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Budget 2009: Stamp Duty holiday remains

Wednesday, 22 April 2009 1:58 PM

Chancellor Alistair Darling has announced in the Budget the stamp duty threshold will remain at £175,000 until the end of the year.

Mr Darling said the threshold would be held until December, but made no mention of increasing the threshold to a higher level, as requested by many industry groups.

The housing market had a positive morning, with the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) and HM Revenue & Customs seeing an increase in lending and a 40 per cent increase in home sales in March.

However, a number of property industry groups, including the CML, had asked for the stamp duty threshold to be increased, to reflect average house prices and help first-time buyers.

Chief executive of Spicerhaart, Paul Smith, said: "The continued suspension of stamp duty on properties worth up to £175,000 will certainly benefit many house buyers, but we are calling for the government to increase this to £200,000 to widen the properties within their reach."

A call by some to abolish the tax, including the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA), was not met. Peter Bolton King, chief evecutive of the NAEA, said: "Merely extending the stamp duty threshold is disappointing. Mr Darling had a real opportunity to get rid of this hated tax, which is seen by many as a tax on aspiration. Since the threshold was introduced last Autumn it has helped just one third of first-time buyers.

"In this difficult economic time, Mr Darling could have seized the opportunity to encourage first-time buyers to the market and to send a signal of confidence that may have reverberated around the economy.

"Instead he has tried to choose a path to please everyone, which I suspect will please no one."

The chancellor also said that a further £80 million would be invested in Home Buy Direct, and into helping first-time buyers onto the property market by making lending more available.

Nici Audhlam-Gardiner, director of mortgages at Abbey, said: "The government's extension to the stamp duty 'holiday' for properties up to £175,000 until the end of the year is welcome relief for struggling first time buyers but it's disappointing that it doesn't go further.

"The government should be doing more to help first-time buyers - ideally through a permanent increase to the nil rate threshold - or at the very least, by making stamp duty incremental, so it works like income tax."

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