The Budget was slammed as a "lost opportunity" for people looking to buy their first home - despite a raft of measures designed to improve UK housing development levels. In a move to encourage the redevelopment of brownfield sites, Mr Brown plans to introduce a new derelict land tax credit. That met with the approval of Tim Matthews, director of industrial and distribution agency at Lambert Smith Hampton in Birmingham. He said he believed it would "help developers focus on the redevelopment and regeneration of brownfield land which will have a particularly positive effect in the Black Country and around Birmingham". Mr Brown is also looking closely at the introduction of US-style Real Estate Investment Trusts - promoted as a means of improving the supply of rental housing in yesterday's long awaited Barker Review. A REIT is a company which buys, develops, manages and sells real estate assets, allowing participants to invest in a portfolio of properties. Under US law, REITs are able to distribute the majority of income cash flows to investors without taxation at the corporate level, providing that certain investment conditions are met. However, property firm Knight Frank thought their introduction was likely to have a more profound effect on the commercial property market than on the residential sector. A spokesman added: "REITs are a welcome addition to the UK property market, but without planning reforms they will not be able to increase supply of housing numbers overall." And confounding forecasts, Mr Brown decided to freeze stamp duty, while marginally increasing the inheritance tax limit. That provoked an angry response from a number of experts in the West Midlands. David Moore, head of tax at Price-waterhouseCoopers, said: "The freeze on stamp duty will do little to help first-time buyers struggling to get a foot on the housing ladder. "The housing market needs this new blood to prevent stagnation. However, there is some cause for perhaps a small celebration, given the fact that homeowners who have profited through a rising market haven't been hard hit with an increase in stamp duty rates." Harvey Williams, national and regional housing market spokesman for the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, was "extremely disappointed" that no effort had been made to help first-time house buyers. "It is also a pity to see that there hasn't been a rise, other than that in line with inflation, of the level at which inheritance tax kicks in," he said. "What a sad state of affairs it is for our pensioners who have invested a significant amount of both time and money to secure a stable financial future for their children. "It is not possible for these people to pass on their investment to their children without being hit by a huge tax bill. "The new higher threshold of £263,000 will have little or no impact in the West Midlands, when you consider that the average house price in the region is already over £150,000." Philippa Gee, investments director at Wolverhampton financial advisers Torquil Clarke, said she thought the inheritance tax limit was still too low. "Many more people have found their estates liable to inheritance tax due only to their property value. It is therefore unfortunate that the limit has not been raised further." Andrew Messenger, chief executive of the West Bromwich Building Society, also hit out at the Chancellor's failure to "do more for homeowners hit by an antiquated inheritance tax system that is trapping - for the first time - hundreds of thousands of homeowners as house prices rise". | 
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