Mansion Tax at £1.5m - what will this mean?

[MaureenOHara]

Does anyone have any idea what this might mean for an individual and what it might do to the market. What happened to the £2m market and will that be replicated or is it different?

This will mean lots of jealous people being happy. This will mean the Russian Revolution.2 (1917 version) only in the soft form but still 'expropriate from the expropriators'. Little did I know, studying history, that it will repeat itself. Fascinating times ahead?

House prices in many parts haven’t kept up with inflation & flats have lost value in many cases.

Ever increasing house prices are not a good thing but I only favoured a property tax if they scrapped other taxes.

I love how posts like this always lead to Londoners living in homes worth well over a £1million claiming that actually where they live is a crime ridden hell hole, that they are, in fact, very socially deprived and that their home is barely a step up from a slum property, requiring £100ks of renovation just to become liveable...

It's tough when your house loses value but that's been happening to thousands of houses in geographical pockets outside London and the Home Counties for decades (and to me, twice, since the late 1980s). If you pay a ridiculous price for a pretty average home in the South, or in another prestige location in the UK, you do so off wages which have sky rocketed compared to the average. Your children can't afford to buy there, yet anything which might dampen prices is anathema.

A family living in a £400,000 home in Blackpool, faces a higher Council Tax bill than a Billionaire living in a £10 million mansion in Mayfair. This cannot be fair or right.

Then they will back for PPT following an election win. They are sowing the seeds for "fairness" being taking more from anyone who earns more than you.

Very broadly, eg properties on a road of 3-bedroom 1930s terraces were rated as between £x and £xx and Edwardian semi-detached houses in the next road were rated between £y and £yy. They weren't assessed individually.

But that was before extensions and loft-conversions became popular. There are houses in my road that have barely changed since the original council tax valuations whereas others have been renovated and extended. I would guess the difference in value between them now could be up to £200k. They're not over £1m though.

What is the benefit of a land tax ? An acre or garden in the SE is still worth a lot more than the north so it’s no different to pricing houses in different categories. Besides I thought I read somewhere that the cost of revaluing was too expensive and would take years .

London is massively Labour. Most Labour voters are wealthy. They are still pretending they are the party of the Working Classes although they haven't been for about 40 years.

According to Wikipedia 59 of the 75 parliamentary constituencies in Greater London are Labour.

@bingobangs i think she means replacing or fitting windows. Not cleaning them. No windows cleaning company is losing work.

Because you would have to replace other taxes with one blanket property tax including stamp duty so the idea is that people who currently live in large houses they no longer need will move to smaller ones to avoid the higher land value tax without worrying about paying a load of stamp duty. It would also replace Council tax, so it would make little difference at that end. But you may be correct about the cost being too high.

@WildLeaderI still would replace a window if it needed doing so. In this market I don’t think it would even add any value.

I think it will significantly help in bringing property prices down to a rational level, and that's a very good thing.

@Messedupmyusernameagain yes my parents, in-laws, relatives do not want to downsize & pay stamp duty. It doesn’t matter that their 1m plus houses only cost 40k, stamp duty is unfair 🤷🏻‍♀️

oh absolutely @bingobangs

in fact we’ve just replaced all our windows last week. A process that’s taken almost 3 years of fighting woth the local council, but that’s another story 😂

nothing could stop us, they were desperately bad condition.

When you buy a property that has lodged extension or renovation with building regs, your house is reassessed. So the owner that did the work doesn't get the rebanded council tax, but the new owner does. This happened to us when we bought a property with a lift conversion and we were rebanded C to D.

A pensioner who downsized to an ordinary terrace in Manor Park could likely be forced to move again if PPT existed today. They wouldn't really be “downsizing” at that point they would just be moving to cheaper area because the value of the home they already own had risen around them pushing up their PPT. They haven't earned more money but because the area has become more desirable and their annual tax bill has risen with the desirability. Keen to hear the fairness argument for them having to move again, especially given that they are no longer asset hoarders.

I would also be keen to hear where all the houses are for people who actually want to downsize, nor need to move again because their area has become more expense. For everyone with a parent who won't move, there will be plenty who would, if only to release some equity because the State Pension barely touches the sides for most people.

At what point do we start coming up with sustainable solutions rather than short-term fixes that are no better than kicking the can down the road? We have a shortage of the right homes in the right places, a broken housing market and councils with vastly different abilities to raise money locally (that before we get on to the quality of leadership). Add another shit government with equally poor skills and even more questionable motivations.

Moving the tax burden onto this particular administration's sacrificial lambs doesn't actually fix any of it.

Re read my comment. You’ve misunderstood

@TortephantI misunderstood window cleaning but I still don’t understand why you wouldn’t paint a room for example.

They need to ensure there are suitable places for old people to downsize to and sort out the mess with retirement home purchases

moving is also stressful so elderly people will need support with that too

but this is an ideological tax and nothing burnham has suggested so far suggests he’s willing to look at the bigger picture to fix the mess we are in

Yes exactly. Now that borrowing costs have normalised prices also need to normalise. Lower housing costs will be good for everyone (appart from lending institutions obviously) and will improve the economy. Some short term pain for those who borrowed to the max at cheap rates cant be avoided though. So expect quite a lot of flak for pointing it out at dinner parties. Fortunately the numbers of folk in that situation aren't as high as you might think. Only about a third of uk residential property is mortgaged and of those most dont have high ltv.

It raises a tiny amount but scores points as it hits someone else, again.

I have a full house renovation to do, if I do it. That means stripping walls back, lime plastering, lime wash or specialist painting. This is not a small job. it's not a tub of dulux over a weekend.

I dont agree with the policy, it will further jam up the property market.
But come on people, even in London its a posh house in a posh area. You can make your point about it being counterproductive without implying that you live in a hovel and this would push you to destition..

Are they intent on calling it a mansion tax when property of that price can be terraces in London?

London is normally pro Labour so he’s taking a very big risk with this policy. Which party is going to benefit from people pissed off with this unfair tax on the SE? If it was about fairness then it would be tied to council tax band or other measure. (council tax band means that they’d save on assessing properties as CT requires property value assessment. )

I guess the issue is more that an actual mansion in another part of the country won’t attract this tax but a 4 bed terraced with a postage stamp garden will in London

they should call it a high value homes tax rather than a mansion tax