But major property tax reforms are on the cards longer-term… “Ministers and officials are looking at the tally of winners and losers from the abolition of council tax and stamp duty,” reports the Sunday Times. “They would be replaced with a proportional property tax, levied on the existing values of homes.”
Mixed messages from Whitehall on an extension to the Stamp Duty holiday, as a popular petition forces a debate in the House of Commons.
The sales market has seen a busy start to the year, although asking prices have dipped in the last month as vendors price competitively.
48% drop in transactions marks ‘first official confirmation that fears over unsafe housing are freezing the market’
A third national lockdown has deterred just 14% of buyers and sellers from a purchase or sale in 2021, according to a survey of over 10,000 people, with 81% planning to carry on as they planned.
New figures show a massive decline in basement-related applications across RBKC & Westminster since the introduction of stringent rules designed to prevent over-development.
The pace of property price inflation in the UK has slowed sharply since the EU Referendum. 14% growth since 2016 compares to 28% – double the rate – in the equivalent time period prior to the vote. London has seen an even more dramatic slowdown.
“It is a mixed and changing picture but with an overall growth in confidence,” says the RIBA. “Whilst this confidence is likely to falter in the current lockdown, there is hope that it will return, once restrictions are eased.”
“The volume of activity in prime residential markets [outside London] for [2020] as a whole was the strongest since before the global financial crisis,” says Savills.
Housing market activity continues to rise but momentum is easing, according to the latest survey of Chartered Surveyors.
Huge inventory builds up across the prime postcodes after Covid blows seasonal activity patterns off course.
The government may be “absolutely determined” to keep the housing market open, but pressure is mounting from various quarters – including the science one – to pull the shutters down again as Covid continues to wreak havoc across the UK. It is possible to do things safely, counters PCL agency MD Becky Fatemi, and avoid the wide-ranging fallout of another closure…