By Giles Barrie

For property the reaction to the Pre-Budget report will be pretty lukewarm.

Congratulations first to the business centres lobby for winning an extension to empty rates relief for another year for premises with a rateable value below £18,000.

Housebuilders, too, have won a desperately needed promise to reduce the `impact of regulation on the house building sector’.

On the Private Rented sector, it is, however, a promise of jam tomorrow.

It’s better than nothing, but the promise of a new consultation document early in 2010 hardly sets the pulse racing.

A vow to look at `any barriers’ to investment in private rented homes, examining how stamp duty and REIT regulation impede the regime, is good news, though.

On Tax Increment Financing there is also a promise to `continue to examine the framework needed’ and to look at what new laws would be needed to introduce TIFs.

I wonder if we will ever see TIFs given that they effectively mean more borrowing by the state.

And the biggest disappointment of all? The cuts in quangoes and state property sell-offs promised will barely touch the UK budget deficit’s sides.

Finally, we are promised a new quango, Infrastructure UK.

It will `bring together TIFU, HM Treasury’s Public-Private Partnership policy team and the capabilities within Partnerships UK’…also working with the OGC, BIS, DFT and DECC.

So much for rolling back the state…