Autumn Budget – an anticlimax for renters
The big news in today’s Budget was the abolition of stamp duty for most first-time buyers.
From today if you buy your first home you’ll pay nothing to the government on the first £300,000 (unless it costs more than £500,000 and you need to be super-rich before you’re in that territory).
Life in the rental market: what the future holds for older renters
Most debates around housing focus on young adults, the drastic fall in their rate of home ownership and ways to boost the number of first time buyers.
Far less attention, however, is given to the vast numbers of renters who are already too old to get a mortgage and face a lifetime of renting instead. As more of them reach retirement age, the state will start paying more of their rent, and faces enormous costs unless it makes some fundamental changes to the housing market. Because politicians only operate with 5-year horizons, few are fretting about the implications of lifetime renting.
But we are, and today we publish a report co-authored with David Adler of Oxford University: Life in the Rental Market.