Are people actually waiting for budget announcements before putting up their property?

[Kentgirly]

We are currently looking to buy but noticed there hasn’t been much coming on the market in the last few weeks.. There’s literally been 4 in the area we are looking at. It got me thinking perhaps people are waiting for the budget announcement? Is that possible? It’s just dead really… Also don’t think whatever will be announced will be better than what we have today in terms of stamp duty surely?
please let know thoughts? Getting fed up

We're considering where we want to live in our dotage. Several areas appeal after a year or two visiting them, but we're still in the process of exploring the details during holidays and weekends away. Once we agree on a location and have organised somewhere to rent for a while while we do a refined search and start looking for property, we'll list our current house. This should allow us to find out what's in this budget and the economic prospects.

Probably if the property is over £500k, people are maybe waiting, that's what the rumours were mainly about

We are under offer and looking for an onward purchase in the SE commuter town we’re trying to relocate to. The market there for the family house we’re seeking is absolute tumbleweed - nothing at all has come on the market for the past few weeks, and several properties we’ve attempted to view have been removed from the market unsold. Our estate agent here and those in our target area agree that it’s owners of pricier houses holding out until after the budget. We’re now having to look at rental options.

Yes I am. My flat is around 500k and I want to see if I should hold onto it and keep on a buy to let and buy somewhere small in my new area, or to sell and buy somewhere bigger. Stamp duty and ‘Mansion tax’ will be consideration as my new place could be up to 800k I don’t want to risk having to pay extra mansion tax on that I’d rather live somewhere smaller and have two properties - I’m really hopeful that the Tory announcement about stamp duty will force labour to cut it back a little

I also notice not much for sale in the area I’m looking at - I think people in maisonettes of 800k that would be looking to upsize to above a million will be waiting for budget to be announced to see if they want to move after all

Rough value of our house is c £800k, and that's a guess, but above £400K there is nothing clearly available for sale. There will be houses available, but no one is listing openly here. I wouldn't put my house on the open market for fear that in three weeks of not having sold, the value is scratched back by 30%.

Right now, in our postcode, there are small terraced houses for sale. Nothing else.

I think so. And because the budget is end of November, I think even after it people will probably then decide to just wait until after Christmas. (Unless she announced changes that will come into effect from April next year, in which case it will depend on what those changes are as to whether people rush to sell ASAP, like with the stamp duty increases earlier this year)

What changes do you think the Chancellor is likely to introduce @ShesTheAlbatross ? My view is that she is fresh out of sensible revenue options and that any novel ideas are likely to be bad news, both for home buyers and the government. Stamp duty is a tax that stops people moving, because it costs most people at least a five figure sum. I want to move somewhere smaller, but it would cost at least £20k to do so, and if there is talk of CGT on the sale of a primary residence, so one pays tax both on sale and purchase, then I think the market will stop dead. If it's just me, please say, but I am not going to transact anything bigger than the sale of a cheap second hand car under such conditions.

Yes we’ve noticed this in my area (town in Bedfordshire). Very little is going up for sale
in the £500,000+ bracket and it’s been like this for about a year, but has got considerably worse in the last month or so. There is very little available other than overpriced houses that have been on the market for well over a year. One house, over the course of a year, has dropped from £1.3 million to £750,000 and it’s still not selling. We had originally hoped to move by the first quarter of next year (we’ve been actively looking for the past 9 months) but I can’t see that happening now which is frustrating as there just isn’t anything coming onto the market and that’s unlikely to change in the lead up to Christmas.

Obviously, I don't know your financial circumstances @Aquabluemouse but is there a bridge point at which you might have a conversation about property values with the people who still think they are living in 2023?

There’s been so much speculation that it’s hard to say.

Badenoch just announced that it’s Tory policy to scrap stamp duty, and because politics is full of children, that may mean that Labour don’t do that because they won’t want the Tories to be able to say “oh look, they have no ideas so just take ours!”
Although Badenoch didn’t announce any stamp duty replacement (like a property tax on the seller, for example) so they may still scrap it and replace it with an alternative. One thing I read was scrap SD, and replace with a possible property tax, but only payable when you sell, and wouldn’t be payable by anyone who paid stamp duty when purchasing. But the thing with that is, that would reduce the tax income for years because it would take ages before sales of homes that didn’t have stamp duty on the purchase started to happen in any significant numbers.

I think the speculation is enough to make people wait, even if they have no idea what she might do. And then it snowballs, because if fewer people list, then other people will be put off because there’s fewer houses to buy, and so it increases.

