Ridiculously entitled baby-boomer complains that she can't sell her £1m home

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Soldato
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Headline much? ;)

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money...heartfelt-plea-Chancellor-Philip-Hammond.html

But no, seriously. This is an actual article, an actual pensioner actually wrote in, in all actual seriousness to complain that she can't sell her £1m house. I don't even know where to start.. :o

How about the fact that it was last sold in 2010 for £550k, so that means she's made approx £50k/year on it since then. Must be soooo hard having your bricks and mortar "earn" double the national average salary eh? :confused:

Just what in the actual ****?! :confused: :mad:

(The obvious answer is to reduce the asking price to compensate the stamp duty, but obviously she wants to hit that magic £1m and can't fathom the price of her house going down, no sirree that is just not acceptable for someone who has, errr, worked so hard to err, you know, earn that err, money, or something :o :rolleyes: )
 
It's her pension of course she is going to want to maximise the sale, I would hope to be having similar complaints when I reach that part of my life as should anyone else rather than expect to be supported by the rest of the population in later life.
 
sandys said:
It's her pension of course she is going to want to maximise the sale, I would hope to be having similar complaints when I reach that part of my life as should anyone else rather than expect to be supported by the rest of the population in later life.
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1 - Where does she say it's her pension? I'd imagine she has a decent pension that has nothing to do with her property. She's just been greedy.
2 - A "pension" like that is just an investment vehicle. It's nobody's fault that her investment value is going down. Tough cheese, just like a stock trader. Who said property prices are guaranteed to go up forever and ever? :confused: If you choose to use your home as a pension you should be prepared to take the hit should anything happen to it.
 
Whilst I don't want to comment on this woman's specific case Stamp Duty is a significant disincentive towards a mobile work force. I have moved house for my job no less than 10 times in the last 20 years but the first 6 times were from shared house or rented accommodation before I bought. Without assistance from my employer I could not have afforded to move house after I first bought. The cost of moving, solicitors fees and stamp duty make each move hugely costly. My last move costs £10,000's pounds half of which was stamp duty. I can well believe people not as fortunate as myself are tied to a house and can't afford to relocate and either miss job opportunities or accept excessive commuting or working away from home. I see no rational reason why the Government should tax moving house.
 
Not being able to move location freely is why I haven't bought a house yet. But that has to give soon
 
PlacidCasual said:
(snip) I see no rational reason why the Government should tax moving house.
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Hey, I totally agree and I understand the point she was (really badly) trying to make. I'd like see the abolition of council tax as well, and see a Land Value Tax come into force. Everyone pay a percentage of the value of their home. Would certainly help stop the boom and bust we've seen in our property market, would especially stop the massive bubbles.
 
While she is an entitled so and so, stamp duty is really not a good idea as it reduced worker flexibility. It also means that instead of buying a smaller more affordable house early and then upgrading down the line there is much more incentive to buy a house you can barely afford to save the stamp duty.

Much better is a property tax and do away with councial tax. Somewhere around 1.5% would work nicely. The women in the article can then pay 15,000 a year property tax and there will be no issues in selling the house due to stamp duty.
 
My partner and I can now ‘afford’ to move to a larger house in preparation for a family with the view of that house being a long term family home. We have been in our first home for 2 years and it’s a brilliant first time buyer home imo. However the ~£20k stamp duty is putting us off...

As others have said, our next move will be the biggest we can stretch to.. 4/5 bed with study and garage preferably. Only two of us.. but long term it’s cheaper...
 
Ah yes, all those people that can afford a million pound house but not 40k stamp duty...
 
Dis86 said:
Ah yes, all those people that can afford a million pound house but not 40k stamp duty...
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It’s not quite that simple.. if you are an actual millionaire it’s probably a non issue.. however if you are getting a mortgage and using previous house equity then 40k probably eats away quite a big percentage of that..
 
balky12 said:
It’s not quite that simple.. if you are an actual millionaire it’s probably a non issue.. however if you are getting a mortgage and using previous house equity then 40k probably eats away quite a big percentage of that..
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In which case you buy a cheaper (or the same) house with lower (or higher!) mortgage so you can use more of the equity to cover the cost of the stamp duty.

Do you not factor in all costs when you purchase a house? I know I did.

Solictors fees. Estate agent fees. Surveys. Moving costs. Stamp duty. Etc.
 
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ttaskmaster said:
My parents sold their cheap ex-council house for £44k. It's now worth hundreds of thousands, almost ten times the purchase price. Should anyone selling it now drop to the original value to reflect this?
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No, but anyone selling a house should remember one key thing. It's not worth what you think it is. It's worth what someone else is willing to pay for it.
 
Jealousy is why this tax was easy to increase for the exchequer. The majority don't care about the impact because they can't afford such an expensive house. But it has some very real impacts. People struggle to downsize, others don't have mobility and eventually it will impact on the value of cheaper houses too. Of course the impact on lower value houses is probably part of why this was introduced. Houses just over a million will be pushed down to under a million to be able to sell. That will impact on houses which were just under a million will also have to fall to be able to compete with those 'million pound' houses and sell... and so on.

I don't think that's happened yet because sellers are, in the main, just not selling their houses below what they feel it was previously worth. But eventually it has to happen and prices will come down across the board - not just for houses over a million. People trying to get onto the housing ladder will win. Everyone already on the ladder will lose, even first time buyers.

I will be downsizing next year and it's at the back of my mind too. Nothing around here is selling. But I am selling for a reason and if I can't buy a smaller house and free sufficient capital for what I need then I just won't sell it.
 
So the point of this thread is to moan that someone feels entitled to sell their house at market value, my god what next people expected to pay the marked rrp on goods in shops.

It doesn't matter how much she paid for her house or when, what matters is the current market value of the property.
 
Maundie said:
So the point of this thread is to moan that someone feels entitled to sell their house at market value, my god what next people expected to pay the marked rrp on goods in shops.

It doesn't matter how much she paid for her house or when, what matters is the current market value of the property.
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You're not quite getting it. She clearly isn't selling her house at market value because IT ISN'T SELLING. Market value is obviously below what she's got it advertised at.
 
ttaskmaster said:
My parents sold their cheap ex-council house for £44k. It's now worth hundreds of thousands, almost ten times the purchase price. Should anyone selling it now drop to the original value to reflect this?
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No, of course not. That's not what I'm saying. Putting those price increases in yearly terms I find helps to explain the ridiculous bubble that our housing market has experienced.

Maundie said:
So the point of this thread is to moan that someone feels entitled to sell their house at market value, my god what next people expected to pay the marked rrp on goods in shops.

It doesn't matter how much she paid for her house or when, what matters is the current market value of the property.
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You're contradicting yourself. Her house hasn't sold because taking into account the stamp duty, she's essentially asking too much. She feels entitled to sell her house at £1m or whatever it was she's trying for, not realising that people simply aren't prepared to pay that. Exactly what you say in your last line "what matters is the current market value of the property".

EDIT: Too slow
 
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