There is only one day left to lobby MPs ahead of a debate on the future of stamp duty in the Commons tomorrow.
It has come about from St Albans MP, Conservative Anne Main, who says stamp duty is causing sclerosis' in the housing market. She is backed by a cross-party group of MPs - perhaps predictably the group includes former Tory cabinet minister John Redwood but also Labour MP Steven Pound.
Recent average house price increases means a quarter of home movers now pay stamp duty of three per cent or more, up from 10 per cent a decade ago; the Treasury receives £1 billion a month as a result.
Stamp duty enshrines inequality because people cannot afford to move to the house they need. It is causing a sclerosis in the market. Pensioners think they are going to make £50,000 by downsizing but then they find £10,000 is going to go in tax and are put off, which means those homes are not available for larger families says Main.
Even though we have got the Help To Buy scheme, the Government is handing money to those people with one hand, taking it back in tax in the other hand. All taxes on properties are a tax on aspiration but when it starts affecting everybody instead of only the wealthy, as it was intended to do, then actually we are taxing everybody's' aspiration she says.
Main promises that the debate means MPs will be able to speak freely on the impact the tax is having on the housing market. From my point of view, St Albans has some of the highest house prices in the country, and residents are writing to me with their concerns about the expense of simply moving to a more appropriately-sized home.
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Comments
Stamp duty is not good but iys nit the worste tax.
The need to look at S106 planning permission requitements (affordable home tax and other planning requirements) on new homes which can be 10 times that of stamp duty. Only additional homes can put supply and demand back im sync and house prices under control.
Replace with LVT. End of.
UNDER 80 GRAND......
Thats how much the national average house price should cost today.
The individual national average wage was always able to buy the averagely priced house, all throughout the 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, 1980's and 1990's.
For no more than 3.5x individual income.
[Thats the long term median. On a couple of occasions it touched 5x salary, but went back down again quickly enough. At other times, it was just 2.5x salary]
The average mortgate rate over that same period was 7%. [Yes, for a long time, it was as high as 12%, throughout the eighties for instance, but the long term average median, over that fifty year period, is 7%]
Average Downpayment was 10%
That was the definition of affordability for the last half of the twentieth century.
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1997 was the last year, that the individual average wage could buy the average house, for no more than 3.5x individual average salary.
[Which is why the national average age of a FTB, without parental help is now 40 +]
[From 1997 to 2007, house prices tripled whilst the median UK wage rose by just 6.5k]
[In 1997 the national average house price was 55k.
The national average wage was 16,666
55/16,666 = 3.3x......So In 1997 it was 3.3x salary.]
So If the priced out generations today were able to buy a house, relative to the same levels of affordability vs earnings that previous generations enjoyed, then the national UK Average House Price today, would cost no more than 3.5x the national averge individual wage of 26.5k
26.5 x 3.5 = 79.5k
The average house price today should cost no more than 79.5k.
UNDER 80 GRAND.....
Yet according to the ONS the national average house price today is 250 Grand.
Im sure that this has completely destroyed many peoples lives.
Labour, Tory, they're equally to blame.
Is 40k profit for doing nothing not enough most working people would have to contribute about 20k tax when they earn 50k. I vote for reducing working taxes and increasing stamp duty.
SDLT is causing a lot of people to think twice about whether they really want the house they love, and this is causing the market to stagnate in some areas, and in so doing, is losing the Government money on VAT for related fees (moves, estate agents, surveyors), as well as SDLT of course, which if it was more reasonably priced people wouldn't have to think long and hard over whether to move. I for one would like to move to a house we love, which we could get for 100,000 more than our house, but the stamp duty will be 185,000! This is a ridiculous amount of liquidity to find out of nowhere.
A heinous tax on first time buyers, partic given rocketing prices in many areas.
Scrap it, no, not a chance.
Revisit how it is calculated, yes, needed, asap.
It makes them too much money, they'll never scrap it!