After months of febrile speculation and doom-laden predictions ahead of the autumn Budget—featuring an ensemble cast of Wealth Taxes, Exit Taxes, and eye-watering hikes to Capital Gains and Inheritance Tax—the final script turned out to be rather more modest. In fact, for most, it was positively tolerable by comparison. Continue reading
If life is like a box of chocolates, then residential property this year has been a particularly mixed assortment — some delicious, some nutty, and a few best left untouched.
It would be fair to say that this has not been an easy year for the Residential Property Market. That said, I struggle to share the media’s apparent enthusiasm for declaring a cataclysmic collapse in values. In reality, the low to middle markets have behaved with surprising decorum. The top end, admittedly, has been less cheerful since the government decided to give the non-dom regime a good kicking — with all the finesse one might expect. Continue reading
After months of fevered speculation before the Budget, residential property transactions juddered to a halt. I always suspected that as ‘confidence arrives on foot and leaves by horse’, the feel-bad factor’ generated by the 4-5 months mindless delays before the Budget, would have a detrimental effect on retail spending and economic growth. Lo and behold, we have just heard from the Office of National Statistics that output in the UK economy fell by 0.1% in October, after a similar contraction in September. Continue reading