5. Will the Minister make a statement on the number of higher rate houses appearing in the latest land transaction tax figures? OQ55756

Yes. The latest LTT data was published by the Welsh Revenue Authority on 25 September. It showed that, from 1 April to 31 August, there were 3,300 higher rate transactions.

Thank you for that response. The houses within that higher rate include a number of different kinds of houses, such as second homes, buy-to-let properties and properties sold to housing associations, and so on. So there's a range within that same rate. 

Now, recently in the Senedd we have discussed the housing crisis and particular proposals to tackle that, but it's proved impossible to get the necessary statistics to understand how many of those higher rate houses are second homes or buy-to-let houses and so on and so forth, and that makes it more difficult in drawing up policy. So, can I ask you whether you will ensure that LTT figures clearly differentiate between those kinds of houses bought within the higher rate, so that we can get a clearer picture of the exact nature of the income coming from the various kinds of houses?

I'm grateful to Llyr Gruffydd for raising this particular issue, and I know that we have a meeting coming up shortly as well in which we can have the opportunity to talk about land transaction tax, but also the wider issue of second homes, because I know it's an issue of serious concern to many people.

Llyr is absolutely right in the sense that you cannot read or that there is huge difficulty in interpreting the data as we have it, in terms of land transaction tax and that higher rate, because it does include people who are bridging from one home to another—so, selling their main home to move into another main home, but there's a period in between moving into the second and selling the first, if you like—and as was also mentioned, it includes those properties that are bought by residential landlords, which I'm sure would be something that many of us would be very supportive of. And, equally, the data doesn't show the land that churns the other way, so those properties that were previously buy-to-lets, which are now being bought as main properties as well. But when we have that meeting, I think it would be an opportunity for us to discuss, in more depth, to what extent we can get better data, really, in order for us to understand what's happening behind those figures. But I look forward to that conversation.