Another cut in Stamp Duty - what a joke

[servodude]

Perhaps something should be done about all those selfish sellers then perhaps?

Yes - ban them from selling them when they move. That will sort out the second home owners.

erm,...

Paul.

Exactly. It's ridiculous. Yet the asymmetry on buyers seems to raise few issues with many. Creation of second home buying and "hollowed" out communities isn't a one-way street is it? Always convenient to blame those that bring money into that community rather than those that by definition remove it.

Hard to bring anything to a "community" if all you do is hold a property in it. Nothing agin second homes - but tax them appropriately

So the seller takes away any spend from that community but the buyer might spend in the local pub,shop, attractions etc. Its all down to the buyer that the community is "hollowed out"?

Whether its a local community, or a country, deterring inward investment isn't a great idea.

No.. indeed.
But having a "community" full of normally empty properties is a pretty poor outcome.
I'm not sure I'd consider buying a property to use for a few weeks a year inward investment; can you explain how that works?
I suppose it could be... iff those that sold it continued to stay locally... and the new owners spend enough during their stay to compensate But my impression is that's not really the case and places are bought and held without very much happening in the community - save for places sitting empty (I've family on Arran and Cumbrae, and an inherited share in a property in Donegal that I've not seen in a decade )

I think that there should be a system to prioritise homes for people to live there - e.g. greatly increase the council tax/rates to punitive levels so that if the places remain vacant (or not on the letting market) that there is a financial compensation for "the community"

-sd

[dealtn]

Yes - ban them from selling them when they move. That will sort out the second home owners.

erm,...

Paul.

Exactly. It's ridiculous. Yet the asymmetry on buyers seems to raise few issues with many. Creation of second home buying and "hollowed" out communities isn't a one-way street is it? Always convenient to blame those that bring money into that community rather than those that by definition remove it.

Hard to bring anything to a "community" if all you do is hold a property in it. Nothing agin second homes - but tax them appropriately

So the seller takes away any spend from that community but the buyer might spend in the local pub,shop, attractions etc. Its all down to the buyer that the community is "hollowed out"?

Whether its a local community, or a country, deterring inward investment isn't a great idea.

No.. indeed.
But having a "community" full of normally empty properties is a pretty poor outcome.
I'm not sure I'd consider buying a property to use for a few weeks a year inward investment; can you explain how that works?
I suppose it could be... iff those that sold it continued to stay locally... and the new owners spend enough during their stay to compensate But my impression is that's not really the case and places are bought and held without very much happening in the community - save for places sitting empty (I've family on Arran and Cumbrae, and an inherited share in a property in Donegal that I've not seen in a decade )

I think that there should be a system to prioritise homes for people to live there - e.g. greatly increase the council tax/rates to punitive levels so that if the places remain vacant (or not on the letting market) that there is a financial compensation for "the community"

-sd

My point here is 2 fold.

Firstly all the blame is attributed to the "outsiders" buying, and no consideration to the effect the sellers have in such a perfectly legal contractual transaction. More often than not there are underlying structural reasons why communities are failing, and people selling up. They are quite possibly selling and seeking employment, for instance. Why should outsiders be restricted from buying? Who buys in the alternative scenario where employment is low or unattractive? How does that change the direction of a "failing" community?

Secondly beware of the unintended consequences of "taxing" demand out of existence. Potential buyers that bring potential income, and employment, might go elsewhere and marginally revive that community instead. How has the implementation of these additional taxes worked in practice and helped the community? Is that extra stamp duty diverted back from central government coffers for local community benefit? How would the community feel if a law was passed that all sales had to be made to locals, and that an offer of £300k to an outsider was outlawed and an insistence made they had to sell to an alternative at only £250k?

Investment in, and regeneration of, locations is rarely successful when built on an increased taxation and a demand depressive set of policies.

[88V8]

...beware of the unintended consequences of "taxing" demand out of existence. Potential buyers that bring potential income, and employment...

In a few cases. Southwold for instance. Aldeburgh.

But they are the exception. More usually, second homes are used a few weeks in the summer. That does not support local shops or even one local shop, and as for any notion of 'community' well pfft. I remember one coastal village we walked around, like a ghost town, and an aged local said over 90% are now second homes.

I have nothing against second homes but they should be limited to a percentage of properties in a locale, and imv pay more council tax, and the extra tax used to maintain local shop and transport, but that would involve joined-up thinking so....

As to greedy sellers cashing in, maybe, but in general one does not know one's buyer, their intentions, and if one were to enquire quite possibly one would not get an honest answer anyway. I would not compare this to landowners selling green field to developers, sellers who know perfectly well what they are doing.

