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Mansion Tax at £1.5m - what will this mean?

856 replies

MaureenOHara · 20/09/2026 09:27

Does anyone have any idea what this might mean for an individual and what it might do to the market. What happened to the £2m market and will that be replicated or is it different?

OP posts:
bingobangs · 20/09/2026 17:18

Schlossadler · 20/09/2026 17:16

And lower value houses will also drop in value - you are OK, with that too, right?

I don’t agree with this policy but think house prices shouldn’t be increasing as they were. I have dc & want them to be able to get on the ladder when older.

Higher interest rates, flags stagnating are already impacting the market though.

Tortephant · 20/09/2026 17:19

intrepidpanda · 20/09/2026 15:02

Please don't use a word quite that often if you can't spell it. It's really grating.

my spelling is correct. Context matters.

ThisDandyWriter · 20/09/2026 17:19

bingobangs · 20/09/2026 14:19

@Pluto46the cliff edges already discourage my family eg I have stayed p/t

But, but, but…..didn’t reeves say it was a one time event and there would be no further tax raids????!!!!!!!

TheSilverTeapot · 20/09/2026 17:19

EasternStandard · 20/09/2026 15:42

I agree with pp that Labour will likely move the threshold again. It hasn’t even been put in place and they already are looking at shifting it.

Then fiscal drag will kick in and numbers caught will creep up.

Of course with all this it’s taxing someone else hence the endless appetite for more taxes. It’s not working though due to behavioural and economic reality.

Yes, all that may be true. But my point was that there are not millions of £1m + houses in London, which is what you were claiming!

BeardySchnauzer · 20/09/2026 17:19

ThisDandyWriter · 20/09/2026 17:16

Or they can reduce expenditure on benefits and asylum seekers.

Yes but we know they will only look at one side of the equation

they need to look at all expenditure and procurement. I’m not in a position to say what should be cut but they can’t just fix the economy through tax unfortunately

my local council has decided a month long project to prettify a small parking area to reduce parking spaces from 10 to 8 is a good use of their resources. These little projects are replicated all over the council area. I’d far rather that had gone into the housing pot

bingobangs · 20/09/2026 17:19

Constantrunner · 20/09/2026 17:08

Well they benefitted from buying back 5hen very cheaply and now having a very expensive house.
Although the average house prices in hackney is still way below £1.5 million.

Yes they did, but my point is they are not unusual.

bingobangs · 20/09/2026 17:21

ThisDandyWriter · 20/09/2026 17:19

But, but, but…..didn’t reeves say it was a one time event and there would be no further tax raids????!!!!!!!

I don’t know, didn’t Tories freeze the tax bands as I stayed p/t under them? I had hoped labour would unfreeze but alas.

EasternStandard · 20/09/2026 17:22

ThisDandyWriter · 20/09/2026 17:19

But, but, but…..didn’t reeves say it was a one time event and there would be no further tax raids????!!!!!!!

Yep it was claimed pre GE, then first budget.

Schlossadler · 20/09/2026 17:26

bingobangs · 20/09/2026 17:18

I don’t agree with this policy but think house prices shouldn’t be increasing as they were. I have dc & want them to be able to get on the ladder when older.

Higher interest rates, flags stagnating are already impacting the market though.

That’s a separate discussion, and in inflation-adjusted terms, property was not increasing in value anything like people believe.

This is simply another envy-driven policy, akin to the VAT on private school fees. It will raise nothing, but will jive with Labour’s student union back benches.

EasternStandard · 20/09/2026 17:26

LifeOnEnceladus · 20/09/2026 16:56

The IMF don’t have the money to bail out the UK, even if they wanted to.

There’s nobody who is going to arrive to save the UK.

