please empty your brain below
Amazing, then, that there is currently no capital gains tax payable on the sale of foreign-owned additional homes / property bought for buy-to-let... until 2015 (and only then on gains made since it was announced in the recent Autumn Statement). That's a huge tax loss to the Treasury...
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/12/06/uk-britain-budget-property-idUKLNE9B401220131206
Plus points: architecturally very striking and (to me at least) quite a pleasing addition to the skyline due to its unique wind turbines. Gives the impression that this building is looking to the future, and must hence be located in a neighbourhood that is going places.
Minus points: that neighbourhood is actually Elephant & Castle, right on what is (coincidentally) another cyclist death trap of a roundabout. And those wind turbines are London’s equivalent of a chocolate teapot and the motorbike ash tray.
The currrent position is not really "amazing" - historically the UK has just chosen not to try to tax gains arising to non residents. The change does not apply to other UK assets, such as commercial property, or shares in UK companies.
I heard that figure too - and immediately thought beyond it.
If CGT was applied retrospectively, the figure would be very different.
And, one needs to look at the disposals figure going forward - not just for the next 6 years (most foreign property speculators will be looking longer-term as buying and selling new-build immediately isn't lucrative due to the premium payable for intiial ownership.
Plus, it may 'only' be £125M now, but if foreign investors are buying an increasing amount of our residnetial property, it's going to be much more in future.
Mr Osbourne pretending to look popular to us lot but still pandering to his mates I'm afraid!
The BBC video even gave a solution to the problem: follow HK in having a 22% tax on property for foreign buyers. That would have a huge effect on levels of speculation in London and cool off the market.
I honestly don't think that the government want introduce such a tax though. There's a lot of business and cash being generated off the back of this, and they'd rather encourage that than make it possible for under 30s (or maybe even 40s now!) to buy a home.
WHAT? Another one? There's already a ridiculously large carbunkle gone up next to John Lewis with hundreds of student beds.
What do the planners think they are doing allowing this. Stratford will be crawling with herberts who will have no care or interest in the local area. Stupid. It should be rejected like the other student tower was in the Broadway.
That's 1431 students to decend on Stratford who won't give a dam about it and I bet these money grabbing developers haven't finished yet.
I've lived in Stratford all my life, I'm sorry but the so called legacy of the Olympics is ruining the local community.
Rant over - for now!
Yes but I'm more concerned with 1431 students and Anti Social Behaviour. Go to any student town on a Saturday night and sample the delights.
I wonder if there will be a property crash and these monster developments will languish and decay in an unmaintained state? That unattractive, big brown band around the towers looks like Masking Tape. Doesn't look like a design that will improve with age.
Similarly, my home city arguably has quite a problem with anti-social/drunken behaviour on Saturday nights - but it's not students who cause it, it's the same live-for-the-weekend workers who save up their alcohol consumption in the week for a Saturday-night binge.
Also while it maybe 50 to 70% of new builds in inner London going to foreigners. New build actually makes up a tiny percentage of total house sales in London. Asian investors only like buying new properties (old houses are dirty cramped and lack proper facilities in their countries).
As to students, it's better they are in Student blocks rather than renting in private houses.
The council wants to attract an additional university to Stratford. What do they think is going happen? Have several thousand students study in town, but none of them to live there?
It's not Newham or Tower Hamlets in control is it. It's this quango the London Legacy Developement Corporation. (LLDC).
A load of fly by nights who will not have to answer for these stupid developments when in a few years time they are slums. They will be long gone and Newham will be left to pick up the pieces.
Any backhanders I wonder?
Also I agree with what someone else said above: it's mainly new builds they're investing in. I very much doubt if the majority of real Londoners want to live in newly-built properties. Those of us who grew up in the surburbs tend to prefer places with character and atmosphere. I really don't like these identikit blocks of flats going up everywhere.
Many London students are a different demographic to other cities. Many foreign students from Asia and less white middle classes who are more likely to be drinking.
Students often bring in better nightlife, pubs, shops etc so its a good thing.
rationalplan - the fact they only get built with foreign buyers shows that prices are way too high for domestic buyers. Land and selling prices were up 10% plus per annum for over 10 years and now many are only affordable abroad. It shows land and selling prices need to crash. Then we start afresh with more entrants to the market and less cash needed to build, less to buy and less indebted buyers and banks with bad loans.
I hear rumours about Far Eastern developers looking at parts of London and mentioning how the density is too low.
There is a risk that sites still open for development (Old Oak? North Greenwich?) may have Far Eastern higher densities without it being explined to them that we tried that in the 60's and 70's and don't want to make the same mistake again.
It may also be interesting to find out how much money the Developers pay towards transport improvements for the impact of extra residents or whether they are assuming that the current transport provision is sufficient and Crossrail will take up any slack.
While I'm at it, I should probably mention the "Ornance Survey" caption of a couple of days ago. Yeah, yeah, I've been busy.
The problem with all these developments is not that they are going to foreign buyers per se, more that they are going to buyers who have no intention of using the property for its intended purpose. Purchase of residential property for investment should be outlawed or at the very least heavily taxed. It's almost impossible for a Londoner to buy a house in London nowadays because the market is so crazy, and the market is being driven almost single-handedly by wealthy foreign investors who have least need of any property in the first place, let alone one in London.
Interestingly, this has a direct connection to the large housing benefit bill which the loony right likes to moan about. Housing benefit goes to private landlords who charge exorbitant rents, and with the bill being underwritten by the government, it's basically a licence for them to print money. Unfortunately, there's nowhere affordable for people to live, or at the very least several times less of it than demand, so the only alternative is directly subsidising the fat cats.
(Oh, if only there was some sort of readily-available stock of housing owned by the council in which those of limited means could have a roof over their head instead of having to resort to expensive private renting. We could call them "council houses".)
Remove housing benefit and the only alternative is social cleansing - shipping the poor of the borough off to cheaper locations at the other end of the country. This is now happening all over London, nowhere more so than in Tower Hamlets and Newham.
Bring on the next crash, I say. And let's do it properly this time.
http://blogs.ft.com/ftdata/2013/07/17/london-population-set-to-break-historic-record-high/
And many of those places are cheap for a reason - no jobs!
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