Positive but incomplete
Ken MacDonald, managing director of Hooke & MacDonald, said: “The reduction in Vat in the Budget from 13.5 per cent to 9 per cent will help to stimulate the construction of a certain number of new apartments. It had been hoped that Vat would have been removed altogether on new apartment delivery in our cities and towns in order to provide a major stimulus, as in the North and the UK.”
He welcomed the extension of Help to Buy and the Renters’ Tax Credit, but warned infrastructure funding remains short of what is needed.
“The capital injection of €1.4 billion for water and waste-water infrastructure, while helpful, is only a fraction of what is needed to support the delivery of housing,” he said.
MacDonald also called for a modernised Section 23-type tax relief for the private rental market, “confined to urban locations,” which he said “would have had a hugely beneficial effect on rental accommodation and costs.”
Source: The Business Post