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Ministers should apply stamp duty cut to shared ownership buyers
Labour is backing the sector’s call for the stamp duty cut to apply to all home purchases. John Healey explains why
Why ministers should extend the stamp duty cut to include shared ownership properties #ukhousing @JohnHealey_MPLabour is backing the sector’s call for stamp duty cut to apply to shared ownership purchases #ukhousing @JohnHealey_MPOne of the biggest problems we have in housing is that people simply don’t believe that politicians can or will help to fix the housing pressures they face.
So it’s really disappointing that when Philip Hammond promised in the Autumn Budget to abolish stamp duty on “all first-time buyer purchases up to £300,000” he didn’t say he was excluding the very people who most need a hand-up with the big initial cost of buying a home – those who buy a shared ownership property.
I think this is wrong, and I’ve said I want to see ministers applying the same rules to shared ownership they apply to people buying a full property for the first time.
Buyers of shared ownership homes are precisely the people that this stamp duty relief should work for, to help with the initial cost hurdle of buying a place.
Of course, without a more balanced package of measures, a stamp duty cut won’t fix the problem of declining homeownership, particularly for young people on ordinary incomes.
There are more than 900,000 fewer under-45 households owning a home than in 2010, and we need much more than stamp duty relief to reverse this trend.
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That’s why at the heart of Labour’s pitch to the electorate in June in our main manifesto and our housing manifesto was the idea that government must start to give housing the same priority as most people give their own homes – whether they want to own or rent.
This means more than small-scale tax cuts.
It means government taking a much bigger responsibility for a market that Conservative ministers admit is failing but aren’t prepared to act to fix.
So while Labour would do much more to build council and housing association homes to rent, the simple truth is that the housing market isn’t working for you whether you want to rent or buy.
A Labour government would take action on both fronts to do what this current government won’t.
Take the building of shared ownership and other affordable homes to buy. The number of new low-cost homes to buy has halved since 2010, as a direct result of Conservative funding cuts.
Grant investment has been slashed by more than three-quarters compared to when I was last housing minister, so it would be an urgent priority for a Labour government to restore that.
In addition we would better target Help to Buy, introduce first dibs on new homes for local people and pioneer a radical new type of housing for low-cost ownership.
FirstBuy Homes would be discounted to make them affordable to those on local average incomes, and that discount would be recycled over time to help not just the first first-time buyer but the next one, too.
“We’d also focus on tackling the structural problems in the housing market.”
The post-War Labour government built long-term affordable homes to rent; the next Labour government will build affordable homes to rent and buy.
We’d also focus on tackling the structural problems in the housing market.
Of course that means more homes for social rent for those who need them, and control on rent rises in the private sector, not least because you can’t save for a home of your own if you’re paying half your income in rent.
But it also means getting more land available for housing development at a lower price, and setting tougher requirements for developers and landlords in terms of affordability and standards.
Most of all it means reclaiming the role and responsibility of government to deal with one of the biggest challenges many people face.
I’ll keep making the case for ministers to do all this and more. But Mr Hammond could start by offering a little hope to first-time buyers of shared ownership homes – and cut stamp duty for them, too.
John Healey, shadow secretary of state for housing
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