V8

[servodude]

...beware of the unintended consequences of "taxing" demand out of existence. Potential buyers that bring potential income, and employment...

In a few cases. Southwold for instance. Aldeburgh.

But they are the exception. More usually, second homes are used a few weeks in the summer. That does not support local shops or even one local shop, and as for any notion of 'community' well pfft. I remember one coastal village we walked around, like a ghost town, and an aged local said over 90% are now second homes.

I have nothing against second homes but they should be limited to a percentage of properties in a locale, and imv pay more council tax, and the extra tax used to maintain local shop and transport, but that would involve joined-up thinking so....


V8

Absolute yarp to the above.
Compensate the community for holding a place empty.

[Eboli]

MrFoolish noted:

A reduction in stamp duty would be fine so long as they offset it with a Land Valuation Tax. An LVT would encourage the efficient use of land. But as it would hit the very rich it won't happen - so move along please.

This goes about half way. What should happen is the receipts from LVT should be the ONLY source of revenue for Local Authorities and it should be the ONLY tax levied on land (by which I mean bare land or the buildings thereon). You deal with second homes and Nimbys at one stroke. And you remove the excess burden of other taxes such as Stamp Duty Land Tax (to give it its proper name).

Perhaps it is time to dust down Henry George and to fully understand what the 1911 Constitutional Crises was really about. After all LVT was intended to be the single tax. But LVT is misunderstood badly by most who talk about it. To be clear LVT is a tax upon the optimal revenue value of the land subject to current planning permissions usually expressed as a percentage of the excess of that value over bare agricultural value of the land in question.

Eb.

[Lootman]

MrFoolish noted:

A reduction in stamp duty would be fine so long as they offset it with a Land Valuation Tax. An LVT would encourage the efficient use of land. But as it would hit the very rich it won't happen - so move along please.

This goes about half way. What should happen is the receipts from LVT should be the ONLY source of revenue for Local Authorities and it should be the ONLY tax levied on land (by which I mean bare land or the buildings thereon). You deal with second homes and Nimbys at one stroke. And you remove the excess burden of other taxes such as Stamp Duty Land Tax (to give it its proper name).

Perhaps it is time to dust down Henry George and to fully understand what the 1911 Constitutional Crises was really about. After all LVT was intended to be the single tax. But LVT is misunderstood badly by most who talk about it. To be clear LVT is a tax upon the optimal revenue value of the land subject to current planning permissions usually expressed as a percentage of the excess of that value over bare agricultural value of the land in question.

I would agree that if we had a LVT then other taxes that are land or property based should go away, such as council tax, CGT on property sales, and IHT on property assets.

I oppose LVT however. If we were starting a nation from scratch then LVT would be an elegant way to tax property. The problem is getting there from here, as such a transition would create huge winners and losers. At minimum I think you would have to grandfather existing property owners to avoid the new tax being seen as needlessly punitive on people who made decisions under very different rules. Otherwise I can't see the voters going for LVT - it would be dead on arrival.

[1nvest]

Poll tax is fairer, everyone pays for local authorities rather than just some, combined with a local sales tax and that levels in reflection of means.

[pje16]

Poll tax is fairer

I thought it was fairer but remember what happened in the 90s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_tax_riots

[servodude]

Poll tax is fairer

I thought it was fairer but remember what happened in the 90s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_tax_riots

If all the properties in a street were owned by people that lived elsewhere, so that they were for all intents and purposes empty, what would be levied by the local council for the upkeep of municipal infrastructure or services?

That's how communities due - through neglect; both financial and in terms of attention.

Eventually folk off load their holiday home because the place they wanted to think they could spend their time becomes an empty shell of what it was - and everyone loses

[Gerry557]

Well the joke now has a punchline.

You don't have to like it I suppose.

[CliffEdge]

There will never be affordable housing. Population growth is too high

[richlist]

People have been complaining about house prices for as long as I can remember. Whatever the Gov of the day have done, prices have continued onwards and upwards. Whilst those people, perhaps that includes you, have been bemoaning the situation I've spent the last 40 years buying and selling them and making a fortune. What's not to like ?

[Lootman]

If all the properties in a street were owned by people that lived elsewhere, so that they were for all intents and purposes empty, what would be levied by the local council for the upkeep of municipal infrastructure or services?

If such an imaginary town existed where nobody lived, then presumably the need for "municipal infrastructure or services" would be minimal.

Anyway, we got our stamp duty cut, so that is a start to relieving the tax burden on property ownership.