I do know people cling on to the best valuations. I am probably guilty of doing likewise. But there isn't another house that can be compared with mine. It is one house on a unique plot. Next door, either side, both different. Both lovely, very comfortable and spacious. One won't come to the market at all for at least 10 years, and the other probably not for even longer. We've been here almost 30 years. How do you value such properties? Curious.

Wow so sounds like this is actually a thing then. We are looking up to £600k so definitely looking at homes in the £500k plus bracket. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see if anything comes on before December if not it will have to be January. I would have thought people would try to sell off before the budget rather than the other way round. All Labour policies have been crap so not expecting much. Although with the reception of abolishing stamp duty from conservatives hopefully it’ll force her hand to be liberal with whatever she plans to announce..

This is going to have to be a tax-raising budget. So if she scraps it, there’ll have to be something else. It just depends whether she decides to go for something more weighted towards the more expensive (£1m+?) houses.

@Kentgirly, governments shouldn't change the rules without giving a sensible period of notice or warning. I don't trust anyone BTW, but when they announce big changes to financial rules, like making pension funds taxable across generations from March 2027, anyone who has been planning their pension/saving programme for 30 years or so is hit in the face. One might imagine they would be cross. Like me. I am so livid that the last budget attempts to rewrite the rules that I have followed for almost 30 years are being ripped apart. I have spent 25+ years trying to do the sensible thing for my pension under the existing familiar rules, and now we've just made it subject to tax at 40%.

I'm quite sure this is a thing

There's a few people trying to sell in my block of flats that I live in now, and the block of flats I moved from a couple of years ago

There's two people trying to sell in mum's road

They have pretty much all done price reductions and only one person has got an offer

I think the market has stalled

I would say it's just random, but I was talking to a local estate agent and he said absolutely nothing is shifting. If nothing is shifting, then people who are looking to go on the market will also be waiting.

I think you would only move now if you really had pressing reasons for doing so

Basically, you could be in the middle of doing all of that nightmare stuff and suddenly be subject to a change.

The EA I spoke to is mostly on commission and came to the networking event to get ideas for a different line of work. I'm sure he's also got other reasons for changing, but he seemed genuinely concerned that the number of transactions has dropped significantly.

Labour's method of floating ideas, presumably to gauge responses, is really damaging.

@Kentgirly the only way you could get a transaction through before the budget would be if you started in the summer. So I would imagine almost nothing will come on the market between now and the budget.

We've been on the market since July, we had a steady stream of enquiries which stopped dead as the rumours started to circulate. We're definitely not in the 500+ bracket but it still matters because the rumours are that people wont pay SD below that. So why would someone buy now knowing that in a few months they may save themselves 1000's

If RR decides to hit property in a tax raising budget, then I suspect property tax revenues will hit the floor. No one who isn't forced into a move will move at all.

Nobody has to create the tax liability if all it takes to avoid it is not to move at all.

It's hard to think they will just scrap stamp duty when the overall aim is to raise revenues. Some kind of council tax rebanding where higher price properties pay more I think has been suggested at one point. They've stalled the market with these leaks, nothing in my area is selling and that's with reductions.

We want to move, to be closer to friends when we are in our dotage (75+ roughly). But to let people like us worry that we are going to pay CGT on the sale of the family home we bought in the 1990s, plus SDLT on the house we buy for retirement.... It looks like a liability on selling one and buying another, and you don't have to have passed the 11+ to understand that.

Yep, that’s us. We have a place to sell at around £350k, and would look to buy another for about the same. We’re in no great hurry, so may as well see what, if anything, the Budget changes at that sort of price.

There are definitely people who are clinging on to unrealistic expectations when it comes to selling. Property prices have adjusted since the post-covid boom. Overpriced houses are just sitting there, with their owners stubbornly hoping against hope.

The cost of moving, particularly downsizing, is huge. (For us it was around £30k.)

And then there's the terrible system in England & Wales which makes the whole process a bit of a nightmare.

You have to be flexible and agile to buy/sell/move.

We had always planned to move next year, so will be considering housing and all other changes to tax laws when making decisions. If there are changes that mean we are hugely disadvantaged then we may just stay. We are in the over 500k bracket to buy but selling at about 350 to 400k.

@Papyrophile yep was chatting to a friend yesterday, she is a lifelong Labour supporter but is so pissed off with them. I mean I’m not a supporter so I’m just annoyed, she seems genuinely upset.