By PrimeResi.
Black Brick buying agency boss, Camilla Dell shares her industry insights and reaction to the 2024 Spring Budget this week in a piece for PrimeResi, alongside fellow property experts and consultants.
At Black Brick, we welcomed some elements of the Spring Budget 2024 — but our overall assessment, shared widely across the property industry, is that it fell well short of what the market truly needs right now.
Our founder and Managing Partner Camilla Dell offered a measured but candid response to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s announcements. On the reduction in Capital Gains Tax on residential property — lowered from 28 to 24 per cent — Camilla acknowledges it as a helpful step in the right direction, one that should encourage more transactions from property investors, second homeowners and overseas buyers who have accumulated significant gains on their holdings. That is a genuinely positive move, and we welcome it.
However, Camilla is clear that the benefits are narrow. The reduction does nothing for one of the most significant bottlenecks in the market: homeowners looking to downsize. Since Capital Gains Tax does not apply to the sale of a primary residence, those weighing up the costs of moving from a larger family home will see no benefit whatsoever from this change. With stamp duty remaining the single biggest financial deterrent to downsizing, and with no meaningful reform announced on that front, a significant source of much-needed housing stock will remain locked up. The effects of the CGT cut will therefore be largely limited to investors and foreign property owners — helpful, but far from the transformative intervention the market requires.
On the abolition of Multiple Dwellings Relief, Camilla’s view is equally direct: it is shortsighted. Many of our buy-to-let clients acquire six or more properties in a single transaction, benefiting from reduced Stamp Duty Land Tax rates as a result. These investors are not simply pursuing personal gain — they are actively providing much-needed rental supply to a market already under severe pressure. Removing this relief is yet another disincentive to investment in the private rental sector, and the consequences will be felt most acutely by tenants. Fewer landlords mean less supply, and less supply means higher rents — precisely the opposite of what the market needs.
The Spring Budget 2024 contained some welcome tweaks, but the absence of bold, structural thinking on housing supply, stamp duty reform and support for first-time buyers means it represents yet another missed opportunity for the property sector.
Read the full article here.