Harborne Landlords, Homeowners and The Autumn Budget 2022
The Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, gave his Autumn Budget 2022 at lunchtime, intending to deal with inflation and keep mortgage rates down for homeowners. In this short and sharp post, I wanted to touch on what this would mean specifically for Harborne landlords and homeowners thinking of buying and selling.
Capital Gains Tax Changes
In previous articles about the Harborne property market, I touched on the muted plans from 2020 to increase the Capital Gains Tax (CGT) headline rate. Instead, in the Budget, the CGT relief allowance has been cut from £12,300 to £6,000 for the next tax year (2023/4) and then cut again to £3,000 for 2024/5. Therefore, if you are a basic rate taxpayer, you will end up paying £1,134 extra in CGT after April 2023 (and £1,764 if a higher rate taxpayer) and a further extra 50% on top of those figures in tax year 2024/5.
Only second homeowners and landlords pay Capital Gains Tax on the difference between the price you paid for the property and the price you sold it for. (Note- it is not paid on any gain of your principal residence). This will be unwished-for news for Harborne landlords and second-home owners. Even if you have no intentions of selling your portfolio in the next five to ten years, there are things you could be doing now to reduce your CGT liability in the future. However, there are various reliefs Harborne landlords can apply to HMRC for that will reduce the CGT liability. If you would like some names of good local Harborne accountants, drop us a line, and we can suggest some for you.
Is it worth selling your Harborne rental property now? Well, the average conveyancing time for UK property from sale agreed to exchange of contracts is 19 weeks, which takes us to 30th March 2022…all to save £1,764 …all at a time when rents have rocketed by 19% in the last two years.
Stamp duty cut to stay - yet only until 2025
Kwasi Kwarteng's cut to stamp duty in England announced in his September Budget will remain until 31st March 2025. Jeremy Hunt stated because housing activity will be slower in 2023/4, the stamp duty cuts announced in Kwarteng’s mini-budget will remain in place for the next two years and four months. This means that the price of a property before stamp duty is paid will stay at £250,000, up from the previous level of £125,000 until March 2025, then drop down to the old rates. This will be good news for Harborne home buyers and landlords in the coming years.
This graph shows the number of weekly house sales in the U.K. (yellow line) dropping - if this was in a newspaper it would be doom and gloom.
Yet with all things like this, the devil is in the detail. 2020 and 2021 were exceptional years for the U.K. property market. In Q4 2020, an average of 23,071 properties were sold per week in the UK. In Q4 2021, an average of 21,051 properties were sold per week in the UK. So with the average at 19,694 per week Quarter to date .. surely we should run for the hills? Until you look at the averages for 2019
- In Q4 2019, 16,263 properties sold per week sold
- In Q4 2018, 15,922 properties sold per week sold
- In Q4 2017, 15,721 properties sold per week sold
- In Q4 2016, 15,811 properties were sold per week
We are just going back to the ways things were before the lockdown. If you are a homeowner or landlord, don’t believe what the newspapers are putting out and look at what is really happening. Don't get me wrong, house prices will be lower next year (good I say). It's going to be hard work in 2023...but it's not Armageddon like the papers say. There is a light at the end of this long tunnel after all.