Chelsea home prices top £2mil

LONDON: Kensington and Chelsea helped to push the asking price of a London home to a record this month as average values in the district broke through the £2mil (Us$3.17mil) level for the first time, Rightmove plc said.

Asking prices in Kensington and Chelsea increased 5.9% from February, the operator of Britain’s biggest property website said in a report. Values in London rose 1.3% to £455,159, while the average price across England and Wales gained 1.6% to £236,939.

“The traditionally buoyant spring market has combined with a shortage of supply and brisk turnover of property,” said Miles Shipside, commercial director of Rightmove. “Sellers again have the confidence and required level of funds to motivate them to trade up, though no doubt some are deciding to take advantage of the record prices and trade out.”

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said on Sunday that he planned a crackdown on tax evasion on property transactions and that his budget in two days will aim to help lower-income workers.

Osborne is trying to win the backing of his Liberal Democrat coalition partners, who have called for a “mansion tax” on expensive homes.

Business Secretary Vince Cable, a member of the Liberal Democrats, has said that the threshold for the levy should be houses valued at more than £2mil.

UK housing is getting a temporary boost as first-time buyers move to beat the expiration of a property-tax exemption this month. A price gauge by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors rose to a 19-month high in February.

Rightmove said indicators suggested that property-market activity in 2012 would be “more robust” than last year. Still, it added that the end of the exemption on a transaction tax for some first-time buyers was a “potential blow to the all-important lower end of the housing market.”

From a year earlier, home prices in England and Wales were up 2.2% in March, Rightmove said. In London, the annual increase was 7.3%. Nationally, all 10 regions of England and Wales tracked by the company showed asking prices gained in March from February.

Osborne has sought to calm speculation over whether he will scrap Britain’s top 50% income-tax rate by promising to use his budget this week to help less well-off workers. Pledging “extremely aggressive” measures to stop tax evasion, particularly on property, Osborne said the budget would include changes “for lifting low-income people out of tax.” — Bloomberg