Tag Archives: Stamp Duty

The Marching Morons* of the Residential Property Market.1

Shhh, don’t tell HMRC, but I may have found a faultless Stamp Duty saving scheme!

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While the best things in life may be free, it is an inviolable truth that the government will somehow find a way to make them taxable. While that may be the price we pay for representation (a much-debated topic since American colonists rebelled against British rule in the 1760s), not all taxes are equal. Or indeed fair. One of the most egregious examples is Stamp Duty, which is festering away under the epidermis of our beleaguered housing market. However, the good news is that there is a cure. Admittedly, you need several million swilling around in the piggy-bank to take advantage of this loophole, which up until now, has not been exposed.

If you rent instead of buy in the uber rental market, for say five years, the government will give you a rent-free tenancy for this period. Sounds implausible? Let me explain… Continue reading →

The Marching Morons* of the Residential Property Market

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Although the mass-suicide of lemmings is disputed (apparently, they’re just following biological urges and can’t always see the edge of a cliff), it would seem that property valuers and analysts are indulging in the same behaviour. The rumour-mill has been cranking out reports that prices in the residential property market will undergo a significant correction of circa 14% after the Spring of 2021.

Is this prescient foresight or doom ‘n’ gloom prognostication? Let’s look at the economic fundamentals.

One side-effect of all this Covid chaos is the growing chasm between residential property consumers and the parlous state of the economy. Continue reading →

Government cutting red tape on the constipated planning process

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I shout ‘Hallelujah!’ about the latest government proposals to circumnavigate the mindless red tape and labyrinthine process of planning procedures, which have held back the housing supply of affordable and private homes to-date.

In the Thatcher era, we built 300,000 new homes and today we barely dribble out 150,000 of the ‘little buggers’ and although Prime Minister May did make some useful soundings about housing supply, Boris is ‘trying’ to get the deal done. Continue reading →