Stamp duty threshold increased to £175k for one year

Jonbvn

BettiePage wrote: »

How much does a hips cost? People are moaning about a couple of hundred pounds, so I think this will matter to them.

I'm not convinced about this. IMHO, a lot of the people who have been moaning about HIPS are EA's.

giger

Well my brother is very pleased. He just reserved a new flat yesterday after having knocked £xxxx off. This is just a feather in his cap. Horses for courses though, this will help some but infuriate others (either those that have just bought of those with properties close to the threshold)

Chris2685

Aww, they could have made it 210 threshold!

poppy_f1

as a single hopefully soon to be first time buyer its not going to make any difference to me as theres no way i'd be buying a house round the 125k mark anyway

RichOneday_2

Governments fiddling in the markets - will they never learn?

This has got a Panorama/Dispatches scandal written all over it.

The statement says this is to encourage FTBs, or in other words to lure the naive in to a market that anyone with any experience wont touch with a bargepole.

So, the 'help' gets thousands of FTBs in to the market by incentivising with 1% of property value and then in 12 months time gets withdrawn. Anyone remember what happened last time a stamp duty perk was withdrawn from the market?

Oh that's right, it killed the market stone dead making a bad position much, much worse.

But, of course, history never repeats itself does it?

Mark-W_2

This is an incredibly short sighted and damaging move by the idiots at labour, once again a headline grabbing move with little or no thought of the consequences.

Any property currently for sale just above the £175k threshold has had thousands wiped off its value in an instant, as buyers will expect any house upto around £220k to drop in value a) because of the falling house prices and b) to meet the £175k threshold so they avoid paying stamp duty.
So a double whamy for those unfortunate to have a property for sale at the moment.

A more sensible plan would have been to cut the rate to 0.5% on properties upto £250k, this would have stimulated the market to some degree and not put any additional downward pressure on property prices.

Not to mention that this is only for 12 months so it will cause a very short term blip in some segments of the market.

Come on there has to be at least one person in the whole of the government with at least some form of intelligence?
Nope... sorry my mistake.

I long for the day when we have someone with common sense and financial knowledge somewhere in power.

mitchaa

I cannot see the government dropping it back down to £125k next Sept when they have an impending GE not long after.

I suspect in Aprils budget report, stamp duty will remain at £175k indefinitely.

Good move IMO.

giger

But to speculate what might happen based upon previous history is also very dangerous. In truth no one knows what state the economy or the housing market will be in in 12 months. Without incentives like this the market is going to be down for a very long time, and many first time buyers will be taking out fixed rate mortgages which should shield them from any drops (assuming they don't need to sell for personal reasons) for a few years.

Obviously there is more to it than that but this will be a big help for some

BettiePage

giger wrote: »

But to speculate what might happen based upon previous history is also very dangerous. In truth no one knows what state the economy or the housing market will be in in 12 months. Without incentives like this the market is going to be down for a very long time, and many first time buyers will be taking out fixed rate mortgages which should shield them from any drops (assuming they don't need to sell for personal reasons) for a few years.

Obviously there is more to it than that but this will be a big help for some

Even with these incentives, the market will continue to go down.

Fixed rate mortgages will protect from what drops? Negative equity?

mrstinchcombe

Fantastic news, now properties £175k-£210k will plummet to get below this new threshold.

Seems a bit odd that Brown and Darling have brought something in to speed up a crash, I thought they were clinging on the vain hope of preventing it!