Ed Balls accusing high-end estate agency Savills of scaring everybody over mansion tax raised a wry smile from yours truly - and not just because when it comes to scare tactics, Ed Balls has proven to be in a class of his own.
While I think his proposal for a mansion tax is heavy handed and aimed more at taking a pot-shot at pantomime villains than doing anything about Britain's housing shortage, I have to say Balls has a point about a few high end estate agents crying wolf.
For example, look at what happened when George Osborne announced his reform of stamp duty and, in particular, the increase in the charge on properties costing £937,000.
As it happened at the moment that Osborne was delivering his Autumn Statement I was at a magazine lunch with over 40 estate agents, each of them from central London and each of them at the sharp end of the new duty. Most shrugged in reluctant acceptance - not one became shrill and not one said that that news heralded the end of the London market.
Yet the next day a representative from London Central Portfolio - a firm which buys and manages high-end property on behalf of investors - described the Chancellor's stamp duty reforms as meaning London's market could face complete and utter collapse.
Her comments attracted criticism (from estate agents, rather than the public) on social media. But with 98 per cent of buyers benefitting from Osborne's reforms, her comments were - surely - well in the category that Ed Balls would call scaring everybody.
We've been here before of course.
In September 2012 Hamptons International predicted that George Osborne - yes, him again - would trigger a 40 per cent fall in the sale of £2m-plus properties in London by the introduction of his 15 per cent levy on non-natural persons' and by the introduction of an annual charge and changes in Capital Gains Tax for non-doms.
This represents approximately 700 fewer transactions and this implies potentially foregone SDLT taxation revenue of £150m to £175m said Hamptons.
It didn't quite work out like that. London sales, including those above £2m, sailed high; stamp duty receipts soared similarly. It was a crisis that in the end didn't happen.
It's too early to know whether Savills' similarly outspoken predictions about mansion tax fall into the accurate' or scare tactics' category.
A press release from Savills - which contributed to a story on Estate Agent Today on November 6 - claimed that if Labour introduced a full mansion tax it could reduce prime central London prices by five per cent in 2015.
Some online and hard copy publications ran headlines saying 10 per cent rather than five, citing specific Savills presumptions about much higher value properties. For example, Financial Reporter emphasised the Savills 10 per cent figure claiming that a property now worth £7.5m would rise to £8,424,043 in 2017 without mansion tax but just (yes, it used the word just) £7,601,040 if the tax was introduced.
Savills might, of course, turn out to be completely correct if a mansion tax is introduced. Or the firm might just turn out to be wrong. Or such a tax might never be introduced anyway.
But the point is this.
There seem to be some common denominators when it comes to the small number of estate agents who occasionally declare the end of the housing market as we know it.
Such claims tend to come from (a) agents heavily active in central London, (b) agents heavily reliant on extremely rich clients, and (c) agents with substantial PR budgets to promote their views and give them a currency probably well beyond their true worth.
Does this reflect badly on the vast majority of estate agents who are not in London, have ordinary clients, and actually just keep their head down and try to let and sell houses
Well, that's for you to say - you're the estate agents, I'm just a journalist.
But when Rightmove produces research showing that Labour's mansion tax is actually popular with the public, and when George Osborne introduces Conservative stamp duty reform making house buying cheaper for 98 per cent of the public, it seems unwise for a few agents to go into PR overdrive and say how unfair this is to buyers in Knightsbridge.
Ironically most of their peers seem completely reconciled to some form of tax, for good or bad, and aren't minded to talk up the problems and in doing so, talk down the market.
There will be more of this (much more, whether we like it or not) in the build up to the general election.
Until then, have a peaceful Christmas and a prosperous start to 2015.
*Editor of Estate Agent Today and Letting Agent Today, Graham can be found tweeting about all things property @PropertyJourn.
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Comments
I don't agree with a mansion tax because it won't be on mansions it will be on London flats and affect those who have little ready cash, forcing them to sell and letting truly rich people in. Having said that I agree with the new stamp duty and I don't think it will affect the top end much. Rich people are paying over double compared to a few years ago, they have nothing else to spend their money on 12% is pretty irrelevant really
Interesting comment but no its not a 1%x on living in the South East unless you have a property over 1.125 million which is where the extra duty starts coming into practice. Middle class families do NOT all live in such properties and they are the exception rather rule. I say that as both an agent in an affluent area and having grown up in the Medway Towns. The article is exactly about shouting odds and making the rest of the country thinking everyone in the South East lives in a castle!
With the new Stamp duty rates, buyers of Labour 'Mansions' now have to pay 12% tax for the privilege of owning a shoe box in London. With the average person moving once every 12 years this is around a 1% annual tax on property. Yes I know the 12% applies above the 2m mark, but also those in the south east tend to move more frequently than the average, so it really IS A 1% PROPERTY WEALTH TAX FOR LIVING IN SOUTH EAST ENGLAND.
How on earth then is it fair to add another 1% or more with an additional Mansion Tax. We are moving to the point that anyone with something that can passably be called a house in the South East will be paying the government thousands for the privilege of living in it. Thousands for living in a house you've sweated blood and tears and years of massive mortgages to buy.
It is incredibly annoying that newspaper journalists and Labour politicians try to defend the Mansion tax simply by implying celebrities like Myleen Klass and Angelina Jolie don't deserve the money they've earned and therefore should be taxed until they bleed from the nose. How much criticism would they get if the said something similar about those living in council houses
Mansion tax is not fair as it disproportionately targets hard working middle class families in the South East that simply don't have any spare money. Yes, middle class because we all know that a tax that starts on the most expensive homes moves until it captures the majority. Just look at stamp duty; introduced only on the most expensive homes and now capturing something in the region of 90% of all houses.