Housing Rubble

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"Should a House be a Home, or an Investment?" by Anonymous Coward
2007-11-28 19:39:00
Owner occupiers still get 100% tax relief on the benefit they derive from owning a property. If, for example, they were permitted to live in the same property as a perk of their employment, they'd have to pay income tax on it. They used to get double relief, where they paid no tax on the benefit of ownership but still got tax relief on the mortgage interest, and that double relief was quite rightly abolished, but they're still in a much more favourable tax position than landlords. The capital gains tax rate for landlords may be coming down from 40% to 18%, but it remains at 0% for owner occupiers.
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"Will House Prices Always Rise in the Long Term?" by rubble
2007-11-26 13:57:00
Hi Phil, Well, that's why there's a comments section after all! The Government's projection for immigration has been well publicised, but all they appear to have done is taken the figures for the past few years and calculated what would happen if immigration continued at that rate. A similar prediction was made in the 60's and that has turned out to be very far wide of the mark. There are lots of reasons why immigration probably will not continue at the rate the Government expects. Currently, Britain is attractive to immigrants because of our strong economy. But the fall-out from the credit crunch is likely to damage that, making Britan a less attractive choice. Added to that is the fact that the economies of the eastern European countries are strengthening in their own right. So rather than believe the Government's projections, let's stick to what we know about current demographics. On oil, the movement in the Pound/Dollar exchange rate (or the Dollar Index for that ...
More About: House , House Prices , Long , Rise , Term

"Will House Prices Always Rise in the Long Term?" by Phil
2007-11-24 18:39:00
You may be right on the outcome but your arguments are very weak. No mention of the expected influc of immigrants to take up the demographic slack (the population of the UK is forecast to grow not shrink in the next 30 years!). Hence the governments plan to build more houses. As for oil prices, no mention of the fact that oil rises when the dollar falls. Once the US comes away from the bottom of the economic cycle and the dollar rises again thus will the price of oil return to trend (unless your going to argue that the dollars fall is permanent, highly unlikely, but that would still warrant a mention). Opec have just met and agreed that current production is meeting capacity and will likely exceed it as the global economy is held back by the slowing US economy. I'm no expert but you at least need to give some balance to your articles.
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"Is Renting a Waste of Money?" by Ed
2007-11-24 00:05:00
Yo. Great blog. How do I get in touch with the authors? Ta
More About: Money , Renting , Waste