[Mike4]

There will never be affordable housing. Population growth is too high

Ridiculous assertion. My own house for example is perfectly affordable. How else do you think I managed to buy it?

Same applies to every other house in the land. Someone is 'affording' every one of them (save for those in repossession and a few other circumstances at the margins).

[Eboli]

Lootman noted:

I oppose LVT however. If we were starting a nation from scratch then LVT would be an elegant way to tax property. The problem is getting there from here, as such a transition would create huge winners and losers. At minimum I think you would have to grandfather existing property owners to avoid the new tax being seen as needlessly punitive on people who made decisions under very different rules. Otherwise I can't see the voters going for LVT - it would be dead on arrival.

The problem of the transition should not be the reason to discard LVT. I do accept that (and especially in the case of land) people make long term decisions according to the rules current and anticipated. IMHO, however, I think the advantages of LVT are so great that a long transitional period could be justified under which the tax is gradually shifted. It could be simply continuing the taxes on land under current codes fully at first and reducing them by, say, 1/20th as each year passes and introducing LVT in similar tranches. This might have the advantage of allowing the new tax code to be honed and tweaked to make it as simple as possible.

Eb.

[88V8]

I think the advantages of LVT are so great that a long transitional period could be justified under which the tax is gradually shifted. It could be simply continuing the taxes on land under current codes fully at first and reducing them by, say, 1/20th as each year passes and introducing LVT in similar tranches.

LVT eventually would lead to everyone having a poky little garden, and no large estates.

Still, it does seem to suit some people, a huge house in a silly little garden.
There were three houses built on the plot of the 1920s bungalow adjacent where we used to live, each one bigger than the bungalow.
Yuk.

V8

[Tara]

People have been complaining about house prices for as long as I can remember. Whatever the Gov of the day have done, prices have continued onwards and upwards. Whilst those people, perhaps that includes you, have been bemoaning the situation I've spent the last 40 years buying and selling them and making a fortune. What's not to like ?

Greed and boastfulness.

[CliffEdge]

There will never be affordable housing. Population growth is too high

Ridiculous assertion. My own house for example is perfectly affordable. How else do you think I managed to buy it?

Same applies to every other house in the land. Someone is 'affording' every one of them (save for those in repossession and a few other circumstances at the margins).

Interesting viewpoint. By that logic everything is affordable, including luxury yachts, private jets, castles, Caribbean islands etc. Someone is affording them.
Clearly we all live in a utopia.
Or were you just having your little joke?

[Lootman]

There will never be affordable housing. Population growth is too high

Ridiculous assertion. My own house for example is perfectly affordable. How else do you think I managed to buy it?

Same applies to every other house in the land. Someone is 'affording' every one of them (save for those in repossession and a few other circumstances at the margins).

Interesting viewpoint. By that logic everything is affordable, including luxury yachts, private jets, castles, Caribbean islands etc. Someone is affording them. Clearly we all live in a utopia.

Or were you just having your little joke?

Mike is correct in at least one important sense of the word "affordable". Almost every house offered for sale, sells. Almost every home offered for rent, rents. So clearly there are enough people who can afford homes in the UK, even if it there are some people who can't.

Whereas some people use the word "affordable" in a different sense, as in that everyone should be able to afford a house anywhere they choose. And that is not true. So I maybe cannot afford a house in Sandbanks, Salcombe, Padstow, Weybridge or Hampstead. But then I can afford a house in Poole, Plymouth, Truro, Woking or Hornsey.

Again maybe I cannot afford a 4-bedroom detached house but I can afford a 2-bedroom flat?

Again, some people use the phrase "affordable housing" to mean subsidised housing, and that is another whole discussion. But without defining what you mean by the word "affordable", it is hard to have a meaningful conversation about what if anything is wrong with the housing market. What I do know for sure is this - if homes really were unaffordable then asking prices would have to decline to what buyers can afford. If that isn't happening then that is a significant clue.

[richlist]

People have been complaining about house prices for as long as I can remember. Whatever the Gov of the day have done, prices have continued onwards and upwards. Whilst those people, perhaps that includes you, have been bemoaning the situation I've spent the last 40 years buying and selling them and making a fortune. What's not to like ?

Greed and boastfulness.

Yes Tara, it's called business, it's what I was taught from a young age. Work hard, be honest & respect people. Then when I left school I did business studies which instilled in me drive & ambition to make some money.......so I did. In the process I've done a lot of people a lot of favours.......I've borrowed lots of money, paid lots of tax, employed a few people and provided housing for many more.