Rishi Sunak’s stamp duty holiday has led to a bonanza for buy to let landlords - and a blow to first-time buyers, research has found.
Labour analysis found the number of buy to let mortgages tripled after the chancellor announced the tax cut in his 2020 budget.
Last July, Mr Sunak announced that the zero rate would be increased from £125 000 to £500 000.
But the discount applied to landlords and second homeowners, and analysis of figures from UK Finance shows that buy to let mortgages tripled from 4 500 when the holiday was announced in July 2020, to 15 200 in June 2021 when the biggest discount came to an end.
Meanwhile, the proportion of mortgages to first time buyers was down every month from October 2020 to June 2021.
In March and April 2021, the months before the holiday was first expected to end, the proportion of mortgages to first time buyers was down 10% on the previous year.
Labour’s Shadow Housing Secretary Lucy Powell said: “The Conservatives have wasted millions of pounds on a stamp duty holiday which benefitted landlords and second homeowners, over first-time buyers trying to get a foot on the ladder.
“Rather than seeing homes as the bedrock of a stable and successful life, the Conservatives treat housing as a commodity to be traded and profited from.”
First time buyers lost out in every region.
In the South West, mortgages to first time buyers were down 14% on the previous year in April 2021. In the North West, they were down 11% in March 2021, and the East and West Midlands were down 12% in the same month.
Ms Powell added: “Labour is the true party of home ownership. Rather than robbing first-time buyers of their advantage, we would give them first dibs on new build homes, and stop the scandal of developments being sold off plan to overseas investors.”
A Treasury spokesperson said: “Our temporary stamp duty cut helped to protect hundreds of thousands of jobs which rely on the property market by stimulating economic activity.”
