HOUSE PRICES MUST FALL!

No amount of tinkering with the housing market — help-to-buy, build on the Green Belt, more Social Housing—will fix it. Only a really good lasting crash down in the prices of houses will work. Only when we have permanently lower house prices will young people be able to get on ‘the housing ladder’ as it is quaintly called. Only when houses get a lot cheaper will they become ‘affordable’ to use the weasel-words of housing policy wonks and politicians.

Britain can't cope with a fall in house prices – here's why

            Alexander Tziamalis     i Newspaper 

Monday 9 October 2017 13:00 BST

 [I've lifted this from the i  because it explains why politicians cannot Do What It Takes to fix Housing. HOUSE PRICES MUST FALL, but here's why they won't!]

FIXING THE SNAG WITH switching SDLT to mini-LVT

                                                                                                     

Is there a problem? As I’ve said, Stamp Duty is a ‘voluntary’ tax. If you don’t want to pay it, then don’t buy a house or flat. My proposed small LVT replacement will also be ‘voluntary’.

Since the new LVT is a straight replacement for the old Stamp Duty there will be no need for parallel running while bringing it in.

But is that enough, politically? Can we rely on homebuyers forgetting how the old SDLT worked? It was steeply progressive. Cheap houses paid NO Stamp Duty. To buy a mansion in Chelsea cost a huge whack of SDLT. 

Conall Boyle, my life in houses and the housing market. 

I was born in Dublin a long time ago, 1942 to be precise.  My unusual first name is an acknowledgement of my ancestors' origins in County Donegal — Tir Chonaill 'Land of Conall' in the Irish. 

I got involved in the valuation of houses at a very early age, six or seven. This happened when I accompanied my father to many parts of Ireland (apart from the Six Counties of Northern Ireland). He was a District Valuer in the Irish Civil Service. His job was to inspect, measure up and value properties for Rating Valuations. My job was to hold the other end of the measuring tape.          

HERE'S MY ADVICE TO THE WELSH ASSEMBLY's

call for proposals on Financial Reform

(yes it's a re-hash of an earlier post!)

A step towards Land Value Tax that is practicable, popular, politically savvy and economically sound

ABOLISH STAMP DUTY (LTT) and replace it with LVT

A submission by ALTER, the Liberal Democrats Action for Land Tax and Economic Reform

DID LLOYD GEORGE LABOUR IN VAIN?

THE LASTING TRIUMPH OF HIS 1909 ‘PEOPLES’S BUDGET’ WAS INHERITANCE TAX

But is it now time to Convert IHT into more LVT?

You might think that it is very odd that the next best tax to switch to LVT, let's call it LVT₂ would be IHT — InHeritance Tax, which is so detested by Middle Class Daily Mail and Telegraph readers! These Tory-loving newspapers have somehow fallen for the idea that it would be electorally popular to get rid of IHT:

           

Possibly the most dim-witted suggestion EVER for solving the housing crisis !    

We propose three policies that would hand power back to residents; ways of solving the housing crisis that will also win political parties votes. Each would make a huge difference alone; together they could have a transformative effect on the housing situation in Britain: