"Quick! Pour more accelerant on the fire!"

Via Ennui at HPC.

It must be clear to everybody that the Conservatives' re-election hopes are largely pinned on stoking a nice house price bubble before 2015 to create the "feel good factor" which has been key to winning more or less every UK General Election for the past few decades.

But oh no, what's this?

The August data from Land Registry's House Price Index shows an annual price increase of 1.3% which takes the average property value in England and Wales to £164,654. The monthly change from July to August shows an increase of 0.1%...

The region in England and Wales which experienced the greatest increase in its average property value over the last 12 months is London with a movement of 7.1% and the North West experienced the greatest monthly rise with a movement of 1.3%. The region with the greatest annual price fall is the North East with a decrease of 2.2%. Wales saw the most significant monthly price fall with a decrease of 2.1%.

So their votes might be looking pretty safe in London/South East for the time being, but it's ebbing away elsewhere.

But fear not, help is at hand:

Polling since Mr Miliband’s speech last Tuesday suggests that his policies are popular with voters, who have seen their energy bills rise sharply, while average wages have stalled. Mr Cameron believes that too many young professionals are being priced out of the property market because they cannot raise enough money for a deposit.

The Help to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme will be brought forward from January 2014 to next week.

Under the three-year scheme, the Government will provide up to £12 billion of “guarantees” to encourage mortgage lenders to offer more loans worth 95 per cent of the price of a property. The government guarantees are needed to reassure banks and building societies because of the risk that mortgage holders with such high loan-to-value deals will default.

The scheme is expected to enable banks to release £130 billion of loans for buyers of properties worth up to £600,000 who could not raise a larger mortgage deposit on their own. A smaller government loan scheme for people buying newly built properties began in April.

To cut a long story, the very same people can't afford to scrape together a decent deposit on an over-priced house are being expected to be able to repay a mortgage on a house where the price has been pumped up by yet another fifteen per cent or so?