Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Key Budget points for landlords


Universal credit
£1.5bn to remove seven-day waiting period; new claimant in receipt of housing benefit will get it for two weeks.

Stamp duty
First time buyers will have no stamp duty on homes up to £300,000, or on the first £300,000 of properties up to £500,000.

Rents
£125m of funding over the next two years to help 140,000 people.

Housing
  • 100% council tax premium on empty properties.
  • £28m in three new housing pilot schemes – in the West Midlands, Manchester and Liverpool – to halve rough-sleeping by 2022 and eliminate it by 2027.
  • £44bn of capital funding to help build 300,000 homes annually by mid-2020s.
  • New money for home builders fund.
  • £630m ‘small sites fund’.
  • £8bn of financial guarantees to support private housebuilding.
  • £2.7bn housing infrastructure fund.
  • £1.1bn for new urban regeneration.
  • £34m to train construction workers.
  • A review to be chaired by Oliver Letwin to look at ways to speed up planning permission.
  • Five new garden towns.
  • One million new homes on the Cambridge-Milton Keynes-Oxford corridor by 2050.
Budget reaction -

ARLA's David Cox, comments:“There were a number of positive announcements in relation to homes for consumers in today’s Budget. We are pleased that the government will consult on longer term and more secured tenancies, this feels to be in line with the holistic approach they are taking towards the rental market. We also welcome the launch of the Homelessness Reduction Taskforce and look forward to working closely with them in the future.”


Emoov's Russell Quirk comments: “The Treasury’s ‘pledge’ to build more homes is a story we’ve been told many times before, but these well-worn, heady platitudes have not been fulfilled since way, way back in 1969 when the Beatles were topping the charts.
The likelihood of hitting the ambitious target of 1 million homes by 2050 is slim, to say the least, and one that is unlikely to be hit. The ‘urgent’ review of the gap in planning permission and the actual building of houses is also far too little too late and should have been implemented many budgets ago.
A cut in stamp duty for first-time buyers is the only real sign of good intent by Chancellor Hammond and one that may help reignite the property market momentarily, but some may say acts as yet another diversion from the elephant in the room of a continued failure to build a meaningful number of affordable homes. Indeed a cynical electoral bribe.”
Tim Walford-Fitzgerald, private client tax partner at the chartered accountants HW Fisher & Company, comments: “Buy-to-let landlords could be forgiven for pinching themselves. For once they’ve not been the whipping boys of a Budget. After years of being portrayed as the villains of the property market, they’ve escaped further unwanted attention from a Chancellor who has instead chosen to focus on the housing market’s fundamentals rather than seeking scapegoats.


Andrew Turner, chief executive at Commercial Trust Limited comments "The Government’s ambitions for an improved Universal credit process and a consultation into longer-term tenancy agreements and in so-doing has delivered positive affirmation of the importance of buy-to-let for the long-term."










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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousNovember 25, 2017 at 10:22 AM

    I can only hope that the 'empty house' clause in the council tax does not relate directly to houses that are between rentals, a void period is hard enough and someone moving on due to circumstances beyond my control should hardly lead to a punitive measure such as double council tax surely?

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  2. AnonymousNovember 27, 2017 at 6:23 AM

    The current regulations have allowed just that. Not only are you penalized for a tenant that leaves without notice so leaving a void, you are also demotivated to do renovation or upgrading between tenants as you need to pay the higher rate during this period.

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