A Liverpool estate agent hopes Chancellor Phillip Hammond’s decision to abolish Stamp Duty for first-time buyers will help keep the city’s housing market moving.

Helen Griffin-Booth, director at Bluerow Homes, says the measure could also give prospective homeowners a “more positive, optimistic outlook to owning their own home”.

Helen was speaking after yesterday’s Budget, which saw an end for Stamp Duty on properties priced up to £300,000 for first-time buyers.

Helen says: “With the Chancellor himself stating that the number of 25-34 year olds has dropped to just 38% over the last thirteen years, hopefully this measure will keep the market moving and give prospective homeowners a more positive, optimistic outlook to owning their own home.”

Despite the positive news for first-time buyers, Helen questions whether the maximum 15% Stamp Duty rate for additional properties is positive in the long term for Liverpool’s property market.

She adds: “While this is welcome news for first time buyers, stamp duty on the purchase of additional properties like buy-to-lets and second homes is still at a maximum 15%.

“This policy was introduced to realign the residential property market to make it fairer for first time buyers, but it’s become clear that the measure has only succeeded in generating extra tax for HMRC.

“I think the government need to urgently consider whether this policy is helping to achieve fairness in the property market or whether it is creating more problems. It is vital that the private rented sector (PRS) remains attractive to landlords to stop a fall in the quality and volume of rental accommodation available.”

Helen Griffin-Booth, Bluerow Homes.

The Budget also included a promise of “at least” £44 billion of capital funding, loans and guarantees to support the housing market over the next five years and to help deliver 300,000 net additional homes a year on average by the mid-2020s.

However, Daniel Hynd, managing director of Promenade Estates, which developed the Cargo Building apartment building on the edge of the Baltic Triangle, wasn’t impressed, calling it a “missed opportunity”.

Daniel says: “Building more houses is of little use if there aren’t the quality, high-paying jobs to pay people’s rent and mortgages.

“There was nothing meaningful around regional economic development and, when you have councils reluctant to offer head leases or rental guarantees, the speculative development of the quality office stock needed to attract big business in to the region simply won’t happen.

“It was a bit of a missed opportunity from a regional perspective.”

Empty homes in Liverpool

The Chancellor also announced that local authorities will be able to charge a 100% premium on council tax on empty properties, in an attempt to get more occupied. However, Ronnie Hughes of Coming Home, a service which aims to help bring all of Liverpool’s long-term empty homes back onto the market, isn’t convinced the move will be successful in the city.

He says: “I think this only sounds like a good idea, particularly while local authority empty homes teams have been so strapped for cash and therefore staff to police such a policy by the government’s own cutbacks.

“Here in Liverpool, the council already charges extra council tax on properties left empty. And our own experience of running Coming Home for the past year, in co-operation with the council, has been that a punitive council tax policy is not encouraging the early reporting of empty homes for us to sort out anyway. So increasing this tax won’t help the situation out in the neighbourhoods where we work.

“Instead, we’d like to see more encouragement for responsible empty home owners to get in touch and get things sorted early. Meanwhile the irresponsible ones will probably carry on as they are because of the government’s own attacks on council finances.”

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