The Budget: What it means for the property industry

Wed 29 Nov 2017

Here's your brief summary of the key housing points from last week's budget...

Stamp Duty has been abolished for first-time-buyers buying property up to £300,000, with immediate effect. In London the first £300,000 of the cost of a £500,000 home will be exempt of Stamp Duty. The Chancellor believes 80% of first-time-buyers will pay no Stamp Duty whatsoever.

By the mid 2020’s the Chancellor wants us to be building 300,000 new homes a year, whilst also making them more affordable via a £2bn fund for building. An additional £34m has been allocated for construction industry training, in order to meet the expected skills gap predicted when building all of these additional new homes. 

Five new Garden Towns have are to be built across the South East, although exact locations are yet to be announced – however we believe there will be at least one in proximity to the South Cambs / North Herts area. This will aim to soak up much of the high demand for people looking to move to this region of the country.

The government will bring in new laws to give local authorities the power to charge a 100 % council tax premium on empty properties. 'It cannot be right to leave properties empty when so many are desperate for a place to live,' the chancellor said. The current tax cap is 50 per cent.

The Help to Buy scheme is to be extended further, with an additional £10m invested in the government scheme that supports people in buying a new home with just a 5% deposit. It is predicted a further 135,000 will benefit from this scheme extension. 

In a bid to halve rough sleeping by 2022, and to eliminate it by 2027, the chancellor announced the launch of a Homelessness Reduction Task Force. The government will also invest £28 million in three Housing First pilots in Manchester, Liverpool and the West Midlands, and will provide £20 million to fund schemes which give homeless people access to the private rented sector.