Hello everyone it's episode 205 of the property podcast Rob B here with Rob D the government

has once again been sticking a nose into property what have they done and how is it going to

affect you find out this week.

Yes, that pesky government is at it again.

Welcome to the Property Podcast. We're going to be getting into all the details of the housing white paper,

which came out this week. We've also got a resource for you, which you'll be a big fan of,

if you're interested in the Northern Power House. But before we get to any of that,

let's kick off with our news story this week. So this week's story is from the

telegraph and the headline is Stamp Duty Receipts saw as by to let investors are undeterred by tax hike.

And the story is basically saying that Stamp Duty revenues were up 18% in 2016 compared to 2015 and it also says that one in

five of all the houses bought in the second half of 2016 were what they're calling additional

properties so like second homes by to letts and so on and that raised a lot more

money than they'd expected. So Stamp duty revenues specifically from additional

homes was much higher than expected. So that's made up a big proportion of the overall increase

in the Stamp duty take.

So I think that's really interesting and it kind of raises the question of, well, does that mean

that the policy has worked or not?

From the government's point of view, is this good news? It's a funny one because if the policy the idea of it

was to raise more tax overall then it worked. It raised more than they thought it would.

But if the aim of the policy was to deter investors and therefore

benefit first-time buyers, clearly it didn't work because the real story here seems to be that investors haven't been deterred anyway.

So while lots of people were rushing in to get in before April when the new rules came in,

...