Is London really full of normal working people living in million pound houses?

[Morosky]

Because Heseltine seems to think there is, he just said so on Question Time.

Who is out of touch me or him?

I live in a leafy part of West London in Zone 2. Wouldn't be able to find a more than 1500 square foot house for less than a million. This area is very middle class, and certainly NOT upper class.

look at my link and have a cry, sofaqueen

I drive past this every day on the way to work, would need double your million though but it would have my commute so I would be saving the planet

bang on a million so you would escape mansion tax and you would be round the corner from me

halve my commute sorry.

Those classic design railway workers' terraced houses that cover much of London have 2 reception rooms and 3 decent sized bedrooms. They are narrow but go back a long way. Those are ordinary houses.

The point I was making about the London terraces that would be subject to a Mansuon Tax, was not that they are absolutely average, just they are fairly ordinary family houses and a long way off being a mansion. If you lived in 4/5 bedroomed terraced house in Sheffield/Darlington/Folkestone/(insert just about anywhere outside of large city centres and London commuterbelt), you would hardly think you had arrived on Millionaires' Row.

I consider myself and dp to be normal working people, yet there is NO way we could afford to buy in London, we don't have parents that can help us out. We don't have hugh salaries so we are stuck with renting.

oh no Riven Thamesmead is lovely

Morosky I'd love to live in Devon!

I live in Dorset, so close!

As everyone seems to agree that these 'house millionaires' are mainly achieving their 'wealth' through no effort of their own but simply the operation of the market, surely the best way to rectify the problem is not an annual tax (as the LibDems may or may not be proposing) but an absolutely swingeing tax on profits made through the sale of said houses.

Thus, if you purchased for £250k, and sell for £1.5million, you could be taxed on the 1.25m profit at, say, 80%. This would mean that people could carry on living in their own homes without penalty, but when they come to sell, they can't gouge the market. There would be no incentive to sell high, and house prices would come down to sensible levels.

There is already a swingeing tax for houses costing over £500,000. It's called 4% stamp duty. To me Stamp Duty is a tax on freedom of movement and often a tax on misery. As often people are moving due to one of the three Ds - debt, divorce and downsizing.

4% is not swingeing by any definition of the term.

Avenging. Well if you were about to divorce and your home had to be sold in order for you and your soon to be ex spouse to purchase two homes (both of which would attract stamp duty at the appropritate rate), you might change your mind.

4% of £500,000 (which won't buy you much of a house in London) is £20,000.00 That's a lot of money in most people's books.

whoops Morosky I'd happily live there too!

Agree best solution is sort out house prices question is has Gordon done it for us come May 2010?

Reduced it is wrong when someone 'makes' more money tax free by sitting in their real estate for a year (which lets face it is in many cases actually owned by the bank) than they do by actually going out and working (even pre-tax) how can that be healthy?

we have shored up a hornets nest for our children

massive debt (Uni)
global warming
high house prices
loss of pensions etc

the mansion tax is misguided for plenty of reasons - aside from anything else a house is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

indeed SDLT can be quite painful, as can IHT and indeed CGT if applicable.

but high house prices generally only profit those who

1. own more than one house
2. want to leave the country for ever
3. can change areas to capitalise
4. estate agents working on a %age basis.
5. inherit a house

just living in the thing whilst it increases in value does you little good (except as an asset you can raise capital against). Therefore being taxed for that alone would be daft - there are so many taxes already surely something could be done within the existing tax framework?