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?

Nail on the head. As always, the "incentives" to help the housing market etc are always aimed at the seller/developer who benefits from higher prices, not the buyer who always ends up paying more or at least the same, never less. All just to prop up the housing bubble.

Of course people who live and work in London and the SE have a lot more money overall than those who live in Grimsby. Salaries are much higher, there are far more opportunities, London attracts far more funding, many have considerable equity from buying decades ago and gaining from prices rises. Most Londoners understand these great advantages.
At present, the situation wrt council tax is clearly unfair as wealthy Londoners in very expensive housing are paying signficantly less than those in houses worth a fraction of the cost. Where are all the Londoners protesting about this?
A national land value tax would see those in London and the SE paying more but it would have some positive side effects such as lowering the cost of housing in those areas and potentially, finally doing some 'levelling up', which Boris failed to do.
I actually don't agree with @XVGN on the poll tax concept. It always seems unfair to me to impose larger taxes on poorer families who are trying to live frugally, often because of a lack of ability to do anything else. There are more and more families resorting to inter generational living due to the high cost of housing.

It's nice to have a a bit of division between us to work on!

Again, the level of the tax would need to be set by government / local government so I can't say which families would be "winners" or "losers".

Many people get hung up on the concept of the Poll Tax because they equate it to the abominable implementation of the Community Charge in Scotland by Thatcher's government.

But the concept that 4 adults enjoying 4 lots of local service, means it is fair that they should pay twice the amount that a couple would pay. It's just logical to me.

The elderly couple next door may well be using more council paid services than the adult family of 5 next door though. If that elderly couple are in receipt of adult social care. The house with 5 adults may actually be contributing more in tax than they're using from local services. If they are also looking after elderly relatives in the household, they may be also saving the local authority from needing to fund social care. So it's not as simple as how many adults there are in a houshold

The problem with whataboutery is that there are an infinite number of scenarios and you cannot cater for all of them. You have to make the logic simple. I mean, by the same logic why should a young family pay the same CT as our elderly couple next door who have 3 adult children living with them and caring for them. You just can't structure a simple system on that basis.

I do think that the Poll Tax should be less than the average CT divided by 2. It should be at a level that feels acceptable. Other local costs should be covered by a percentage of the HVT collected. So LL's and Owners pay the HVT - but not renters (directly, although I'm sure that the LL's will try to recover some of it through rental payments). But renters would pay the Poll Tax.

Prices crashing properly is the only way flats will become appealing, the young can stay at home save, party and travel, WTF would they want mortgage debt on a flat? It also looks like the youth are slowly waking up to the fact that "Uni" is a debt scam (how many degrees do you need for that to filter through?) so BTL flats will also get hammered. There is no "Ladder" it is a debt ladder only and has been for many years.

The point you were making was 4 adults are receiving twice as much but paying the same as the elderly couple next door in council tax, so it's only logical to charge them twice as much. I was pointing out the number of people doesn't equal an easy multiple of how much that person gets back in services

Or sales collapse, new-build sales were down 60% recently.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/05/31/britains-housing-wealth-is-in-danger-of-collapsing/

Not any more, now it is just a tax.

https://www.mortgagefinancegazette.com/banks/lending-drops-by-35-in-april-boe-02-06-2026/

People traditionally bought flats because they were cheaper, some people prefer flats maybe, but cost was probably the main factor for most I would say.

I wonder what they used to do in the olden days
My grandparents had a flat in a converted house that they owned, but I don’t ever remember them complaining about a service charge or joint repairs
Presumably they just didn’t do them given the Housing stock in Wood Green

"Search Assist" gives this -
"The concept of joint repairs has evolved to address the complexities of shared living spaces. Historically, disputes often arose over unclear responsibilities, leading to the establishment of clearer guidelines and legal frameworks."

.....but doesn"t give dates for the historical changes, there was the Tenements (Scotland) Act 2004 which went into exact detail about responsibilities and shared costs in tenements/blocks of flats, but there was also the notorious incident where individuals at the Edinburgh Council housing dept. were allowing family members who were running roofing firms etc. access to the shared repairs database so they could undercut prices being offered by other firms, and there was also some instances of repairs being just made up ( who actually goes on the roof of their tenement block to find out if the person from the council, who you think you should be able to trust, is telling the truth?)

Interesting read, this. We're planning a downsize, and relocation to a small city 200 miles away where DC is in the process of buying a house to live in when their apprenticeship is completed. Until they are ready to do so, we were planning to live in that house while we sell the family home. But the market here has just died in our sale bracket so it could be slow. Watching with trepidation.

@Papyrophile I haven't been able to sell until this week. Six months on the market (£500k+) and a very low offer that we are considering.

@Dorothyperky Fingers crossed that it proceeds successfully.

It absolutely 100% should be reformed at the very least. The second and third order benefits for society and the economy are potentially huge.

Do you agree the seller should pay it?

All sellers were buyers once and have already paid stamp duty!

So it’s dropped by a third.
Thats one hell of a slowdown.

Why are we paying a tax to move house anyway? It's just a money grab by the government. It's not like it "pays for social housing" in the way that VED theoretically "pays for roads" (but in reality we know it just goes into a big pot marked "Tax")

I'd resent SDLT less if it were framed as a levy to fund social housing and went to local authorities.

That's not actually true. The rates were increased a lot in 2014. Prior to that, many sellers, probably the majority paid nothing. For first time buyers, there is no SDLT up to 300,000k, I believe.

There's a genuine feeling of injustice for some who have been forced to pay this stupid irrational tax on moving - the same sort of injustice felt by people who missed the most excellent decade of music (1970's) and now have to suffer the dirge today, or those who missed all the carpetbagging opportunities of the 1980's, or those who missed out on all the "legal claims" of the 2020's.

The injustice perhaps blinds them as to why the tax is so bad and needs to be replaced. Maybe our politicians could provide some tapering relief to these people?

Well, according to Chat GPT, at least 6 million people did pay in your quoted period (since 2014) so a not insignificant number and likely within Labour's target scapegoat group to be double and treble taxed....you know, those over 45k who are apparently not 'working' people.