Dear Editor
The latest idiotic hike to the special stamp duty land tax (SDLT) levy that landlords and anyone buying a second property must pay will kill off the potential to bring lots of homes back into use.
This clueless government, just like the last one, seems to think that by making it harder for developers to buy property, they will somehow magically be bought by first-time buyers instead.
This is insane magic beans type of thinking.
Many landlord-developers do a bit of development as well as doing standard buy-to-lets and then ‘farming the let properties’ for income once they have done them up.
Some landlord-developers will keep some of the properties they have done up – to let them out for a steady income – and they will sell others. It depends on what they want to do at the time.
But first-time buyers will not be able to buy dilapidated properties anyway because mortgage lenders will not lend on derelict property or any property without a functioning kitchen or bathroom. By increasing the SDLT premium that anyone buying a second property must pay, this government has only deterred a lot of would-be investors. So more property than ever will sit empty and derelict.
Well done, Rachel Reeves. I do wonder what they do on the PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) courses at Oxford that lots of these politicos seem to have studied.
I conclude they must do a lot of the two Ps and b*gger all of the E. Perhaps the only ‘Es’ they learn about are the ones they stuff down their necks at nightclubs?
David Lawrenson
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