Should stamp duty be abolished to help the housing market?

[Dorothyperky]

Nothing is selling in our area over £500k (south).

Every agent near us is seeing less sales and fewer instructions.

Also would it make a difference to you?

Or perhaps the owners before they died had tried to sell it but refused to reduce the price to the necessary amount for it to sell.

There was a house on our road that held out from 2007 to 2019 and then just missed the surge
They must be kicking themselves after all that time

If the "Ten Year Yield" stays consistently at or above 5% it will be then, the difference with recent spikes is that Trump, Truss etc. could just U-Turn on domestic policy, to get it back down, now they need to invade Iran to get it under control, not a good time to be carrying large mortgage debt.

If they invade Iran Mortgage rates over the least of everybody’s worries
They got their arse kicked in Afghanistan
They got their arse kicked in Iraq
Going for the Hattrick it would appear

I do think that at the moment, it is seriously affecting the market for flats - it feels like you can't "climb the ladder" any more because you might get stuck on any ring at any time and have to put your life on hold. But SD also makes each step so expensive... But it does make sense to have twenty-somethings living in flats at a time of their lives when that makes sense - so they need to find a way to make them more appealing again.

There are so many reasons to buy a house rather than a flat, I don’t even know where to begin

Yes, but there are also other problems with flats, such as difficulty if achieving the energy performance rating as you often have no say over things like heating, i.e. many flats don't have gas installed and the landlord/lease won't agree gas being installed, likewise necessity to change electric heating and water boiling is sometimes refused by the landlord or not allowed by the lease, likewise loft insulation, double glaze windows etc. I'm on a couple of landlord forums and a lot are trying to sell up as they don't think they'll get the EPC rating required meaning they won't be able to let to new tenants if the proposed lower bandings come into force. Then of course, lots are still blighted by cladding after Grenfell which renders them unsellable until the work is done which is often unaffordable by the leaseholders. We've also got a 10 story block in our town which are unmortgageable due to structural issues, one being that they contain asbestos, which is so expensive to repair/replace, it's never going to happen, so the only people who can buy are cash buyers not needing a mortgage, which has massively knocked down selling prices and lots of the residents who own their own leasehold flat are trapped them in perpetuity as they can't afford to move.