An annual property tax set at 0.48% of the value of the home is being floated by a Think Tank close to the Treasury according to The Sunday Times. While there will be no radical change to property taxes in this budget according to Tim Shipman, ministers and officials areContinue Reading
Lots of people calling for the Stamp Duty holiday to be extended despite the Government stating that they won’t indeed the Telegraph have started a campaign. When ig was originally announced in July last year it was clearly signed that it would end in March 2021. Estate agents, conveyancers, mortgageContinue Reading
The UK Government has announced a third Lock Down with similar restrictions on movement and on businesses as in March last year. In England, the housing market remains open, you can buy and sell, let and rent and estate agents can remain open and operational. Some things will be difficult,Continue Reading
Last January the BBC repeated it’s annual round of house price predictions. This year they have sensibly decided not to repeat the exercise. Turned out we were all unable to see what would happen to house prices despite a number of experts changing their predictions (in some cases several times)Continue Reading
The Chancellor, ‘Dishy Rishi’ presented his Spending Review this week and the Office for Budget Responsibility has published their latest Economic and fiscal update. The section on housing is interesting as the Office has updated their views on both transaction numbers and prices. House prices are expected to fall backContinue Reading
The housing market in England is to remain open during the four week lockdown. The Housing Secretary confirmed the news on Saturday evening via Twitter, some hours after Boris Johnson announced the lockdown. Current Government guidance from August, says: “The process of searching for and moving into a new home is different because property agents, conveyancers and otherContinue Reading
The annual FT Weekend Festival went virtual this you and I joined Aneisha Beveridge, Hamptons research director, Nathan Brooker, FT House & Home deputy editor to discuss the strange 2020 housing market and what the future might hold. One of the most popular sessions of the three day event I’mContinue Reading
Since the market re-opened (in England on 13th May) we’ve had lots of anecdotal indications on what is happening to the housing market and more importantly to prices and we’ve had some detail on asking prices but we have yet to see any concrete data on what buyers have beenContinue Reading
Nobody knows what’s going to happen to the housing market, to prices or to transaction volumes over the coming months and years. There are as many opinions as there are people you ask. Most optimists happen to be estate agents, conveyancers and mortgage brokers and to be fair they areContinue Reading
The Chancellor has announced a Stamp Duty holiday to take immediate effect and which will run until the end of the financial year. The details have been published and the official online Stamp Duty calculator has been updated so you can calculate the tax you will owe. SDLT is dueContinue Reading
You’d be surprised how many people equate ‘value’ with an asking price. It’s not hard to see why – agents call their pre-marketing pitches “valuations” and sellers often mistake of choosing an agent to sell their property based on the asking price they recommend. The asking price is all partContinue Reading