Conveyancing: What Have The Chancellors Ever Done For Us?

Day 24: Everything You Need To Know About Buying and Selling a House or a Flat in 31 Daily Bite-Sized Chunks -“The 2011 Budget and the Housing Market” 

As part of the series everything you need to know about buying and selling a property this Spring, we should include the latest Budget delivered by The Chancellor yesterday.

The trend for Chancellors instigated by Gordon Brown to conceal as much as you reveal –he introduced a new Stamp Duty Land Tax and didn’t mention it at all in his Budget speech, was followed by Mr. Armstrong yesterday

We will need to see the fine print underscoring the attention-grabbing headlines before knowing fully the impact of the changes announced

First Time Buyers.

This was the vote pleasing pre leaked headline aimed at helping the housing market.

The Government will add 15% by way of a shared equity scheme with first time buyers holding a 5% deposit.

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.

The downside is that it is only available for new build properties.

This is a shame because when a buyer buys from a builder that signals the end of the chain.

To grease the wheels of the housing market, it would have been better to have made the scheme available to all properties.

This would have freed up Sellers hoping to sell to first time buyers, and allow them in turn to move up the housing market.

The Government may have even been able to contribute towards paying for the scheme by the increases in Stamp Duty it would have received with the increase in transactions.

Stamp Duty Avoidance

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

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

Relaxation of Planning Restrictions

The Chancellor said that 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”

The certain use class changes were also pre leaked and the assumption was that some commercial properties could revert to residential use without planning permission. We shall have to wait and see the detail on that one.

The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors said that it:

..welcomes steps to tackle under use of buildings but the wider impact on the commercial property market also needs to be considered. As the economy grows there will be a need for additional accommodation for expanding and new businesses and too many conversions to residential property could mean that appropriate space is not available.

We will revisit the Budget when more information becomes available, but in answer to the headine – not much!

Be sure to sign up for a chance to have your Conveyancing carried out by Clutton Cox, free of charge.