Tory MP slashes house by £6m -- thanks to Osborne
Awealthy tory MP has had to slash the asking price of his westminster home by £6 million — after his own former Chancellor’s stamp duty reforms apparently drove away buyers.
adam afriyie, 52, put his Grade II- listed Georgian townhouse with views overlooking Parliament up for sale for £16.75 million in 2015. But he has seemingly struggled to sell the eight-bedroom home and has cut the price to £10.9 million.
Property experts blame the lack of demand on the drastic rise in stamp duty on multi-millionpound properties in 2014. Introduced by George Osborne, the increase from 7 to 12 per cent has caused the top end of the housing market to stall.
Following the rule change, the bill for prospective buyers of afriyie’s westminster house had rocketed to nearly £2 million.
he is also struggling to sell his constituency house in windsor, having also reduced it from £4.85 million to £4.5 million.
afriyie, whose net worth is estimated at between £50 million and £100 million, was brought up by his mother in a three-bedroom council house in Peckham with eight siblings. he began a career in It and set up what became one of the fastest-growing private companies within a decade.
elected in 2005, he bought the westminster townhouse for £7.25 million. three years later, he also acquired a home in windsor for £4 million.
the mansion, which also has eight bedrooms, comes complete with a swimming pool, tennis court and croquet lawn. however, he put both up for sale in 2015 and planned to move to west london with wife tracy- Jane.
Roarie Scarisbrick, a director at Property Vision, says: ‘the main villain is stamp duty — but the greatest threat to any market is, in my experience, uncertainty.’
afriyie declines to comment.