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Stamp duty holiday ends, replaced by New Buy Guarantee
The stamp duty holiday was introduced in 2010 to help first time buyers
The stamp duty holiday for first-time house buyers has ended, meaning they will join others in paying 1% tax on properties worth more than £125,000.
The government says it ended the holiday because it had been ineffective in helping people to buy.
It is introducing a New Buy Guarantee scheme instead, which it says will be better at getting people on to the housing ladder.
The stamp duty holiday was introduced in 2010.
It allowed first-time buyers to save up to £2,500 on the purchase of their first home by exempting them from stamp duty on homes worth up to £250,000.
Under the New Buy Guarantee, the government and major house builders will guarantee part of the loan from banks to first-time buyers.
This is intended to help those with smaller deposits to get on the housing ladder.
The government also announced a new 7% rate on homes over £2m last week.
And it further outlined a clampdown on stamp duty avoidance at the higher end of the market.
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Comment number 59.
grouting tiles24th March 2012 - 21:00
If govt does not / cannot remove stamp duty altogether for modestly priced properties it should at least make it a gradual sliding scale so that lumps don't form around £250 k / £ 1 million etc.
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Comment number 58.
boldriley24th March 2012 - 20:51
Abolish stamp duty for properties less than £500k and double it for all second homes.
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Comment number 21.
madhatter24th March 2012 - 17:16
Houses where I live have been made so expensive because of the second home buyers. Houses stand empty for 40 weeks a year and local people have to move miles away to buy a home, shops close and public services are cut. In some places over 50% of houses are holiday homes.
Do we have a housing shortage? No
Are house prices over inflated? Yes
Proper taxing of second homes would help.
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Comment number 14.
Nick24th March 2012 - 16:45
Stamp duty is a horribly unjust regressive tax. Designed as the original mansion tax successive governments have been happy to reap the huge tax revenues generated by their inflation of house prices without considering any of the consequences.
Perhaps one reason the housing market is so slow is because duty adds £7k to the cost of an average family house?
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Comment number 12.
gsum24th March 2012 - 16:26
I'm older, a home owner and I want to see house prices crash. Houses are for living in - not an investment. The situation that we now have, of landlords living off people because they can't afford to buy, is unhealthy and immoral.
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