Tag Archives: residential property market

The Marching Morons* of the Residential Property Market

Budget 2020: Conspicuously absent of any reforms on the parlous SDLT escalator, apart from a much unneeded surcharge for foreign buyers

Posted on by

Here was a golden opportunity missed by the new Chancellor, to get the Residential Property Market off its knees, by reviewing the Stamp Duty Escalator, imposed by former Chancellor Osborne, in 2014.

According to the OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility), Osborne claimed that the Stamp Duty Receipts in 2014 i.e. £14.5billion would, as a result of his reforms, be £19.5billion in 2020, but instead, turned out to be a paltry £12.5billion.

In effect, that these measures cost the Treasury £1billion in lost tax and was an eye watering 50% prediction error, which is an unacceptable overstatement. Continue reading →

The post-election residential property market – is it safe as houses or should you run for sunnier climes?

Posted on by

As a nation we are going through changing times, with the various political parties spewing out their pre-electoral rhetoric, like the drunkard that everyone tries to avoid. In their desperate thirst for power, the three main parties have resorted to the last refuge of the scoundrel; that is, profligate spending that appeals to a short-sighted, public-sector mentality, venal, low-IQ voter base that refuses to think beyond the next government hand-out.

Worzel Gummidge, the leader of the Labour Party and his Caledonian gimp McDonnell are threatening to inflict their Communist intentions upon us, which will transform this country into that heaven of economic rectitude, Venezuela. What they don’t break they steal, emulating their hero and mentor, the late banana-flavoured dictator Hugo Chavez.

Continue reading →

The only certainties in life are death and that higher taxes raise less money

Posted on by

According to Winston Churchill, “There is no such thing as a good tax”. He could very well have been referring to the draconian changes to Non-Doms and Stamp Duty, which are now costing the Treasury £3billion per year. One could play a game of ‘Fantasy Infrastructure’ and ponder how many hospitals and schools could be bought for this humungous amount of money.

The omnipresent, politics of envy, represents the pinnacle of socialist utopian thinking, managing to be both expensive and inefficient at the same time. Like all caring, sharing lefties, Labour governments can’t wait to get their greedy hands on other peoples’ stuff so that they can whittle it away. The hapless, former Chancellor Osborne succumbed to this practice in 2014, when he caved into the usual Labour clamour about ‘soshul justis ishoos’. Continue reading →