UK Home Sales Drop 52% in One Month After Stamp Duty Holiday Deadline
Home sales in October were the lowest in the same month in a decade.
Home sales fell more than half during the first weeks after the end of the extended stamp duty holiday in England and Northern Ireland, leading to the calmest October property market in nearly a decade.
After a record spike in activity earlier in the year, UK transactions plunged 52% in a month to 76,930 in October after thousands of home buyers rushed to complete their purchases and outperformed the government vacation deadline of late September to buyers in the largest market, England and Northern Ireland.
Elsewhere, the withdrawal of property purchase tax breaks came earlier: in Scotland, the end date was March 31 this year, while a similar move in Wales ended June 30.
HM Revenue and Customs, which released the new data, said UK home sales in October were also 28% lower than in the same month last year.
HMRC said that after “significant preventative activity” by homebuyers in September, there had been “an expected but notable decline” in sales the following month. Anticipation is when advanced measures are taken to prevent an anticipated event, in this case, the phasing out of the stamp tax holiday. The threshold at which the tax begins returned to its pre-pandemic level of £ 125,000 on 1 October in England and Wales.
While last month was the slowest October since 2012, according to HMRC, other market measures, notably the various house price surveys, show a market that continues to shoot at full blast.
Halifax said earlier this month that UK house prices rose for the fourth consecutive month in October, adding 0.9% to the average cost of a home and raising the typical figure above £ 270,000 for the first time in your measure. Rival lender Nationwide said property values rose 0.7% in October, which meant that the median property price had risen more than £ 30,000 since the coronavirus pandemic began in March 2020.
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