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From The Times

March 23, 2007

Home on the web - the Budget

Lucia Adams

The Budget may not have gone far enough to aid the environment, first-time buyers or those facing large interitance tax bills, but thanks to the internet there is plenty we can do to help ourselves.

First find out whether you’ll be worse or better off under the new tax regime by logging on to Times Online’s budget calculator.

Gordon Brown has made carbon-neutral homes under £500,000 free of stamp duty until 2012. But according to smartnewhomes.com, there are only 27 such homes in the UK. However, there is no need to let this dampen your eco-enthusiasm and stop you banking some green credits. www.whatdoidowiththis.com encourages DIY-ers and the building trade to recycle their reusable surplus materials rather than top up the nearest landfill site. If you discover, postloft extension, that you’ve got a leftover door, hob or three-piece bathroom suite you can sign up and sell it. Buyers browse the website’s catalogue of brickie hand-me-downs.

Does the unchanged stamp duty threshold get you down? Check out www.humraz.com — a “lowest unique bid wins” property auction. Set up as a reaction to the increasingly prohibitive first-time buyers’ market, Humraz only allows bids to a maximum 5 per cent of a property’s value. It costs £3 per bid to receive “status messages” when you bid online or via text message. Status messages keep bidders in touch with their bid. The website currently has a two-bedroom flat in Woking worth £180,000. If all goes to plan you’ll get a property for under the market value and under Brown’s threshold. Well, that’s the theory.

If you are thinking about moving abroad to escape the Chancellor, then you are one of 1.5 million similarly minded Britons, according to www.mrioverseasproperty.com. Cyprus or the Bahamas, anyone?

lucia.adams@timesonline.co.uk