Gordon Brown has surprised the property industry by not going ahead with a plan to allow individuals to place second homes into self-invested personal pensions (sipps), at a 40% tax discount. Residential property will now be treated as a "prohibited asset" under sipp rules and is therefore no longer eligible for inclusion in a sipp. Just four months before the tax breaks were due to come into effect, the chancellor released a detailed note on sipps after his pre-Budget report. It said: “Sipps will be prohibited from obtaining tax advantages, when investing in residential property and certain other assets such as fine wines from April 6 2006.” The news has been welcomed by those concerned about the adverse impact tax breaks on second homes would likely have on first time buyers' chances of getting onto the property ladder. But property investors have criticised the last-minute climbdown. According to King Sturge, it had been anticipated that around 50,000 properties would enter sipp funds after April 2006 as investors set up sipps and transferred funds into them. Stuart Law, md of property investment specialist Assetz commented: "The chancellor has performed a quite remarkable u-turn, stating that residential property in a sipp will …