Burnham's stamp duty plans could unlock stalled housing market

Andy Burnham's economic speech has drawn a cautious but optimistic response from the UK mortgage industry, with brokers and network leaders welcoming his recognition stamp duty reform and regional lending flexibility are essential to unlocking growth.

Sebastian Murphy (pictured top), group director at JLM Mortgage Services, told Mortgage Introducer the frontrunner to succeed Keir Starmer appeared to understand the structural barriers holding back the housing market.

In his speech at the People's History Museum in Manchester on Monday, Burnham set out a 10-year mission to raise living standards, with housing and property tax reform central to his agenda. The Makerfield MP has described council tax as "highly regressive" and its 1991-based valuations as "not justifiable", while he has also written in favour of replacing stamp duty with a land value tax.

For the mortgage industry, the speech crystallised expectations that property taxation would sit at the centre of his economic agenda.

A speech that resonated with the industry

Murphy said Burnham's address was significant, particularly his acknowledgement different parts of the country face very different economic realities – a point the mortgage industry has long been pressing with lenders and regulators.

"Many people within the mortgage industry have been asking for mortgage lenders to view customers more regionally, as in have different rules for different areas," he said. "If you take a buy-to-let landlord in Leeds who's maybe predominantly dealing with student accommodation, then they should have different criteria to maybe somebody letting a single dwelling within a London borough. It doesn't make sense that we're applying the same affordability metrics and rent coverage metrics for very different clients in very different parts of the country."

Murphy acknowledged scepticism about Burnham existed, particularly in London, but argued it was largely misplaced. "He understands that London's challenges are very different from maybe a Birmingham or maybe a Bradford or maybe parts of Cornwall," he said. "He understands that there has to be flexibility, and flexibility in a good way."

Stamp duty at the top of the agenda

The issue generating the most industry discussion is stamp duty reform. Murphy said clients were already asking questions, and that conversations at industry level reflected the same urgency. According to HMRC's Annual Stamp Tax Statistics, stamp duty land tax receipts totalled £18.2 billion in 2024–25 – up 23% year on year – underscoring the scale of the tax burden on property transactions.

"We're very keen as an industry to hear more about his proposed changes to stamp duty because we're hoping that will unlock the social mobility we crave and the government craves," Murphy said. "That will also produce the growth that again sits within the Labour manifesto."

His assessment of Labour's record was frank. The intention had been sound, he argued, but execution had fallen short. "The thought process was right and we all agreed there needed to be a change after having a long period of the Tories in power," he said. "But the application and the pragmatic approach of changing it has been wrong. But we're not a million miles away from making it right."

The ripple effects of a stagnant housing market, Murphy argued, extended well beyond mortgage brokers and lenders. "If you want to be able to pay for some of these public services, you've got to get the housing market going," he said. "It creates all this other growth in your economy with the businesses which get employed in that process."

The buy-to-let question

Murphy acknowledged Burnham's position on the private rental sector posed a more complex challenge. A Labour government, he said, faced inherent political tension between its base and the economic reality of a market still dependent on private landlords.

"Sensible people in the Labour Party understand that you need a strong private rental sector if you're going to have a strong economy, especially at the time when you can't build enough houses yourself," he said. "The last thing you want to do is put more pressure on yourself as a government and a country by constantly kicking the private rental sector."

Murphy said there was now genuine pent-up demand beginning to surface, with clients reassessing their position in the current mortgage market. Properties below £500,000 were moving quickly, he noted, as buyers factored in the possibility of a stamp duty-driven price spike.

"The trade-off is sadly paying more stamp duty now, but it's just got them paying too much more for the house," he said.

For Murphy, Burnham's speech carried a message the industry had been waiting to hear, that housing was not a standalone policy issue, but a driver of the wider economy. Whether that recognition translates into action will define how the market responds to a potential Burnham government's first months in office.

"We need anybody who will listen at this moment in time in government to realise that this is not an industry just kind of clutching at straws," he said. "This is everybody from surveyors, economists, estate agents, banks and building societies saying there needs to be a change to stamp duty to remove this barrier."

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