Friday, Nov 23, 2007
John Stepek wrote a real masterpiece
Firstrung: A brilliant article from Moneyweek
"So if you wanted to slow the market up, you might do things like making it harder for people to sell, by extending Hips across the entire market. And you might also promise to drop capital gains tax on second properties - if you just hold onto them until April. A cynic might even go so far as to suggest that the government might announce a re-think or a U-turn on CGT just before April, to avoid a glut of buy-to-let properties hitting the market. Perhaps Alistair Darling (or whoever's Chancellor by then - it's all up to Gordon Brown anyway) will say that the government needs more time to consult with the business world. All idle speculation of course, but you've got to think sneaky when there's someone as mendacious as Mr Brown in charge." MWUAUAUUHHHH
4 Comments
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1. enuii said...
Extending HIPS only makes it harder to sell crap houses, my local EA's only charge £200 for them so there can hardly be any great detail. Plus many FTB's can't afford to buy anyway especially since mortgage lenders are getting a bit pickier so there is nothing nasty Mr Brown can do anyway as it's all out of his control now.
Having fiddled with all the economic levers for the last 10 years the economic machine is about to go off the rails and will go wherever it wants to now and not where Brown would like it to.
2. paul said...
I think the opposite of John Stepek on this to some extent. I think it will accelerate the decline, by stripping out the speculative sellers. If you're looking to cash in on the spare property that's hemorrhaging money, 200 quid for a HIP is nothing.
Price falls are accelerating now.
3. planning4acrash said...
4. Flash_2007 said...
I agree with Pauls comment above about HIPs accelerating the decline. I put my flat up for sale last august and sold it in January. I had a few fair offers that I rejected and eventually sold for just 3k under the overinflated asking price but things weren't as bad as the are now and I knew I could hold out for a better price. If I had a HIP and was going to have to go to the hastle of renewing the searches etc every 6 months I would probably not have tried to hold out and taken the first reasonable offer.