Tag Archives: cookies
A mansion tax in the UK would mostly affect owners in London and South East
The announcement by the UK’s Shadow Chancellor that the Labour Party will impose a mansion tax on homes over £2 million will put a heavy burden on home owners in London and the South East. Ed Balls has announced that if Labour wins the general election next year the tax will be introduced and the revenue used to increase spending on services such as the NHS. ‘We will do it in a fair, sensible and proportionate way, raising the limit each year in line with average rises in house prices,’ he said. He claimed it was not right that a ‘billionaire overseas buyer of a £140 million penthouse in Westminster will pay just £26 a week in property tax’. Labour would not say how much the mansion tax would raise but the Liberal Democrats who have also raised the idea of a mansion tax calculated it raise £1.7 billion a year, but Labour’s higher bands for homes worth tens of millions could raise more. But with property prices having shot up in the past decade, families who moved into relatively affordable homes could suddenly face huge tax bills because their home has increased in value even if their income has not. Indeed, according to figures from the Halifax House Price Index, a property in Greater London bought for £500,000 in 1994, would now be worth £2,056,381 and according to the Centre for Policy Studies think tank, almost one third of properties worth more than £2 million have been owned by the same people for more than a decade, and around a sixth for more than 20 years. Almost 96% of the mansion tax burden would absorbed by London and the South East with more than 108,000 households nationwide affected by the proposed tax, according to leading property website Zoopla. After conducting analysis of all properties in the UK currently valued at more than £2 million, Zoopla found that in excess of 108,000 households would be liable for the annual levy, at an average of £15,000 each. Properties in London and the South East would account for the vast majority, 95.9%, of the additional £1.63 billion cost with the rest of the country contributing just 4.1%, or £66 million, of the total contribution. ‘The introduction of a mansion tax would disproportionately penalise home owners in London and the South East who are already responsible for the vast majority of property tax take in the UK,’ said Lawrence Hall of Zoopla. ‘With more than 100,000 homes to be affected by this new levy, it is somewhat misleading to call it a mansion tax when many three bed family homes in London and the South East would find themselves caught by it,’ he added. A mansion tax would distort the realities of who own homes in the £2 million plus bracket, according to Nick Leeming, chairman of national estate agents Jackson-Stops & Staff. ‘This will affect people all over the country, not just in… Continue reading
Expectations for future house price growth in the UK eases to 13 month low
Home owners in the UK still perceive that the value of their home increased in September but at the slowest rate for eight months, the latest property market sentiment index shows. Some 26.7% of the 1,500 households surveyed across the UK for the Knight Frank and Markit Economics index said that the value of their home had risen over the last month, while 5.5% reported a fall giving the HPSI a reading of 60.6, the eighteenth consecutive month that the reading has been above 50. However, the reading was down on the 61.8 achieved in July and was the fourth consecutive month that households’ perceptions about house price growth have moderated. Households in all 11 regions covered by the index reported that prices rose in September, with those living in London perceiving that the value of their home had risen at the strongest rate at 67.7, followed by households in the South East at 67.5 and the East of England at 64.4. The future HPSI, which measures what households think will happen to the value of their property over the next year, fell in September to 69.2, its lowest level since August 2013 and well below its peak of 75.1 in May. Expectations for price growth weakened in ten of the 11 regions covered by the index, with households in Wales the only ones more confident of future price rises than the previous month. In London expectations fell to a seventeen month low. Some 5.7% of UK households said they planned to buy a property in the next 12 months. This is down from 5.9% in August. Looking at the figures on a regional basis reveals that 9.3% of households in Yorkshire and the Humber plan to purchase a property in the next year, compared to just 3.4% in Scotland. Men are more likely to be considering buying a home in the short term, with 6% of such respondents saying they planned to purchase a home within the next 12 months compared to 5.4% of female respondents. House prices are rising across the UK, but our index signals a continuing slow-down in the pace of growth. The index started to ease in June and the trend is continuing. Some 46% of respondents expect the price of their home to rise over the next year, the first time this proportion has been under 50% this year,’ said Gráinne Gilmore, head of UK residential research at Knight Frank. ‘The strengthening economy, job creation and low base rates are helping underpin property values, but there are signs that households across the board are becoming more circumspect about the scale of price growth they expect,’ she added. According to Jack Kennedy, senior economist at Markit, these figures continue to lead other indicators and point to ongoing evidence of a cooling in the UK housing market. ‘With the index tracking property price expectations easing to a 13 month low in September, expectations weakened across all regions with the exception of Wales,’ he said. ‘The prospect of… Continue reading
Survey reveals opposition to big housing developments in UK
With general agreement that a major uplift in new home building is crucial to resolution of the UK's housing crisis, half of the population would oppose a major house building programme if it was in their immediate neighbourhood, a survey has found. Some 49% of Britons would be opposed to building more than 300 properties in their neighbourhood and 53% are anti-developments of 100 and 299 properties, according to the Property Tracker survey from the Building Societies Association (BSA). But when asked how much of the UK they believe should be ‘urban’, which is defined as housing, gardens, train lines and parks, nine out of 10 said more than 10% of the country should be developed when currently just 7% of the country is. The majority of Britons are only willing to support developments of one to 10 properties being built in their local area. Against that, the research also shows that Britons are increasingly open to the types of properties they want to live in and want greater diversity in the types of properties and tenures available to them. One in five people say they would be open to buying a shared ownership property, living in an off the shelf kit home, living in a converted retail or office space and even renting long term. And despite the fact that less than 10% of properties built in the UK are custom build, more than a third of Britons are open to building their own home. The research also shows that access to mortgage finance is now the single biggest barrier to owning a home among first time buyers, rising above raising a deposit for the first time since 2012. Now 57% of these buyers say that getting a mortgage is the most difficult hurdle to overcome, compared to 41% in June 2014 and 33% in September last year. Difficulty in accessing finance for home movers has been marginally less striking, rising from 42% in September 2013 to 51% in September 2014. Substantial press coverage around the changes to mortgage regulation implemented in April may be one of the reasons why first-time buyers are especially concerned about getting a mortgage. Recommendations from the Financial Policy Committee (FPC) to bring in a cap of 15% on the total number of mortgages available at or above 4.5 times a borrowers' income may also have affected confidence, especially to those buying for the first time in London and the South East. ‘These consumer views results illustrate the major barrier that governments has to overcome when it comes to boosting housing supply in the UK. People are open to new developments and even different types of housing and tenure, but the message is clear: not in my backyard,’ said Paul Broadhead, head of Mortgage Policy at the BSA. ‘Local opposition is a major barrier to any government building its way out of the current housing crisis and is why we need the position of Housing Minister to be a full Cabinet position… Continue reading
