Chancellor Philip Hammond
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Latest property news
Still no relief from ‘unwarranted’ stamp duty rates in Hammond’s Spring Statement
Today's Spring Budget statement from Philip Hammond included many well-funded initiatives for house builders, but nothing for beleaguered home buyers.
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Exclusive: Airbnb ‘whole property’ listings rise by a third in just 12 months
The number of whole homes being rented out via Airbnb has increased by 31% over the past year, latest data shown to The Negotiator reveals. These figures are for London, the key market for Airbnb in the UK, where there were 29,476 properties available to rent during October, up from 22,400 the year before. This is also more than four times the number of ‘whole home’ listings compared to November 2014 when US-based consultancy AirDNA began collecting data. These ‘whole property’ listings are contentious because they can be in direct competition with traditional lettings, despite efforts to limit them. 90 day limit Airbnb earlier this year limited the number of total nights a property can be rented out during a calendar year to 90 to conform with Section 44 of the Deregulation Act 2015, which requires any landlord exceeding that limit to seek permission to do so. Although Airbnb’s system automatically limits a property’s account once it goes over 90 days of bookings, landlords can override it by confirming via a weblink form that they have the relevant permission from their local London council – no proof is required. Airbnb says this information including the listing address can be shared…
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Lettings legislation: is Government listening to the professionals?
Chancellor Philip Hammond’s autumn budget has failed to address the challenges faced by Britain’s ten million renters, says Belvoir CEO Dorian Gonsalves (pictured). “We are disappointed that despite persuasive arguments from many key financial and industry experts, there has been no reversal of the punitive tax changes that were imposed on landlords by George Osborne in 2015,” says Dorian. “We believe that reversing those tax changes would have been an important factor in helping to increase the supply of rental properties in this country and would alleviate some of the pressure on a Private Rental Sector (PRS) that is facing unprecedented stress as tenant demand continues to increase and less good quality housing is available to accommodate this. Dorian says that it isn’t just a lack of a deposit and affordability issues in buying a home that aree driving tenant demand – “In many ways this budget seemed almost to put an unhealthy emphasis on home ownership and failed to recognise that many young people are actively choosing to rent rather than to become first time buyers. “The reasons for renting are numerous, the English Housing Survey of 2015-16 showed that first time buyers are increasingly likely to live in…
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Budget 2017 – big news for first time buyers, landlords and tenants
Chancellor Philip Hammond has made several key housing announcements that will impact both the sales and lettings sectors of industry and which he said was part of a £44 billion package. “House prices are increasingly out of reach for many and it takes too long to save for a deposit and rent absorbs too much of people’s ability to save for a deposit,” he said during his speech. The most important of these is that Stamp Duty is to be abolished for first time buyers and, in more expensive areas of the UK such as London, the first £300,000 of a property’s sale value exempted from Stamp Duty, if priced less than £500,000. This, the chancellor said, would remove any Stamp Duty obligations for 80% of first time buyers. Other measures included enabling councils to charge a 100% council tax premium on empty properties – which may force many landlords to either rent out their properties or sell them. “Penalising empty home owners with a 100% council tax premium is unlikely to really be a deterrent for people who are likely to be high net worth,” says Nick Leeming, Chairman of Jackson-Stops. “If they don’t need the rent, this penalty…
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Who’s your agent, Theresa? PM joins the ranks of landlord MPs
There’s an agent somewhere in central London with a very special client and looking after a property with very high political connections. It has been revealed by Prime Minister Theresa May that she and her husband Philip have become landlords after deciding to rent out their central London apartment. The information has come to light after the Prime Minister, who is the MP for Maidenhead in Berkshire, declared the interest within the latest update of Parliament’s Register of Financial Interests. On 19th August the pair rented out their property in London, which unsurprisingly is worth more than £100,000 and generates more than £10,000 a year, the thresholds for property and rental income declarations by MPs. Landlord MPs Theresa May is not the only MP to join the House of Commons list of landlord MPs recently. Other MPs making the same declaration as the PM include Nigel Adams, MP for Selby & Ainsty, who has declared two rental properties in York, and Sarah Newton, MP for Truro & Falmouth, who has a rental property within her constituency. Earlier this year it was revealed that almost one in five or 123 MPs are landlords including Chancellor Philip Hammond (pictured, left), Foreign Secretary…
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£12 billion extra for housing revealed during Conservative Conference
Details of Theresa May’s announcements during her conference speech yesterday about how she will fix the nation’s ‘broken’ housing market have been revealed including measures worth an extra £2 billion. The extra cash will be spent on building additional council homes for rent, which comes on top of the extra £10 billion announced on Monday to fund an expansion of the Help to Buy scheme. The budget for affordable homes is to be increased by £2 billion to £9.1 billion and will see an extra 25,000 homes to rent created that are “affordable for local people”. Theresa said she was “getting government back into the business of building houses” and that she wanted to create “a new generation of council houses to help fix our broken housing market”. “Whether you’re trying to buy your own home, renting privately and looking for more security, or have been waiting for years on a council list, help is on the way,” she said. The £2 billion will also be used to change housing policy on affordable homes – subtly but importantly – to include funding for ‘social’ as well as ‘affordable’ council homes to rent. Help to buy The additional spending comes after Chancellor…
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Autumn Statement: Building industry response
The housing industry’s response to the Autumn statement has been mixed – depending on whether your a housebuilder or in lettings, or whether you believe what he says at all! Some like him… “Philip Hammond is something of a political novelty, he is a Chancellor who listens,” says Jeremy Blackburn, RICS Head of Policy as The Chancellor, Philip Hammond finished his Autumn Statement. “Our ‘listening Chancellor’ consulted widely with industry in the build up to today’s statement, as I’m sure he will as Britain moves closer towards Brexit. We haven’t yet seen him pictured in a hard hat, but he clearly understands the housing sector better than his predecessors. “RICS warned Treasury that the UK is facing a critical rental shortfall of 1.8m homes. Our latest figures show that there has been a 15 per cent decline in house sales to first time buyers over recent months. That tells us that for all the rhetoric, David Cameron and George Osborne’s Starter Homes Strategy failed to get off the ground.” We can only hope that Jeremy is right. Other industry comments were varied in their support and/or cynicism. Martin Skinner, CEO Inspired Homes, said: “I am pleased that the Government is recognising the…
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