Your Blog

Stamp Duty on Houses

Posted by AdrianD on Saturday, 10 March 2007 11:09:03

With average house prices in many areas being above £250,000, stamp duty is having perverse and possibly unintended effects on house prices. Many may assume that the effect of stamp duty is to stifle house prices; to keep them low - with buyers not being prepared to pay the tax and, therefore, forcing sellers to keep prices down. The reality couldn't be further from this, with stamp duty forcing house prices higher. This is simple economics; many people now are choosing not to move, refusing to pay £10k plus and getting nothing for it. The consequence is that there are fewer houses on the market. With the supply of houses reduced and demand still high, prices are bound to be forced up. This is untenable, with a real danger that the market will crash, leaving many people in negative equity and with massive consequences to the UK economy. I am one of the people who refuses to move, even though our preference would be to do so. Instead, we have renovated our house. My question is simple: what is your policy around housing; meeting current housing shortages; and, in particular, to stamp duty? Also, are the conservatives concerned about the level of house prices in the UK?

, , , , , ,

You could comment if you logged in | Read comments


 

Posted by DeathbyDonut on Sunday, 11 March 2007 11:57:53

I'm sorry , that is just total tosh , stamp duty is nothing to do with it . It's cheap credit , cheap immigrant labour , and a tax system that allows second home owners to benefit from being able to offset interest payments against their tax bill that is the culprit , and thus completely taking first time buyers out of the market.

Why not instead campaign for first time buyers to be able to reclaim the interest on their mortage?

Anyway , don't worry because once the housing market implodes I've no doubt the likes of yourself will be taken out of the upper duty brackets as your house price falls and then you'll be comfortably able to move home without the tax bill to go with it.

As for shortage of supply , well thats simply another urban myth and you only need to look around the internet to see the glut of overpriced property currently knocking around , never mind all the empty rental properties too add to the list.

Still house prices never go down , do they?




DbD