Things we’d like to see in the budget Episode 4 – Reduce or Simply Get Rid of Stamp Duty

Dear Rachel,

With just two weeks left to the budget that could make or break the housebuilding sector, we’d like to put a word in about Stamp Duty Land Tax.

With Ms Badenoch promising to abolish it to get the sector moving and earning money for the country again, helping you with your desperately needed growth ambitions, will you follow suit?

Stamp duty at its current levels acts as a brake to all levels of the private housing market. From first time buyers to downsizers and everyone in between, Stamp Duty provides a powerful disincentive to moving.

When the last Government’s Stamp Duty holiday ended, the thresholds plummeted, adding thousands – and often tens of thousands – to the cost of moving house. Moving house just to own your own home. To accommodate a growing family. Moving for work. Making space for an elderly relative. Downsizing as you can no longer manage a larger family home.

This all impacts the housing market, which moves more slowly as a result, and reducing demand for new build homes, which builders simply will not build if no-one can afford to buy them. It hurts housebuilders, their supply chain, and the individuals who continue to lose their jobs because of the state of the housing market.

In their pre-budget manifesto published this month, The Home Builders Federation calls on Government to restore the pre-March 2025 first-time buyer Stamp Duty thresholds and undertake a review the impact this duty is having on the housing market – and economy.

We back this call and hope you will consider going further. The wider economic growth this move would stimulate is exactly what the country needs as well as  what you keep telling us all you want to achieve?

It’s all included in the HBF manifesto for your budget Rachel – happy reading: https://www.hbf.co.uk/policy/political-engagement/autumn-budget-2025/#stamp

James Scott
MD