The justification for taxing property rather than people is that buildings don’t move: the taxman always knows where they are. Well, before Britain resurrects plans for a mansion tax it ought to look at Ireland’s latest levy on property. Half the country is refusing to pay.
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The government’s new scheme to help first-time buyers is ideal for people who want to overpay for a property and then pay too much for their mortgage as well. You’d have to be desperate to use it.
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If Ed Balls has paid attention in cabinet he’d have learnt the lesson of financial stimulus. It’s not introducing them that boosts the economy, but withdrawing them.  Look at what’s happened to the housing market before the stamp-duty break for first-time buyers ends.
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There’s a black market in money in Britain. On Threadneedle Street the price may be just 0.5 per cent a year, but on high streets it is many times higher – and rising. That’s why UK mortgage rates are going up.
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After the Bank of Mum & Dad, we know have the Nanny State Bank. Government plans to top-up homebuyers’ mortgages are bad for both the borrower and the lender.
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Britain needs more affordable housing, scream the social reformers. Well, actually, Britain’s housing is now more affordable than at any time since the 1990s. It isn’t cost that stops people buying.
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Double-dip is here. The housing market is now officially back in recession having recorded two consecutive quarters of negative growth. And don’t forget, the housing market was the first part of the economy to turn down in 2007.
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Northern Rock has proved the law of unintended consequences. Having split this year into a “good bank” and “bad bank”, it is the bad half that is making profits while the good half has reported a loss. Maybe the government will have to sell the “bad bank” and be stuck with the good.
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It was only last spring we were being told house prices were down 18 per cent on the year: now the rate of inflation is about to become plus 10 per cent. A hidden housing boom is underway.
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Home Information Packs – Hips – were introduced as the housing market turned down, but it would be wrong to blame them for the house price slump. And it would be equally wrong for the Conservative Party to scrap them just because they were a Labour idea.
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