Autumn budget 2018 - buy to let and the high street

JLL's UK research team has been speaking to us ahead of the Autumn Budget which has just been announced for the 29th October.

Amendments to the 'Help to buy' loans scheme and a possible increase in stamp duty for buy-to-let landlords, may feature in the Chancellor's Autumn budget at the end of next month.

Nick Whitten, Director of Residential Research at JLL states that he expects stamp duty to remain unfavourable to residential buy to let investors.

When asked about what would represent a positive change in the budget for landlords and commercial tenants of high street properties, Jon Neale, Leader of the JLL Research Team, commented that:

'the current system of business rates does represent a problem for the high street and the system needs to change to become more responsive to regional and local variations in the economy. Importantly, technology could be used to make the current system much more dynamic and also fairer.'

The UK government created the 'Help to Buy: Shared Ownership' and the 'Help to Buy: Equity Loan' in 2013 and these have helped over 100,000 people buy new homes. The Help to Buy ISA pays first time buyers a government bonus. However, although the loans are interest-free for five years, borrowers must begin to pay a fee of 1.75 percent of the value of their loan after that, increasing each year by R.P.I. plus 1 per cent.

We will be discussing the future sustainability of the high street at our 10th October Future Cities Forum with Rachel Fisher, Deputy Head of Regeneration and Infrastructure at The Ministry of Housing, Local Government and Communities along with Helen Rainsford, Senior Director at Aviva Investors, and the Greater London Authority's Deputy Head of Regeneration and Economy, Debbie Jackson. Research to come out of the forum will be posted on this blog shortly.