What will happen is that this incompetence will continue until the Government either cannot sell its gilts as there is no market for them, causing a fiscal crisis, or the rates the market will buy them at will be so high that the Government cannot pay it without huge devaluation of GBP (Harold Wilson, anyone?). Even that (and the extremely sharp resulting crash in UK living standards, the like of which seems incomprehensible to many people) still wouldn’t resolve the issue because unlike comparator countries the UK has issued a significant proportion of its debt index-linked so it cannot even inflate away a large chunk of it! Also extremely unwise to be running an enormous and ever widening trade deficit and importing huge amounts of inflation when you are reliant on imports for a large proportion of basic necessities like food and energy.

The UK electorate seems to think that it has some kind of inalienable right to a standard of living not enjoyed throughout most of history and still not enjoyed by the vast majority of people on Earth. There is absolutely no guarantee that this will continue, in fact it is highly unlikely to do so unless significant steps are taken imminently to rebalance the economy and tax system and create growth. Other countries will not care about this at all, just as the UK population is quite happy getting on with daily life in the knowledge that there are people living in poverty around the world. No knight in shining armour, IMF or otherwise, will come to save us.

The decline in productivity and growth relative to the rest of the world compounds very quickly. In another decade it will be far too late to turn it around. We can very quickly become a poor country. Our GDP per capita is already woeful internationally compared to where it ranked just a decade ago.

The choices are either appropriate, obvious steps are taken now and the electorate accepts that “tax everyone but me more to pay for what I want!” is not a viable economic strategy and has a 100% chance of making them poorer as well, or (far more likely because we have no politicians with any backbone or morality and all they are interested in is being elected again, not doing the right thing for the country and its citizens) politicians will continue actively making the problem even worse while the electorate cheers them on until there is a fiscal crisis and then the economic shock will be ten times worse and people will find that their benefits, state pensions, public sector pensions etc simply will not be paid.

The UK electorate is so poorly educated in basic economics and so incapable of thinking rationally rather than wasting time with class wars and irrelevancies and blaming the state of the economy on issues which are effectively a rounding error in the national budget that I presume the latter will be the case and it will take many decades to recover from and all be far more painful than it needs to be if we had competent politicians who would take sensible steps now.

I think the IMF work as a way to force change rather than bail out fully. I totally agree re lack of economic understanding although Labour fit with that. Bar McFadden possibly who seemed to despair after every meeting he witnessed.

Araminta1004 · 20/09/2026 17:26

Looking at the HPI - London is already down 3.3% and 2016-2026 London is lagging most other regions. So why exactly are Labour deliberately trying to cause a further property crash in London? What exactly is the thinking behind it. Because it is clearly not about overall revenue as it is peanuts and a likely loss due to stamp duty impact. Is it to move human talent and capital more fairly around the country? But London is a Labour strong hold so exactly why are they doing this for no real revenue gain? I just don’t really understand the thinking.

MeridaBrave · 20/09/2026 17:26

My neighbours houses have sold for circa £1.5m. London suburb. Can’t see anyone paying over £1.5m now. MIL will also have to pay, would have been ok at £2m but not at £1.5m.

Constantrunner · 20/09/2026 17:28

Schlossadler · 20/09/2026 17:15

300k per annum equates to approx GBP 13,000 net per month.

A 1.2m mortgage - capital repayment, 25 years, assumed 5% is approx 7k.

So, I disagree, finding another 200/net per month will register.

It's actually £14k a month net. If they can't afford an extra £200 a month, then they are very bad at managing their money.

Schlossadler · 20/09/2026 17:28

Araminta1004 · 20/09/2026 17:26

Looking at the HPI - London is already down 3.3% and 2016-2026 London is lagging most other regions. So why exactly are Labour deliberately trying to cause a further property crash in London? What exactly is the thinking behind it. Because it is clearly not about overall revenue as it is peanuts and a likely loss due to stamp duty impact. Is it to move human talent and capital more fairly around the country? But London is a Labour strong hold so exactly why are they doing this for no real revenue gain? I just don’t really understand the thinking.

I think applying logic to Labour’s policies is doomed to failure.

They are ideologically motivated, and remember, they don’t always model outcomes, as we know.

