Stamp Duty abolished for 98%

Thats hilarious. Where do they get these people from.

I walked past an estate agents window this morning, a 2 bedroom flat in crappy West Norwood..£435,000. If any of you know that area it's hardly what I would called 'sought after.'

we need some super sized tower blocks for London.

I can imagine a developer building two , one for owner occupiers and the other for the housing association

Newham lost 5 tower blocks just in Canning Town in the 1990s.

3 blocks at 4 flats to a floor, 14 floors high, and 2 blocks at 6 flats to a floor, 22 floors high.

I don't think you'll see any more built there.

They're putting a £30 million roof on the Olympic Park Stadium though.

Which is nice.

Yep. Not enough affordable ( laughable) houses being built. Thatcher sold off the council houses. Which was one of the most idiotic far reaching damaging things done to the social infrastructure of this country. The revenue obtained was to be used to rebuild new homes on a large scale.never happened. What happened to the money ? Used to pay off Tory  accrued debt.

always better to own your own home than be even more of a slave to the state in a council house.

The point about stamp duty some people don't seem to realise is it has to come out savings whereas house price can be funded of a mortgage, so £5k on a house in SD was far worse for the buyer than £5k on the asking price. The huge step at a certain value was also incredibly stupid, changing it to a graded scale like income tax was long overdue, Osbourne has done a very good thing here.

I wonder if there's any thread facts couldn't turn into an anti-tory rant?

Council housing is obviously cheaper than renting privately.

Due to the sell-off by Thatcher, and her orders not to use the money to build more, different London Boroughs Council housing stock has been slaughtered.

Newham, the forum's favourite Borough used to be 99% council properties in the 1960s.   

I just googled their council page, these are the properties they state are in Newham now.

Housing association homes to rent​
16,848​

Council homes to rent
17,470​

Privately rented​
36,776​

Owner occupied
37,038​

That's a total of 108,132 houses, with just 16% owned by the Council.

It would appear to be incorrect, or this is: Newham state that at the 2012 census there were 101,500 properties.

They have definitely not added 6,632 houses in the last 2 years.

However, in a borough where unemployment is high, a lot of jobs pay minimum wage, and the cost of renting a private 3 bed house is about £300 per week, you can see why the Housing Benefit bill for London alone is so high.

There is no chance whatsoever of employers raising wages enough to ensure that their staff have no need to apply for Housing Benefit.

They keep them on low pay and let the govt take up the slack, as would any businessman.   

That housing benefit bill would be cut by a lot if they built more council houses, and there were no private rents.

And as for my opening post question, if property values treble,  'What will happen to all those claiming housing benefit that's capped?'

The answer is quite simple, it's eviction.