy and sell homes a few times in our lives, so we are not expert consumers. The lack of experience, information and regulation allows estate agents and other middle men to exploit homeowners and inflate prices.

3. How does it build the institutions of social democracy, like social groups and collective and cooperative forms of ownership and control?

A non-profit public agency - the Homes Clearing House - organised on a regional basis, would offer to buy your home when you wanted to sell. It would hold the home until a new buyer was found, abolishing the chains that bedevil the current market. This would create a huge, constantly changeing pool of publicly owned property assets, which could easily be diverted into affordable housing, co-ops, community land trusts or other public uses.

4. How much will it cost or raise and where will any cost come from?

The offer to buy homes without a chain or an estate agent would earn a discount on the price paid for the homes. Homes bought from a reputable national agency with clear, comparable information should fetch a premium - the difference between buying and selling prices should make the Homes Clearing House self funding.

It would require a large capital fund, but would save the national economy millions in wasted transaction costs each year, and could well make a profit, especially as it should be able to out compete estate agents .

5. Which groups in the electorate are likely to support or oppose this measure? Is there any polling evidence you have on this?

The millions of homeowners who have struggled with estate agents and housing market chains should support the idea. The property industry would resist the public sector breaking open their restricive market.

6. Is there a place or country where it’s worked? Please provide some information.

Not that I am aware of.

7. What are the three main arguments in favour/against it?

FOR:
Reclaim the housing market from estate agents and give home buyers and sellers greater choice and freedom.
Create easy opportunities for public acquisition of homes for affordable housing and other public uses.
Allow the market to flow faster and easier, helping to stabilise house prices.

AGAINST:
State interference in a ‘free’ market
Risk of public liabilities in a falling market.
EU state aid rules.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 14th, 2009 at 12:55 am and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.