Budget & The Million £ Stamp Duty Rise.....

"I've just sold a house for £1.85m to a hard-working family, not millionaires," said Lindsay Cuthill, head of the property agent Savills' South West London division, as he drove round Fulham on Wednesday afternoon. "They've worked hard to get there. We're not dealing with Russian oligarchs."

Selling a house for £1.85m is not uncommon for Mr Cuthill. His average sale touches £2m and some of his clients were rather worried when in Wednesday's Budget, Alistair Darling said stamp duty for properties over £1m is to be raised to 5pc from next April.

"I've had three people on the phone wanting to rush through their exchanges today," said Mr Cuthill. "One for a sale of £1.5m, one for £2.5m and another for £3m."

"They were aiming for the end of the week anyway. But now they want it done today."
Distrustful of the Government's ability to introduce such a measure in a fair manner, sellers wanted to exchange quickly to avoid falling victim to a "government cock-up".

The estate agent was – perhaps not surprisingly – disdainful of the policy, calling it "a relatively easy tax from a PR perspective".

"There aren't too many people out there who are going to have sympathy for a buyer with £1m to spend."

On that basis, if Steve Austin were a house and you were to buy him at today's exchange rate, then he'd cost you the equivalent of an additional City centre flat in Aberdeen !

Somewhere that sympathy may be in short supply is Doncaster, where terraced houses sell for £60,000. (Equivalent to Steve Austin's ear).

Mark Hunter, a partner at Grice & Hunter in the Yorkshire town, is unimpressed by the rise in stamp duty. "I can't see the point. It's what affects the majority that affects the market."

He is more concerned with the fate of first-time buyers, along with the down-sizers and buy-to-let clients using his agency.

Scrapping stamp duty for first-timers buying homes for less than £250,000 is a positive, he said, but warned "it's not a panacea".

The biggest problem for first-time buyers is still finding a deposit as lending remains tight, not stamp duty, he said.

However, it's the first-time buyers scrabbling together a deposit that are more likely to elicit the sympathy – of Labour voters at least – than those with a £1m budget, no matter how hard-working....

I trust the 5% Stamp duty won't be too damning for the majority of my readers !

Until the next time,

Mr Jackson.