MOSCOW, September 27 (RIA Novosti) - British Prime Minister David Cameron promises to offer a 20 percent discount for up to 100,000 first-time home-buyers under the age of 40 if the Conservative party wins next year’s May election, the Guardian reported Saturday.
“We will make these starter homes 20 percent cheaper by exempting them from a raft of taxes and by using brownfield land [land previously used for industrial purposes]. I don’t want to see young people locked out of home ownership,” Cameron said as quoted by the Guardian.
The Conservatives’ final party conference before the next year’s General Election will be held this Sunday in Birmingham.
The savings from constructing on the brownfield lands would account for part of the 20 percent discount, alongside tax exemptions such as the community infrastructure levy.
Cameron also told the Daily Mail newspaper that the new discounted homes would be exempted from the zero-carbon homes standards that require all new homes from 2016 to mitigate carbon emissions produced on-site.
Housing is likely to become a major issue in the upcoming elections as rival Labor Party leader Ed Miliband said that affordable housing and building new homes were among the top six national goals of the party.
“By 2025, for the first time in 50 years, this country will be building as many homes as we need, doubling the number of first-time buyers in our country,” Miliband said on Tuesday at the Labor conference, adding that they would help small developers to build homes.
“We will build a new generation of towns, garden cities and suburbs creating over half a million new homes,” he added.
