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Prashanth Kuchibhotla's avatar

As an American transplant, I found the British obsession with property as store of wealth puzzling, different from the US where wealth lies stocks and shares. Until I saw the the tax system bias to property over equities, and the planning act (as you mentioned).

No CGT on primary homes means we can shovel unlimited savings into primary home ladder climbing - unlike ISA's £20K cap - and make 20:1 leveraged bets confident that the planning act will help you prop up the price and you will almost never go under water. You can NIMBY all new competing supply to skew the housing market in your favour. Or charge eye-watering rents to the younger generations.

Any proposal - from a studio to movie studios - is fought to the death as possibly impacting house value; never mind having a major studio near your house may drive up the house' value as people who work there might want to live nearby.

CGT exemption needs to be capped (like US does).

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Prashanth Kuchibhotla's avatar

"The government’s thinking on the housing crisis seems to have moved backward"

This infuriates me. Removing barriers to growing housing supply side is an almost no fiscal cost growth lever she can pull but doesn’t.

They have talked a good game on housing and fiddled around the edges – setting higher targets for councils. These are all slow burn and long-term.

Houses aren’t affordable, we have gone from house price/income 4:1 to 10:1 and eye-watering rents. We need radical action to get the supply side going quickly. I’d gut the Planning Act and start all over again.

No more vetoes to current home-owners on new builds/ conversions unless there is an absolutely compelling reason such as the skyscraper next door will block all my sunlight access. No more councils wasting time and money on applications to paint their front door a certain colour (mine does in some areas).

Default to yes and set a clock. Don’t let the NIMBYs delay for years. My local NW London suburb pensioners association fights any building over 2 floors with the argument “we can see the floors and hence they are detrimental”.

Hire Jeremy Clarkson as chief marketing officer for their plans, he knows all about council meddling.

Labour has a stonking majority. Cost of living crisis related to housing is hammering their core younger vote. The NIMBYs and older pensioners vote Tory and Lib Dem anyways. What does Labour have to lose? Be bold.

It surprises me how the left tends to bend over backwards to accommodate their non-voters, who then take the win and vote right anyways. When the right wins, it’s all about screwing the left and boasting about it. Biden sent billions in subsidizes to red states and got no credit. The Republicans voted against that but then took credit for money into their states and districts.

Why is Labour persisting with triple-lock? The winter fuel payment U-turn was just shoveling more money to the richest segments of the population.

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