Budget offers a ray of hope to property buyers It looks like plenty has been done towards both stimulating house building and keeping the home-ownership aspiration alive. At the same time, the new measures should encourage second-steppers to take that next step up the ladder. There's also no question that there is a lot of latent demand around. The current level of housing transactions is just 45 per of what it was pre-crunch. Also important was the announcement that the Government is going to put aside money to encourage developers to build properties for rent. It's clear that private renting is a heavily undersupplied market at present. The sentiment was echoed by James Mannix of Knight Frank Residential Investments: "This is a sign that the Government remains committed to promoting build-to-let," he said. It would be a plus if the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) is able to channel the money in the direction of entrepreneurial investors rather than registered housing providers, since the future direction of the market is reliant on new and innovative approaches to the current stalemate. Naturally, the possibility of increased house-building activity was welcomed by National Housing Federation chief executive David Orr. We welcome the measures to support new supply, but they are very small scale. The danger is that if we don't tackle the fact we're still not building enough homes, we'll just create another housing bubble that will continue to push house prices up and out of reach of the majority. Current lack of mortgage and finance availability isn't helping either, as pointed out by Mark Hayward, president of the National Association of Estate Agents. However, Home Builders Federation chief executive Stewart Baseley acknowledged the Chancellor's attempts to address this problem. "A lack of affordable mortgage availability remains the biggest constraint on housing supply, something the Government now clearly understands and is looking to address," he said. Extending NewBuy to the rest of the market should create churn in the marketplace and drive up sales across the board - including for new homes. Also optimistic was John Cridland, director-general of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). We're particularly pleased our call for a focus on the short-term boost of housing has been heeded, alongside an increase in longer-term big-ticket infrastructure spending. By shifting £6 billion to housing and infrastructure, the Government has sowed the seeds for growth and jobs. The Chancellor's new measures also served to boost morale on the front line of property sales. "Hopefully, this will release money all the way up and down the system," said Trevor Abrahamsohn, boss of top-end north London estate agents Glentree, purveyors of houses in the £5 million-plus bracket. As the property market gets healthier, so there is a beneficial, spin-off effect on the retail sector. It helps the white-goods market, the brown-goods market, and it gives confidence to house builders to build not just in the upper and middle price ranges, but also down at the lower end. That said, I would have liked to have seen some kind of change to the system whereby you have to pay 20 per cent VAT on refurbishing a house, but zero per cent if you knock it down and start from scratch. Sometimes, of course, no news can be good news. Up in the rarefied air of high-value property, huge sighs of relief were breathed that the Chancellor had not imposed a further increase on stamp duty. According to research from Knight Frank, the stamp-duty increase in last year's Budget (from five to seven per cent, on £2 million-plus homes), meant sales of prime London property had gone down by 15 per cent. "Thank goodness there are no nasty surprises this year for the property industry, only positive news," said Peter Wetherell, chairman of Mayfair-based Wetherell estate agents. Or, as Justin Marking, head of residential property at Savills, put it: "This is a Budget that helps the bottom end of the market, rather than attacking the top end."