Sunday, November 22, 2015
Tory think-tank wants to shut stable door after horse is long gone
Is it time to close the door to foreign buyers of British property?
It is a dramatic repudiation of decades of thinking in the Conservative party. These are the people who have, until now, equated rising house prices with wealth and prosperity, and who have profited enormously from buy-to-let and billions in foreign cash. But the Bow Group now recognises that Britain’s housing market is broken – and its prescription for reform may stagger traditional Tory supporters.
Posted by debtserf @ 08:16 AM (5163 views)
8 thoughts on “Tory think-tank wants to shut stable door after horse is long gone”
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quiet guy says:
“Foreign buyers now own close to 10% of the UK’s housing stock”
There’s evidence that money from criminal activities ends up in the London property market using shell companies registered in places like the British Virgin Islands.
http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/analysis/comment-and-opinion/house-prices-and-crime/5051538.fullarticle
There’s a fair case for restricting foreign ownership but an overwhelming case that we should be discouraging money laundering.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7c329314-32ae-11e5-bdbb-35e55cbae175.html (login required)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7c329314-32ae-11e5-bdbb-35e55cbae175.html (login required)
But nothing seems to happen.
taffee says:
So it’s a speculative bubble based on
Huge foreign buying/money laundering
Near zero rates
Funding for lending
Huge forbearance
Help to buy overpriced property
What could possibly go wrong?
icarus says:
@1 – Targeting international criminals is pussyfooting around the main issue regarding foreign investment’s causing a London property bubble. Which international law prevents individuals from building up massive fortunes by shady dealings which make them rich enough to become respectable (think Balzac’s ‘every great fortune is built on a crime’)? More international speculative investing is by such mega-rich individuals and their respectable investment vehicles than by druglords and corrupt Russian civil servants (it takes hundreds of the latter to equal one Roman Abramovich, who is now respectable after a ‘checkered’ past). And if the money is looted from a country via a corrupt government the leaders may have broken no laws (since they may have made those laws). And Gaddafi was Blair’s buddy in the last few years of Blair’s power but by 2011 US/NATO decided that he (Gaddafi !!) had become an international criminal with a billion’s worth of London property that was therefore seizable – while the Saudi leaders remained respectable investors.
pete green says:
I feel embarrassed to say this but a Land value tax of corse would solve 90% of all of this both in the UK and on the country where the dishonesty arose. Question strange other worldly guff from libby and flashy
hpwatcher says:
Yes.
clockslinger says:
I imagined I read an article (one above this on homepage) telling me we need the rich to buy more property.
mombers says:
The mansion tax or making council tax more progressive was unthinkable to the Tories, but they had to appear to be doing something about taxing property, and they’ve slipped in their own turds. It’s basic economics that transaction taxes are terrible. It goes without saying that it would have been a lot more efficient to raise the equivalent sum by an annual tax instead. Or just be honest and say that wealthy landowners are not expected to pay any more tax than they did before this change.
mombers says:
Whoops, commented on the wrong entry… should have been on the stamp duty one…