Stamp duty is set to stay off the table at the Budget, but Tembo’s CEO argues scrapping it would free up family homes for buyers
Scrapping stamp duty would do more to restart the UK housing market than any other single policy change, according to Richard Dana (pictured top). The Autumn Budget on 28 October is expected to leave the tax untouched.
Prime minister Andy Burnham ruled out changing or abolishing stamp duty in July. That came weeks after the Housing, Communities and Local Government (HCLG) Committee called for a consultation on reform before the end of the year. Pressure for change has continued since. Berkeley Group used its Budget submission to urge chancellor John Healey to cut stamp duty on new-build homes.
Dana, co-founder and chief executive of savings and mortgage platform Tembo, told Mortgage Introducer removing the tax was the most achievable fix open to government.
"There's a lot of things that could change, but I would say probably the thing that would be the easiest to do would be to get rid of stamp duty," he said. "There's so many other things you could do. We need to do planning reform, and lots of those things, but they're complicated and we've been trying to do those for ages."
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Why would scrapping stamp duty help first-time buyers?
Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) is paid by buyers of residential property in England and Northern Ireland. Under the rules in place since 1 April 2025, first-time buyers pay nothing on the first £300,000 and 5% on the portion up to £500,000, with relief lost above that. The impact varies sharply by region. Zoopla found that 79.7% of first-time buyers in London paid stamp duty in early 2026, at an average of £8,750, compared with 2.1% in the North East.
In Dana’s view, the gain for first-time buyers would come indirectly, by getting homeowners further up the ladder moving again.
“I think it creates an unnecessary friction in an already kind of struggling housing market,” he explained. “Fundamentally, we need to increase liquidity. We need properties to move around more, so people are more willing to move, particularly like downsizers.”
Research by Public First found that 35% of would-be downsizers see stamp duty as a direct barrier to moving, compared with 23% of first-time buyers.
“The larger homes, they could be sold for families, and then older people could move into the smaller places,” Dana added. “It’s just not happening because it’s just so expensive, and that seems to be a bit of an own goal.”
He argued that second steppers and downsizers bear the brunt, rather than those buying their first home.
“Stamp duty in itself, for most first-time buyers, it’s very low, but it’s the other bits of the property market that need to be unlocked to actually get the whole thing moving.”
Dana pointed to previous stamp duty holidays as evidence that transaction volumes rise when the tax is lifted. He argued the Treasury would recoup much of the lost revenue through VAT and other taxes generated by extra activity among estate agents and legal firms.
How does stamp duty affect the rental market?
According to Dana, the tax burden on buy-to-let investors also works against first-time buyers by pushing up rents.
"I don't think restricting or making it harder for buy-to-let landlords is helping the rental market," he said. "And actually, it's meaning that rents go up, so then it actually makes first-time buyer dreams go further away because they're paying more money in rent."
What is going wrong with new build?
Dana's longer-term concern is the quality and design of new-build housing, which he linked to planning and the need for more development on brownfield sites.
"I think a lot of the new-build developments are not well thought out," he said. "The quality is not very good. They don't put in the right infrastructure in terms of transport links. It's all car-based.
"We need to have a different way of building homes that are more aspirational and better quality because we need to build them."
Burnham announced Your First Home last month. The scheme will offer first-time buyers in England a 20% government-backed equity loan on new-build homes, with deposits from 2.5%, and full details expected to be confirmed at the upcoming Budget.
Can the 1.5 million homes target still be met?
Supply figures remain mixed. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) data published on 25 September showed housing starts in England rose 20% year on year to 35,910 in Q2. However, completions fell 3% on the previous quarter, and planning approvals dropped 12% to 212,000 in the year to June. In July, the number of new-build developments listed on Rightmove fell to its lowest level since January 2017.
Full Fact estimates, based on government data, that 392,400 net additional homes were delivered in England between 9 July 2024 and 14 June 2026. That is around 26% of the government's 1.5 million target. Housing Secretary Angela Rayner told BBC One's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg in September that there was only a slim chance the target would be met.
"I think that's really challenging because if you're not building more stuff in a high volume, then the problems of things like higher pricing still continues," Dana said.
He believes planning and housebuilding reform will take years, leaving tax as the lever government can pull fastest. "For me, the real quick one is stamp duty."
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