Stamp Duty Below £175K Abolished
Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have made a move to quell the recent unrest about house prices and the apparently impending recession by giving every seller a year long boost. The previous lowest level where you paid Stamp Duty 1% Tax was £125,00, this has now been raised to £175,000. This will last for 1 year from Wednesday 3rd 2008.
Also announced today were measures to help people struggling with large mortgages with increased rates of interest by giving councils and Social Housing Landlords the power to pay off mortages while charging reasonable rents. This money will be found from previous funding and ‘brought forward’ to improve housing in the short term.
Conservatives and Liberals have condemned these measures as short-term solutions and as an attempt to save Gordon Brown from Election defeat or being ousted by his own party.
With the cost of living rising and the global economy facing the worst slump in 20 years, its unclear what Brown could do, the UK property market has been inflated for most of the 21st century and many people are seeing this as a sensible re-adjustment rather than a collapse in prices. People buying in popular areas will never lose much, however builders and speculators may lose out in the medium term.
Where will Gordon Brown be finding the money to pay for this? Millions of pounds will have to be found from somewhere, since someone like me (who bought property last year) wont be moving in the near future I am not keen to fund others just to boost the number of properties sold and artificially raise prices. The government also announced that households earning under £60,000 will get ‘interest free’ loans to fund property.