Countrywide calls for radical changes to stamp duty to help ailing housing market

Countrywide, the country’s biggest estate agent, has proposed a series of changes to provide the depressed housing market with a major boost with the key being substantial change to the stamp duty system.

Grenville Turner, Countrywide’s chief executive, says that stamp duty on all properties worth below a quarter of a million should be scrapped altogether. The current system sees properties worth between £125,000 and £250,000 having a stamp duty rate of one percent imposed which rises to three percent on those worth between £250,000 and £500,000, but Turner wants to see this change.

He said, though first-time buyers were exempt from paying it for a two-year period which ended earlier this year, more radical reform is needed. He argued that it should be scrapped altogether for cheaper properties to provide a much needed boost to the housing market, especially as only 13% of stamp duty comes from those properties which are worth under £250,000. He says the changes are necessary because the current system is outdated and prohibitive to increasing house sales.

Turner also wants to see the government become more involved in helping the beleaguered market and says measures which could provide a boost, such as setting minimum mortgage lending targets and helping to align house prices with wage inflation and deflation, should be considered.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-2174385/Axe-outda...