Article: Stamp duty deters first-time buyers You scrape every penny together to buy, then the Government swipes thousands of pounds more. Jenny Knight asks, can anything be done?

THREE IN FOUR first-time buyers now have to pay stamp duty, compared with fewer than one in five just 10 years ago, according to figures published last week by the Nationwide Building Society. The average first-time buyer now pays pounds 1,070 in stamp duty, rising to a massive pounds 1,894 in London.

Little wonder then that the number of people buying their first property has slipped to its lowest level for 20 years.

Nationwide is calling on the Government to raise the threshold at which stamp duty is paid from pounds 60,000 to pounds 150,000 for first-time buyers. This is the level at which it would start to kick in had the thresholds been increased in line with the house price index over ...

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