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Fifteen-years-ago there was an obsession at the RICS that property was not seriously on the political agenda; that chartered surveyors did not have seats in boardrooms and, that as an investment class, property was getting too small a percentage of the pension fund pot.
Well these areas have all radically changed over the past decade and a half. Government awoke to the easy taxable gains that saw steep rises in stamp duty and ending empty rate relief. Surveyors are making it into the boardrooms and property is a strategic element in mergers and MBO’s. The proliferation of billboards for property funds and buy-to-let showed how property started to receive its share of pension funds.
One thing is for sure, though, you cannot retrace to early nineties a bit nor have selective picking of the parts to keep and the parts to ditch.
As we enter the next decade under a strain of the national debt, weighing heavy on the UK so hard that we face the real prospect of being down graded by rating agencies, property could look like an easy plug to the fiscal waste pipe. We escaped the PBR round from Darling but, come the budget and following the election, who knows?
Of course Governmental lobbying is much more sophisticated and successful now for BPF and RICS but all the same the property is an easy target and the tax take has to come from somewhere!
04 Jan 2010 15:16:46