Older people who are downsizing should not have to pay Stamp Duty Land Tax, it has been argued.
Nigel Wilson, chief executive of Legal & General, said ‘last-time buyers’ should be incentivised to move, in order to free up badly needed housing stock.
Legla & General, together with the Centre for Economics and Business Research, has issued new research into the last-time buyer market.
In doing so, it has identified 5.3m under-occupied homes in the UK, with 3.3m of last-time buyers wanting to downsize.
But while almost a third of older home owners have considered downsizing in the last five years, only 7% actually did so.
The research says that last-time buyers are sitting on the equivalent of 2.6m family homes, representing ten years of housing supply.
The report identifies that older people face critical barriers in moving, including a lack of suitable accommodation for their next home, the cost of available options, and tax.
It calls for more housing to be made available to serve the needs of older people, saying that most retirement housing is concentrated among affordable housing providers and premium private sector firms, with very little for the mid-market.
Last year the same bloke said we should all move into sheltered accommodation!
Listen up Mr Wilson, we have worked hard to get what we have, even harder to empty our homes of kids. We have got what we have got paying 15% interest rates, coping with rampant inflation and high unemployment. My hands are calloused and cut from digging foundations, laying bricks and blocks and tiling roofs, with as much respect as I can muster for a fool such as you I suggest you start preaching the benefits of commitment, hard work and saving. If you can’t manage that say nothing!
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I have already worked 6 hours today, enjoying every productive minute, perhaps those people Mr Wilson is trying schmooze could try the same.
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Whilst I party agree, Robert as a 31 year old, I see the generation before me made advantageous rules that put you in the position you are in. I don’t doubt your hard work but your generation enjoyed free higher education, burned all the fossil fuels, had pensions that were nothing more than a pyramid scheme whereby huge numbers of workers are required to support the few on such pensions etc.
I argue with my grandparents all the time about this and whilst they did their bit and worked very hard, they have a lovely (expensive) house here in the UK another in Florida where they spend six months of the year and they have gold-plated pensions and not a care in the world.
I on the other hand work 56hrs a week, volunteer as a Special Constable and can barely afford my own house, let alone children or a wedding!
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“I argue with my grandparents all the time about this” that alone says a lot.
So from that reply it take it you are agreeing with Mr Wilson, your Grandparents should give it all up so your generation can have it easy? Exactly who is it going to live in your grandparents nice house? you, a sibling or one of the middle management just above you who are house blocked out of their aspirational home by your selfish relatives.
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I am in disagreement with my grandparents because they are of the opinion that they worked hard, therefore they deserve. And they do, just not as much as they think. I too will work for 50-odd years and pay all my taxes and dues, but definitely won’t be in the same position they are in when I am their age. In fact, I blame their generation (even if not them personally), because they were the government of the day both before I was born and whilst I was a child, creating this mess for me to inherit. Baby-boomers were selfish in the way they planned for the future.
Whilst I don’t believe the older generations are completely undeserving, and I appreciate this is a tough thing to say to older folk who have worked all their lives etc, but that generation set up a system that could not realistically be sustained (not without detriment to the generations that follow). You signed up to something that was weighted in your favour and now don’t want to give any of it up, all on the back of the loose argument that, ‘We’ve done our time in the world of work.’
Remember that pensions, the NHS, housing stock was all set up with the people ‘expiring’ shortly after retirement. None of us can help living longer, but you can’t have and endless pot of money indefinitely just because you’ve dodged the Grim Reaper for a long time.
If you want the rewards of a system set up for a short old age, you also need to complete your responsibilities (i.e. drop of the hook).
To be clear, I am not suggesting the ‘termination’ of anyone over 70 but rather the realistic alternative -the system HAS to change.
Pyramid schemes do not work and that is exactly what we have.
I agree with Mr Wilson insofar incentives should be used to encourage last time buyers to downsize. No point rattling around in a massive house when others are in need. It’s akin to having mountains of food, eating until you’re fit to burst, then throwing the remainder, perfectly good food away…right in front of someone who is starving -all because you were first in line. It’s not on.
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I have come across all sorts of trolls on the internet, I have never found one that is openly resentful of his Nan!
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I don’t begrudge MY grandparents anything, but that’s because they’re mine. It was more a wider point of a generational disconnect and a greed by older people of this country. Unfortunately we have limited space and limited resources. We have to share those resources better. We should leave an improved world for our children to inherit, not one in tatters as will be the case once I reach a mature age.
Do you believe it fair that younger families cannot get the houses of a size they need at a price they can afford because some cantankerous old bastards think it their right to stay put ‘just because’?
Why should many, many younger workers have to support one pension just because the system (devised by the now pensioners) was not fit for purpose in the first instance?
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I would really love to know how you are going to sort out the dilemmma of knowing which are the all right oldies from the ones you want to confine to the adequate for their needs accommodation. You can’t have one rule for your Nan and one rule for mine!
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Further to that, this is exactly the problem with the British attitude, our politics and general culture…we’re too afraid to speak the truth and discuss matters that may seem uncomfortable.
Best to not make a fuss and all that…!
The alternative it would seem you suggest is to carry on as we are, politicians should not upset your comfortable old age -that way you get to stay in your big house, hoping the problem goes away because now in retirement, it’s too much bother for you to trouble yourself with.
After all, this was only an incentive not a campaign to forceably remove people from their houses. What would you put forward as an alternative?
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Same bloke, same speech, same poison, it is either a campaign or his personal crusade. Perhaps he is an orphan which would account for his lack of sensitivity towards a generation that rebuilt the country after a war and went hungry for the 8 years following that war, all while grieving those who were killed in that war.
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Yet no sensitivity to the future of the country. Still, as long as you had a good life. I’m not asking for special treatment for my own relations, I was trying to express that I have no resentment, as you suggest, toward my grandparents personally and the my point was a wider one.
