The proportion of first-time buyers paying stamp duty has leapt from 48% to 56% in the space of just a year, reveal the latest figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders.
The CML says only 15% of home movers escaped the tax in August, compared with 21% a year earlier. It claims first-time buyers are continuing to struggle in the current market and accounted for just 35% of the total number of house purchase loans in August - their lowest level since the survey began in April 2005. More encouragingly, their numbers have been rising in absolute terms - and at 38,100 were actually more robust than the 34,900 in August last year. The age of a typical first-time buyer has also remained consistent at 29 for the past year. But affordability worsened for f...
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