The Mansion Tax

[lindylou]

On 26/11/2025 at 17:23, CPR Dave said:

What do we think?

There's a couple of not very big ordinary family homes for sale on my street that will fall foul of this. 

Seems totally arbitrary to tax these people more than others imo. J hope the treasury will pay the cost of collection too, rather than burdening the council who won't benefit at all from this tax.

They should have just increased income tax.

 

Admin note: Post removed to avoid derailing the thread. Removed subsequent posts quoting this one. 

Edited 22 hours ago by Administrator

[Dogkennelhillbilly]

2 hours ago, Sephiroth said:

Every person complaining about a small amount of tax on homes above £2million is the direct enemy of every voter/government/plan to build affordable housing 

I don't really see the linkage between the two factors tbh

[Sephiroth]

4 minutes ago, Dogkennelhillbilly said:

I don't really see the linkage between the two factors tbh

Fair enough. Perhaps I’m wrong 

but the country can either have rising house prices or affordable housing. Which means falling house prices right?

or is there a scenario where all of the existing housing stock rises in value while the hundreds of thousands of new, affordable  homes are somehow immune to the same market forces?

How do we build enough affordable houses for our children yet insist on our own houses going up in value? Both can’t be true. Enough new housing stock has to lower existing housing prices 

if  not , where am I wrong?

[Spartacus]

I wonder if the tax will cause the £2 million plus market to stall but boost the sub £2 million market as houses sell for just below the threshold. 

Will a house that then sells for less than its £2 million value, say at £1,95 million  then drop out of the tax or will the goverment still tax it as though it was worth over £2 million?  

As the tax will obly raise 1/2 a billion, will the threshold creep downwards or will more houses go into it as property values increase ? 

So many questions that may need to be understood better before it is inplemented otherwise there may be potential legal cleans post implementation. 

 

[Dogkennelhillbilly]

16 hours ago, Sephiroth said:

is there a scenario where all of the existing housing stock rises in value while the hundreds of thousands of new, affordable  homes are somehow immune to the same market forces?

I don't think we need to worry too much about that. There would have to be a massive amount of new construction very quickly to keep housing costs level, let alone depressing existing house prices.

[Sephiroth]

But isn’t that massive construction effort the prerequisite to solve the housing problems? 

or is there another way? 

[Dogkennelhillbilly]

It is. It's just not gonna happen.

London is supposed to get 440,000 new homes by 2030. Just 10,000 were completed in 2024-2025 so housing supply is barely growing.

Meanwhile, housing demand continues to increase. Net migration to the UK was +204,000 in 2024-2025 (and that's a big drop from the previous year). Of those people, about 25% will come to London ie 51,000 people. The average occupancy of a home in London is 2.5 persons i.e. we should have built 21,250 new homes in London just to keep the current supply equalised with current demand. But we didn't - we built half as much.

We're not even keeping things steady with new housing, let alone improving the structural long term shortage. That's not helped by NIMBYs and politicians like @James Barber opposing new housing on infill sites like the old Jewsons yard.

But I don't see how people complaining about more tax on £2m homes affects any of that one way or the other. Perhaps I'm being dense.

https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/press/net-migration-falls-78-in-two-years-returning-to-pre-brexit-levels-every-major-immigration-category-except-asylum-declines/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1ldgqvypqpo

https://www.hbf.co.uk/news/urgent-government-action-needed-to-prevent-london-housing-delivery-collapse-warns-hbf/

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/householdcharacteristics/homeinternetandsocialmediausage/bulletins/householdandresidentcharacteristicsenglandandwales/census2021

 

[Sephiroth]

I think it’s directly related because a major factor in so few houses actually being built despite the demand is 

a) financial incentives for builders isn’t there. Longer they wait to build the more prices go up. Because too many people want prices to go up 

 

b) nimbys. In expensive houses.  Don’t build here it will devalue my property   Because my property price has to go up 

[Ebenezer]

7 hours ago, Sephiroth said:

nimbys. In expensive houses.  Don’t build here it will devalue my property   Because my property price has to go up 

It’s not NIMBYism to say I don’t want high-rises in ED ... it’s just not what the area is. Liking the character of where you live isn’t a crime.

[Sephiroth]

I think “high rises” and “crime” might be your words not mine 

“liking the character of an area” is something I imagine mos people feel.  But it is subjective.  What year was your home built? Should it not have been? To preserve the character of the area at that time? 
 

I don’t think building is the only solution.  Investment landlords and multiple property owners could also be tackled

but simply saying “no. Because character of area” isn’t going to help anyone growing up in the area get a place to live 

[CPR Dave]

"the hundreds of thousands of new, affordable  homes are somehow immune to the same market forces"

 

This is because they are usually built very cheaply, they are very unattractive (often because climate change rules limit things like having usable windows), they are built without any thought as to how the new residents will be offered basic services such as GP surgeries, transport links and schools etc, and no one who had any choice would want to live in them. 

The secondary market for modern new built homes is completely different to older homes that were built with some aesthetic thought.