Your last response still doesn’t address the original issue. What do we do now the problem is upon us. It seems you are just wanting to ignore it. It’s not going away! I’m not trying to rile you, just attempting to highlight that an argument of sensitivity for a post-war generation means you get to hoard the limited resources is ridiculously selfish. No other generation before you had it this good and no one after will either.
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You’re not riling me, I am fascinated to compare you with my nieces and nephews who own their own homes and have started families and think life is pretty good for them. They are your age but aren’t whinging and moaning how unfair it all is. They have respect for their grandparents and are motivated by the rewards hard work has bestowed on both generations ahead of them.
The very suggestion that a chap who represents the very worse industry for corruption, greed and mal practice has the audacity to even offer an opinion on providing a solution to social imbalance his industry has created in the past 29 years is abhorrent.
It is fairly obvious you haven’t done the required background reading on the subject, you seem to be inspired by stuff from HousePricecrash.co.uk? but have skipped the bits that cover the financial goings on since FSA 1986. Without being too patronising get to grips with equity release, opt out serps, endowment mortgages and personal pension pots. You might realise you are working for the bad guys.
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I hate to admit this, Robert – but for one horrible moment I almost thought you’d done one on us and baked up a new character to spar with, in order to encourage some lively reaction to the unadulterated bilge emanating from such an obnoxious, unappreciative and downright ignorant upstart on what is an otherwise ‘no-news’ article.
THEN I took a swift reality check – and came to the only sensible conclusion that every one of your ‘friends and associates’ have voiced reason and made perfect sense.
NOT, then, in any way shape or form similar to ‘singlelayer’.
I apologise profusely for ever having thought you were anything other than responding to the rantings of one real noxious malcontent of a person – or one made up by someone who simply wants to spray venom on the site for some reason best known to them.
The race is now on to figure the real culprit. The clues are there for the taking – highly odious… self-opinionated… toxicity streaming from every pore and orifice toward the EYE audience…
– my money’s on Mildred, or Mildew – whatever the weekend name is…
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Now you have got your hands on my tech you will understand the character tag indexing. From memory a search of LAT in the height of the HPC days I even explained to sibley’s out of wedlock child why I had stereotypes. At no point have I ever been like this.
I don’t think this is Simon either, I suspect the press release person at Legal and General, the one who dished it out and came here to check it’s reception. This is someone deeply indoctrinated by the more than this one article, to the point where they have no respect for their grandparents and extent where they happily boast about it to strangers on the internet. Disturbing on so many levels!!!
The financial services industry has created a mistrust and this article is not a no news story; this is a feeble attempt at recovering an industry on the edge implosion. Theses boys have equity release scheme going back to 1986 and the oldies who took them out are still alive. House blocking isn’t just a block on bedrooms, there are huge wads of cash tied up and stagnant, with youngsters being forced to rent, boomers keeping their cash away from anyone regulated by FCA, the wheel of fortune is stuck on the green square. That will be hurting bonuses and it is Mr Wilson’s job to get them flowing again.
If you properly understood me you would know that my character name for this one would have been Dennis; a serious pita to MR WILSON!
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In my defence (albeit a poor one, Robert), I did say that I only considered the possibility for a very short time! It was the Comedy Gold line at the start of ‘singlelayer’s second paragraph that made me suspect you were having a giraffe and wanted me to engage with ‘Angry from Planet La-La’ while you chuckled like a pixie – but then the second post came into my viewfinder and realised that whilst absurd it was a real pie-eating contest, and therefore I left you to it – and what a superb job you have made of not only polishing off the meal but licking the plate clean to boot while your opponent can’t even dent the crust.
Of course, you are also bang on correct with regard to the undercurrents hidden beneath the surface of the article. I was more referring to it being a repeat ejection of previously aired ******** – with, of course, added aroma for good measure. What I want to know is what shelf of the market do they anticipate all these retirees to move their ornaments to when they downsize from their semi-detached mansionettes? Do they not realise that they will be stymying the market – not freeing it?
Unless, of course, they all move into tents – or maybe we should expect Logan’s Run to become Science FACT…
Your suspicion as to the identity of the malcontent character could also be on the money – certainly someone in the sector would believe they had most to gain by portraying such a damaged individual as the voice of the Thirty-Somethings.
MY 30-odds have respect for those around them – of EVERY generation. And I would say that THEY are truly representative of their age – and certainly not this individual.
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Work it out Peebee, they are not after fairness for all, they are not after freeing up the 3 bed semis and run of the mill family homes. This is all about unblocking the aspirational homes, the property in the nice area with the big garden or a nice view, those agents describe as being in a favoured area. The sort of nice home Single layers Nan and Grampy own ( but aren’t hoarding)
The implication of Mr Wilson’s attempts at social engineering are so odious they defy intelligent consideration but the genuine sadness is the repetitions of the madness suggest it he has both the belief in the concept and the belief there is a listening audience who agree with him.
I had dinner with one of these corporate social engineers, he was advocating infanticide as his means to reduce what he essentially described as the population problem. This Zuruahan mentality of no old people exists!
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“I on the other hand work 56hrs a week…”
You see – THERE’S the real problem – everyone’s given part-time contracts these days…
… and you’ve got a d@mn cheek to blame older generations for the cr@p you think you’re in.
Back in the day, they had grafted a 56-hour shift by mid-MONDAY.
Lightweight.
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Check my Tweets, I was working before the Blackbird got up at 4:26 this morning! 108 hours straight through was my best ever but I will save that tale for the film!
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I’m proper impressed – I once did a ’42er’ and it nearly killed me!
Mind you – I did have a three-and-a-half hour drive waiting for me at the end of it so I’m not a complete wuss…
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