Budget 2012 Headlines and the Property Market

The trend for Chancellors instigated by Gordon Brown was to conceal almost as much as you revealed.

Mr Brown introduced a new Stamp Duty Land Tax and didn’t mention it at all in his Budget speech!

The trend for the new coalition is to divulge most of the Budget before the actual Budget Day – so much for political purdah! 

NewBuy: Help for First Time Buyers on to the Housing Ladder

Mortgage finance or rather lack of it has been the main culprit in reducing the number of houses bought and sold in the last couple of years.

We were fed an initiative last week, where first time buyers would receive help in the form of a mortgage guarantee, enabling more to gain access to the housing market with reduced deposits. The catch was that it was only available for new builds

Here is my blog from last week “NewBuy Scheme for First Time Buyers: Good Buy or By Pass“

There was also a freshening up of the Right to Buy scheme for Council tenants.

My concern at the time would be that the Stamp Duty exemption for first time buyers would not be renewed.

This is now the case and first time buyers will have to pay Stamp Duty along with everyone else

Stamp Duty Avoidance

The Chancellor promised to outlaw various anti avoidance schemes designed to circumvent the payment of Stamp Duty in the 2011 Budget.

This is to be welcomed as the main burden of such a punitive tax falls on the politically ubiquitous “hard working families” and is often avoided by those may able to pay

The Chancellor outlined proposals for a general anti avoidance measure designed to stop abuses, especially in residential homes where the punitive 3% and above brackets kick in.

A new stamp duty rate of 7% is introduced for homes over £2 million.

A charge of 15% will be levied on people who transfer their property to a company. Capital Gains Tax will also be charged on overseas companies which own residential property

A loop hole involving sub sales to avoid Stamp Duty will closed up.

The Chancellor did not rule out bringing in retrospective taxation for other “extreme tax avoidance”.

Relaxation of Planning Restrictions

The Chancellor said that in his 2011 Budget his aim was to “allow certain use class changes, introduce time limits on applications and pilot for the first time ever auctions of planning permission on land”

 Details will be published next week, but the promise to reduce 1000 pages of regulation to 50 pages is kept.

There will be an ominous “presumption in favour of sustainable development”

We will have to wait and see a little while longer what the impact of today’s Budget measures will have as a whole on the property market.