London's first-time buyers caught in stamp duty trap, research shows

 
Brent: one bedroom flat for sale at Empire Court in Wembley One for £129,950

More than a third of London boroughs no longer have any homes for sale under the stamp duty threshold of £125,000, research reveals today.

The rapidly rising property market means that for many young workers there is now no chance to escape a tax that was never meant to catch first-time buyers at the bottom of the ladder.

A survey of the cheapest property for sale in all 33 local authority areas shows that in 12 of them even the smallest studio property is caught in the one per cent stamp duty band.

The most expensive is in the City of London where the best-value property is a £360,000 studio on Charterhouse Square, featuring access to a swimming pool and views of St Paul’s Cathedral.

Wesminster: studio flat in Stourcliffe Street, Marylebone on sale for £210,000

In Kensington & Chelsea there is nothing available for less than £250,000 while in Westminster the smallest studio — in a Marylebone mansion block — costs £210,000.

Boroughs where you cannot escape the property tax

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But stamp duty is also unavoidable in less exclusive areas such as Brent, where the cheapest property on the market is £129,950, and Tower Hamlets, where there is nothing for sale for less than £165,000.

City of London: Studio apartment £360,00 in Charterhouse Square

Londoners now contribute more than 40 per cent of all the stamp duty paid in Britain and sharply rising prices are pushing ever more homes into higher rate bands. At £250,000 the stamp duty rate goes up to 3 per cent. The Treasury is forecast to collect tens of billions of pounds more from Londoners over the next five years.

Buyers have to go further away from the capital’s centre to the less fashionable fringes to find a handful of the cheapest properties on the market still below the £125,000 threshold, according to the research from online estate agents Housesimple.co.uk.

Tower Hamlets: one bedroom flat in Elizabeth Close for £165,000

The most affordable are in Barking & Dagenham and Croydon, where it is still possible to buy a tiny flat for £100,000 — three times the average London salary.

Alex Gosling, managing director of Housesimple.co.uk, said: “If you want to find the most affordable properties you need to head further out to the east and south— just don’t expect to buy something you would want to spend the rest of your life in.

“If you buy a studio above a chip shop hoping to move up in the world later, you might find you are there for a very long time.”

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