The Budget 2009
As you will be aware, Alistair Darling has announced his budget for 2009 with plenty of rhetoric about helping present and prospective property owners.
Raising the upper level of tax to 50% – These sort of tax hikes have a way of not happening, the people who earn £150 (Fred the Shred? ) have a way of getting out of paying tax, this is a salve to Old Labour, but not necessarily a money maker. If it was it would boost the economy of which ever tax haven is favoured these days….Virgin Islands, Switzerland or elsewhere. The money raised if any will be swallowed by by the huge black hole which is the UK National Debt, Gordon Brown was in charge of the purse strings while the UK borrowed vast sums and will now have to pay it back during the start of recession.
Payment holidays for mortgages – These have been around for a while and loads of people signed up for them and we are still having record repossessions… Many people would rather be paying less rather having a few months out just to be in the same position.
End of tax breaks for second/holiday home owners – Those renting their second properties will lose out by average £4,000. Is this a secret way of stimulating growth in the property market? These changes will be brough in in 2010 and will effect around 20% of people with second homes.
In the last few weeks I have been to view quite a few properties, and none of them were occupied and the same story was forthcoming from the estate agents, client had rented but had decided to sell and had lower price to sell. There has been no assistance given to ‘buy to rent’ owners in the budget.
If you did not like the Budget 2009 style then hold on for 2010 when the staggering borrowing the Labour Government did on our behalf in the last 10 years comes back to bite us big time….