Tag Archives: london
Scottish govt announces extra tax on second homes, following rest of UK
Private rented sector landlords in Scotland and second home owners face an extra 3% stamp duty tax from next year which will bring them into line with changes in England and Wales. It was only a matter of time before the change came about after the UK Chancellor George Osborne announced the additional tax for England and Wales in his recent Autumn Statement. Scottish Finance Minister John Swinney said that he would bring forward legislation on the new second home charge soon so that it could be in force by April 2016. ‘I am conscious of the issue of second homes. We need to ensure that the opportunities for first time buyers to enter the market in Scotland are as strong as they possibly can be and we need to make certain that tax changes elsewhere in the UK do not make it harder for people to get on the property ladder,’ he explained. It means that an extra 3% rate will apply to the purchase of additional properties, such as buy to let and second homes from 01 April 2016 and be levied on the total price of the property for all sales above £40,000 on top of the current LBTT rates. The Scottish Government has forecast that it will raise overall LBTT receipts in 2016/2017 by between £17 million and £29 million, rising to a possible £66 million by 2020/2021. Overall the Government expects LBTT will raise £295 million in 2016/2017. John Blackwood, chief executive of the Scottish Association of Landlords, said that landlords will be disappointed and frustrated by the decision which will effectively ‘punish’ those who choose to invest in the private rented sector (PRS) Scotland. ‘The supplementary tax on the purchase of second homes will have a huge impact on the buy to let market and exacerbate an already serious shortage of properties in many areas. We firmly believe that the biggest losers from today's statement will be tenants who will now find it even harder to get the accommodation they want at a price they can afford,’ he added. Oliver Knight, a senior analyst in Knight Frank’s residential research department, said that sales will be brought forward as landlords and others seek to minimise their property tax burden. He added that buy to let property investors will also be able to continue offsetting all stamp duty against capital gains tax when they sell their property. Bob Cherry, partner at property consultants CKD Galbraith, also believes that there will be a flurry of activity before the end of March 2016. ‘This new levy will have implications for current landlords looking to sell as well as act as yet another deterrent to would be landlords thinking about the market as an investment opportunity,’ he said. ‘This measure, like the LBTT rises introduced earlier this year, is also a wealth tax on owners as buyers of buy to lets will seek to pass on the extra purchase costs by reducing… Continue reading
Number of British homes worth £1 million or more up 14% since beginning of year
The number of home owners in Britain whose property is worth £1 million or more has increased by 75,796 or 14% since January, according to the latest research. This 14% rise over the past year takes the total number of British so called property millionaires to 622,939, and means that 2.2% of all home owners have a property worth £1 million or more, up 1.9% over the past year. Of these million pound home some 82% are situated in London and the South East, a breakdown of the data from property website Zoopla shows. But Wales has the fewest and the number in Scotland have fallen by 4.5%. London, long the nation’s property powerhouse, has once again dominated the property millionaire league, with well over half (61%) of Britain’s million-pound piles located in the capital. In total, 380,337 homes in the city are now above the million-pound threshold, marking a 33,871 – or 10% increase – since the start of the year. Within London the boroughs with the highest number of property millionaires are notoriously expensive areas such as Westminster with 51,607 and Kensington and Chelsea with 44,972 but they have seen the smallest rise in £1 million plus properties of any borough over the past year, up just 0.9% and 0.6% respectively. Meanwhile, the boroughs that experienced the greatest increases of over 55% are within the top 10 lowest average priced boroughs in London including Barking and Dagenham, Newham, Redbridge and Waltham Forest, Outside of London, the East of England and Yorkshire and the Humber saw the largest increases of million pound properties, up 28% and 24% respectively since January. At the other end of the spectrum, Wales has the fewest million pound properties in Britain with only 1,404 in total despite, an 11% rise since January. Scotland was the only country to see a decrease in number of million pound homes in 2015, falling 4.5% to below 9,000 since the start of the year. ‘It's interesting to see that areas such as the East of England and Yorkshire have seen bigger percentage rises in the numbers of property millionaires over the last 12 months compared with the south which typically dominates each year,’ said Lawrence Hall of Zoopla. ‘However the number of properties valued at more than £1 million in the south still outweigh the rest of Britain boosted by wealthy hotspots such as Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster,’ he pointed out. ‘With an improving economy and the ongoing lack of housing supply, this continues to put upward pressure on house prices at all levels of the market and has nudged a whole new raft of properties over the £1 million mark. A price tag that was once the exclusive preserve of stately homes or massive mansions is now an increasingly common label for more modest houses, particularly in London,’ he added. Continue reading
House and rent prices set to soar in the UK, outlook report suggests
House prices in the UK are set to soar by 50% and rental prices by over a quarter by 20025, according to an outlook report from two key real estate organisations. At the same time the number of households renting is set to rise by 9% while home ownership will fall by 7%, says the analysis from the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) and the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA). Other predictions for the next decade included in the report are that buying a house will continue to get further out of reach for many and drastic action is needed to fix what it calls ‘a broken housing market’. With the average house price currently around £280,000, the ARLA and NAEA Housing 2025 report, compiled with CEBR, predicts house prices will reach an average price of £419,000. It’s even worse news for those living in London where house prices are expected to nearly double in the next decade, rising from £515,000 to £931,000. For those planning to enter the rental market in the next few years, rents are predicted to increase by 27% from a current UK average of £134 per week to £171 in 2025. Again, those living in London will be worse off as they’ll need to pay 34% extra in rent per week by 2025, an increase from the current average of £234, up to £314. Lower home ownership rates amongst the working age population and the ageing of the baby boom generation will continue to drive a decline in the proportion of UK households that own their own home, the report also suggest. Currently around 62% of the working population owns their own home and that could fall to 55% in the next decade. The report says that a declining home ownership rate will boost demand for rental properties, and drive house prices up. The Housing 2025 report also predicts the proportion of private renters in the UK will increase from 20% of households in 2015, to nearly 29% by 2025. ‘Buying and renting a home is a giant step, and is out of reach for many. Rent costs are already growing at a rate that people are struggling to keep up with, and they’re due to become even less sustainable over the next decade, particularly when the new landlord tax sets in, which will put off many would be landlords from entering the market,’ said David Cox, ARLA managing director. ‘If we’re to see the property market lifted out of its current state, we need to help the rental market from top down as well as bottom up, ensuring landlords are not penalised for their choice of income, and they can in turn give tenants the best possible price and service they deserve,’ he added. According to Mark Hayward, NAEA managing director, ongoing house price inflation, combined with low wage inflation, tighter lending restrictions and… Continue reading
