Chancellor Brown under pressure over stamp duty

Ahead of chancellor Gordon Brown’s pre-Budget speech today, companies such as Halifax, West Bromwich Building Society and Woolwich argue stamp duty is now catching most homeowners compared with 10 years ago when the average house price value was just a third of today’s value. Research commissioned by Woolwich, for example, suggests 79% of the 1,000 homeowners it questioned think stamp duty should be scrapped for first-time buyers while 64% also believe stamp duty thresholds should be raised as house prices have more than doubled in the past five years. Andy Gray, head of mortgages at ...