The Libertarian Housing Policy
Will Taylor Party Deputy Leader
Our 10 step plan to introduce more freedom to the housing market, including sales and rental markets, includes bold proposals such as: to abolish stamp duty; reduce Capital Gains Tax on second property sales; and promote major relaxation on planning rules. We believe that introducing more freedom will slow down the increase in house prices and rents, and protect both tenants and landlords.
Will Taylor outlines the Libertarian Party’s progressive solution to the current housing market problem. We welcome readers’ feedback and comments on both the YouTube link and directly to us here at LP HQ.
The Libertarian Party received some excellent press and support within the property sector in November. We released a new video outlining our 10 step plan to introduce more freedom to the housing market, including sales and rental markets. The plan includes bold proposals such as: to abolish stamp duty; reduce Capital Gains Tax on second property sales and promote major relaxation on planning rules. We believe that introducing more freedom will slow down the increase in house prices and rents, and protect both tenants and landlords.
Within hours of the video being published, we were honoured to see a blog post by Mark Alexander, founder of www.property118.com, declaring his support for the Libertarian Party; we are delighted that he has now formally joined the party as a member. Mark is an influential person within the private rental sector. His website has hosted over 10 million user sessions in 2017 and has several hundred thousand property professionals signed up to a mailing list. He has been a landlord for 28 years, possesses a large portfolio of properties and has several very successful businesses. Many in the property sector are disillusioned by the regular attacks of politicians – especially Conservative governments – on the property sector. Most of these are counter-productive to their aims. In recent years, capital gains tax has been increased, tax rules have been tightened, stamp duty increased for second properties, first time buyers have been given subsidies to buy houses – this is but a short list! It has only resulted in higher house prices and rents, landlords exiting the property market, and increases in evictions and homelessness. The alternatives proposed by Labour are even worse; they advocate rent caps and borrowing/ printing hundreds of billions of pounds to build more houses – thereby hastening our nation’s financial demise. Like many professionals, Mark had vowed never to vote for a political party again. And therefore we are even more honoured to have secured his support. Libertarians do not give our political support easily; we are grateful for each and every member and vote.
You can read Mark’s blog post here: https://www.property118.com/next-vote-goes-libertarian-party/ We also shared a short article on www.propertytribes.com along with a link to the video where it was picked up and shared across social media and other websites. It was generally well received. We also shared it with the Axe the Tenant Tax Facebook page, who are campaigning to reverse changes to buy-to-let taxation rules, which threaten to drive up rents, and increase evictions and homelessness (as evidenced by its effects in Ireland).