Anyone else in the South East worried about Andy Burnham bringing in a land tax?

[Beachbooks]

With it looking likely that Andy Burnhan will be the next PM, I was interested to see if anyone else in London / the south east were worried about potential tax raises specifically around the land tax rather than stamp duty ?

A lot of my friends who live locally are worrying that he will make the land tax for the South East so high in proportion to other areas of the UK that it will be financially very difficult to afford but then also extremely difficult to sell!!

BTW we have very standard house and garden but we live in an expensive area

But it's the fault of owners of homeowners who have lived in it for years. And now they will pay a hefty price for the damage that they have caused...🙄

That is why I said it SHOULD account for income.

Its a mentality born out of centuries of taking what wasnt there’s
Labour just can’t get past that

Thats the point.

But the government can and this time with other peoples properties. Power as a weapon.

It is a disease.

Apologies !

Agree !!
but what an expensive admin policy that would be

What you said;

"The property bubble had started before Blair came to power in 1997"

Our definition of "property bubble" is obviously very different.

"You've linked to an FT article about Gordon Brown and financial and banking regulation - I'm not sure what that has to do with a property bubble."

The points you make about de-regulation are the same ones I made in another post, you give more detail, none of that compares to the lift off in property prices from the early 2000"s, Blair/Brown were running things then?

Homeowners aren’t to blame

Sorry, I was being ironic, badly!😂

🙃
missed that one.😆

😂

I should have used a 😉

@EasternStandard you mentioned a Labour loaded survey

Is that a current one ?

As an aside my dh got an email from Labour this morning asking if he’d support them
( Did anyone else get one ????)
and ‘blow me down’ he said no
My lifelong Labour dh 😃 I think those posters in the toilet have already started working 😆😆

I might put some up in the ladies at M&S, in fact I might put them up in the men’s too, according to Labour I can use them 🤢

No, people who grabbed all the cheap debt leading up to the bust and bailout are to blame, and the people who kept on borrowing thinking rates would never go up again, they are to blame. Homeowners benefited of course by being able to pretend that their house was worth a small fortune, maybe boasting about how much tax you pay will be the new "my house is worth" conversation?

We shouldn't be creating tax policies based on invented dystopian fantasies.

With interest rates north of 14%, my mates were "sitting around" wondering how they were ever going to pay the negative equity back, or whether they should just hand the keys back. Many of them did and couldn't get another mortgage for years. These were modest homes they had scrimped and saved to buy, often taking years to build up the deposit. We didn't have parents who could bail us out. Not to dismiss those who do.

The problem with housing bubbles is that at some point you run out of buyers to pay stamp duty, it was inevitable I suppose that they would eventually come for the actual houses because you can choose not to buy but you can"t choose not to be in your house when the tax bill comes?

I guess I see the massive increase in house prices from 1995 onwards as a more systemic issue, than the result of one particular Government. We inevitably have a series of short-term policies in this country because every Government only ever sees themselves in power for absolute max 5 years before they have to sell themselves to the electorate again. And because we have an adversarial system, rather than a consensual system, policies have to be seen to be the opposite of the previous incumbents - who clearly had it all wrong. I therefore see what has happened in the property market as an accumulation of unintended consequences that goes back to the 1970s - probably further.

No, house were dirt cheap in 1995, people thought property was a bad investment. The policies you mention were put in place to boost lending into housing but the true bubble formed much later, Blair/Broon could have put the brakes on but they instead opted to hit the accelerator as it allowed people to think they were "wealthy" as their house value went up, and it covered the lack of wage rises for ordinary people. A fitting end to Labour"s house price bubble actually would be if AB taxes the fuck out of everyone with a house then the market crashes!

I agree it's a systemic problem for which successive administrations need to bear some responsibility.

@KeepPumping it feels like you want to insist that only the Blair govt is responsible. As though nothing or no one came before. The housing market only came into existence in 1997!!!!

Buy to Let was brought in at the height of the Thatcher era in 1988. It came in as part of the Housing Act of that year, which extended landlord rights with the aim of boosting the private rented sector, allowing landlords to set rents and introducing assured shorthold tenancies. But it only took off in 1996, when buy-to-let mortgages were introduced - again before the Blair government came to power in 1997.

I do not doubt for one moment that the Blair Government could have managed the housing market better - of course they could. But surely you can see that there had been so many substantive changes that preceded them that allowed the prices to rocket?

Yes, but none of those changes come even close to the loose lending from the early 2000"s and then zero rates to bail it all out, I"m not sure the Tories would have bailed out the bankers in the same way.

But the "loose lending" as you call it couldn't have existed without the deregulation of the mortage market under Thatcher! It is all inter-linked.

Ah, so although Thatcher left power in 1990 she was responsible for the global property debt led economic meltdown in 2008, and Broon was just caught up in her bad policy. Got it now.

@KeepPumping again you are wilfully ignoring everything I have said about the housing issues being due to the unintended consequences of decades of tinkering with policies towards housing since the 1970s. I lay the blame at no one Government's door, as to me that is far to simplistic. I've said this so many times, but as you seem to want to deliberately ignore what I'm saying, perhaps we shall just agree to differ and you can carry on blaming Gordon Brown - if that makes you happy!

So when, and if, big if, AB gets his tax policy through do we blame Thatcher for that as well?

The main culprits were the bankers, the politicians went along for the two main reasons I mentioned, to blow a housing bubble you need either cheap debt or very loose lending, or both, at one point under Thatcher rates were at 17% and mortgage lending was 3.5 times your income if that, so your argument just doesn"t have legs IMO.