Money News
Would-be first-time buyers were left up the creek without a paddle again in this year's budget as Gordon Brown failed to raise the minimum stamp duty threshold of £120,000. Instead, stamp duty exemptions have been confined to an arguably negligible number of people who will buy new-build zero-carbon homes from October this year.
Gordon Brown doubled the lowest entry threshold of stamp duty in the 2005 budget to £120,000 and edged it up again last year to £125,000. But - with the price of an average property now a staggering £228,183 in March, according to Rightmove figures - this is too little too late.
Andrew Montlake, partner at mortgage broker, Cobalt Capital, said: "Gordon Brown has missed a huge opportunity to help first-time buyers get on the property ladder. To find a property worth less than £125,000 in many areas of the country is proving more and more of a challenge - especially in the South East. And with the UK average price of a property much higher than this, first-time buyers have been really let down."
Tim Crawford, group economist at Halifax, added: "We would have liked to have seen the thresholds for both inheritance tax and stamp duty adjusted to reflect the significant increase in house prices in the past decade."
21 March 2007 © Moneyextra.com
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