Josh Quinn on supply, stamp duty and why the conveyancing process also needs fixing
The UK housing market is holding its breath ahead of chancellor John Healey’s first Budget on 28 October, with supply stubbornly low, first-time buyers struggling to get on the ladder, and landlords navigating the aftermath of the Renters’ Rights Act.
The Budget is expected to confirm the detail of prime minister Andy Burnham's Your First Home scheme, which would allow buyers to purchase a new-build property with a 2.5% deposit backed by a 20% government equity loan – a structure under which the state takes a stake in the property in exchange for reducing the upfront deposit required. Further measures on leasehold reform and landlord regulation are also anticipated before Christmas. But many in the industry believe demand-side incentives alone will not be enough.
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Supply is the central issue
Josh Quinn (pictured top), operations manager at Response Mortgage Services in Leeds, told Mortgage Introducer the market has experienced a year of unpredictable peaks and troughs, with activity quietening ahead of the Budget as clients adopt a wait-and-see approach.
"We need housing supply," Quinn said. "That's the big thing. There needs to be houses being built." He pointed to a large development near his east Leeds office as evidence that volume building continues, but argued that smaller developments, which historically added meaningful numbers of homes to local markets, have effectively disappeared.
"You're not seeing many smaller developments popping up anymore. They need to give more incentive for small developers – just making it easier to get building."
Quinn highlighted brownfield development as an underutilised lever and called for more effort to bring empty properties back into use through councils. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) projected in March that UK net housing additions would dip to approximately 220,000 in 2026–27 before recovering to just over 305,000 by 2030–31 – figures that fall well short of the government's 1.5 million homes target for this parliament.
On the Your First Home scheme, Quinn was measured. He called it a "carbon copy" of Help to Buy, and cautioned against attributing the house price inflation of the early 2020s to any single policy. "When the Help to Buy scheme was out there boosting house prices, that wasn't the only thing that was affecting house prices at that moment in time. You had interest rates sitting around 1%. You had stamp duty freezes all coinciding with each other."
As property experts have already warned, restricting the scheme to new builds risks inflating developer profits rather than expanding supply. The average price of a new-build property stood at £396,889 in May against £283,194 for existing stock, according to data cited by SAM Conveyancing.
On stamp duty, Quinn argued that scrapping it would primarily benefit older buyers looking to downsize rather than first-time buyers. "Scrapping stamp duty, I think the main effect that would have is people at the top of the ladder that are older looking to downsize, and then all the smaller properties are then getting filled up again. Longer term, those smaller properties are going to end up going up in value because there's that much demand for them."
Reaching first-time buyers
Quinn raised a less-discussed barrier to homeownership. The knowledge gap among potential buyers who do not believe getting a mortgage is possible.
"A lot of people I meet, and conversations I have with people just from out and about, they don't think it's possible. They think house prices are too high, interest rates are too high, so it’s hard to raise a deposit. Then just after a quick chat, they've sort of got a bit more optimism about them in the fact that they potentially could buy sooner than they think."
What does the Budget mean for landlords?
On the private rented sector, Quinn's message is direct. Leave it alone. Following the Renters' Rights Act – which came into force in phases from 1 May, abolishing assured shorthold tenancies (ASTs) and ending no-fault evictions in England – he said landlords needed stability more than further intervention. "The Renters' Rights Act was quite a big change for some landlords, so I think just leave them be for the time being."
He noted that experienced investors had adapted – moving into limited company structures and let-to-buy arrangements – but warned that further changes would undermine confidence. "They'll find their own way, but they're not going to get any confidence if they're starting to find these alternative routes and then you're changing things all over again."
Fixing the process
Beyond the Budget, Quinn pointed to the legal and administrative friction that slows transactions long after a mortgage offer has been issued. Technology has transformed the front end – offers that once took 10 days now arrive the same day – but the back end has not kept pace.
"You get the offer on the first day of submitting the application now, but then you've got another four months to wait until you move into the house. Why is that length of time staying the same or even getting longer when the first part of it's getting so quick?"
Quinn described clients supplying the same documentation repeatedly – to the estate agent, the broker, and the solicitor – and pointed to Scotland's earlier-commitment model as a structure worth examining. "Just look at the Scottish system, where you're bound in very early doors, you're not waiting three months and then someone pulls out and everything goes up in smoke."
As the conveyancing process remains one of the biggest friction points in the home buying journey, Quinn argued that legislation could at least start to move things in the right direction.
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