Housing grants a help to sell not a help to buy: Steve Keen

Globe-trotting Australian economist Steve Keen has gone on Russian television to warn that first-home owner grants and other government housing schemes are a "help to sell" for vendors, create housing bubbles and make housing more unaffordable for new entrants.

"They drag people into the market who otherwise would not be able to get in," he said on the Keiser Report on English language Russian news channel RT.

“When the Australian government doubled and trebled the scheme (through the first-home owner boost which ran from October 2008 to December 2009) house prices went up 8% and 12% per annum.

“[That is] 12% more unaffordable. If you can’t control it becomes a poisoned chalice."

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