Schlossadler · 20/09/2026 17:28

Constantrunner · 20/09/2026 17:28

It's actually £14k a month net. If they can't afford an extra £200 a month, then they are very bad at managing their money.

Nope, its 13k - trust me (or don’t).

EasternStandard · 20/09/2026 17:29

Schlossadler · 20/09/2026 17:28

I think applying logic to Labour’s policies is doomed to failure.

They are ideologically motivated, and remember, they don’t always model outcomes, as we know.

It works though. It plays to the gallery and people post yeh they’re taxing more.

Constantrunner · 20/09/2026 17:29

Araminta1004 · 20/09/2026 17:26

Looking at the HPI - London is already down 3.3% and 2016-2026 London is lagging most other regions. So why exactly are Labour deliberately trying to cause a further property crash in London? What exactly is the thinking behind it. Because it is clearly not about overall revenue as it is peanuts and a likely loss due to stamp duty impact. Is it to move human talent and capital more fairly around the country? But London is a Labour strong hold so exactly why are they doing this for no real revenue gain? I just don’t really understand the thinking.

The average house prices in London is well under £1.5 million.
After COVID there was a boom in house prices that were inevitably going to fall.

FirmSnake · 20/09/2026 17:29

MeridaBrave · 20/09/2026 17:26

My neighbours houses have sold for circa £1.5m. London suburb. Can’t see anyone paying over £1.5m now. MIL will also have to pay, would have been ok at £2m but not at £1.5m.

Lol so it's totally fine until it impacts you 😂

Schlossadler · 20/09/2026 17:31

EasternStandard · 20/09/2026 17:29

It works though. It plays to the gallery and people post yeh they’re taxing more.

Labour - the true nasty party.

They’ve got people at each other’s throats.

Mouldemort · 20/09/2026 17:31

bingobangs · 20/09/2026 17:16

@Mouldemortwe do tax higher earners on PAYE relatively high & in line with other European. countries compared to lower & middle earners

Higher earners often have less disposable income because they don’t qualify for all the free hours, child benefit etc. The problem is the concentration of jobs in London & the SE. we are unusual compared to other countries to have so much concentrated around one city.

Housing is a huge part of the problem.

This is not a reason not to introduce this tax. Again, these are outlying "hard cases" who can absolutely afford this tax. Just as an example, a person in a £10m mansion in Mayfair pays less council tax than a £400K property in Darlington.

It disproportionately affects people in London (2% of them) because that's where the rich people live!

High earners definitely have more income, with the exception of the ridiculous cliff edge the Tories introduced just above £100K.

EasternStandard · 20/09/2026 17:31

FirmSnake · 20/09/2026 17:29

Lol so it's totally fine until it impacts you 😂

Tbf it probably sums up a lot of the thread.

FirmSnake · 20/09/2026 17:33

EasternStandard · 20/09/2026 17:31

Tbf it probably sums up a lot of the thread.

Not only this thread - any debate on taxes or benefits. Who should pay more/get less = anyone marginally better off than myself. It is tiresome.

RosesAndHellebores · 20/09/2026 17:33

There will be a large number of champagne socialists who will feel the pinch and be pissed off. I'm glad it's been reduced to 1.5m, so some very vocal cohorts feel the pain. Good. Probably guarantees more Tory MPs.

bingobangs · 20/09/2026 17:33

I agree that CT is all over the shop, my parents in Wandsworth pay less than me for a lot more house. But I don’t think this policy is a good way to fix that, why not scrap CT & SD & have a property tax that everyone pays?

BeardySchnauzer · 20/09/2026 17:34

bingobangs · 20/09/2026 17:33

I agree that CT is all over the shop, my parents in Wandsworth pay less than me for a lot more house. But I don’t think this policy is a good way to fix that, why not scrap CT & SD & have a property tax that everyone pays?

I guess the issue with CT is it’s the services the council provide not anything to do with the house you live in.

I’ve lived in a very low CT London borough and now in a very high one. The former was a lot better tbh!