Stamp duty, home ownership, retirement and pensions

It’s the bane of home-buyers’ lives – and now a major building society has said that stamp duty is due a major overhaul. The Yorkshire Building Society said that nearly three-quarters of first-time buyers pay the tax, compared with just over half in 2006. It wants stamp duty to be a tax on property sellers, rather than buyers, according to the BBC. While house prices have risen, the stamp duty threshold has remained the same. It is levied on properties of more than £125,000, or £145,000 in Scotland. Home ownership The Guardian reports that home ownership in England has dropped to its lowest level for three decades but the amount of people who rent privately is higher than in the early 1960s. The latest English Housing Survey, produced by the Department for Communities and Local Government, shows that the private rented sector has doubled in size since 2004, with almost half of all people in England aged 25 to 34 paying a private landlord for their accommodation.