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Welcome to your weekly briefing on important things affecting the housing market.

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Remember: If you’ve recently rented, bought or sold a home, please report your price to the BestAgent Public House Price Index.

This week’s top 5 housing market facts:

1. Rightmove asking prices slide £11,000 in 3 months and show close to zero annual growth.  
   https://www.rightmove.co.uk/news/content/uploads/2025/08/Rightmove-HPI-18th-August-Final-1.pdf

2. Reeves' inheritance tax raid could cost homeowners £82k https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/inheritance/labour-inheritance-tax-raid-cost-average-homeowner/

3. Reeves may impose a mansion tax https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/rachel-reeves-plans-to-tax-high-value-homes-to-plug-fiscal-black-hole-bmrdwr62c

4. Reeves plans to implement an annual property tax https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/20/reeves-not-stopped-every-inch-britain-property-state/

5. Capital Gains Tax on home sales could destabilise the whole housing market. Government's capital gains proposal on main residences 'complete madness' - Property Industry Eye. Inflation increases faster than Gov wants, dousing chances of any further rate cuts from BoE.

Charlie’s Thought of the Week

The immediate, hidden damage of the government’s thoughtless tax policy leaks. 

(Spoiler: The housing market may be put on ice until 2026).

There are roughly 100,000 property transactions a month, each with a buyer and a seller presumably progressing with their lives or businesses or both, in each transaction.

People move home primarily for non-financial reasons, the most common being to find somewhere suitable to live for work and/or family reasons. When they do, they typically spend £25,000 in the local economy directly or indirectly as a result of their move.

Moving home is good for people’s lives (social mobility) and for the economy, because much of the spend is with local businesses and people.

Regular followers will know my position that scrapping stamp duty, permanently, would stimulate the economy and social mobility almost overnight, and the government would more than recoup the lost stamp duty revenue through the VAT and corporation tax on the spend uplift, as well as the reduction in welfare bills as jobs are created.

I had really hoped that the government might be contemplating a permanent reduction or scrapping of stamp duty in the forthcoming Autumn Budget. Until the budget speech happens, we won’t know for sure what they’re going to do.

And this thought of the week is not about what they might or might not do, because too much energy is wasted on feverish speculation (but some of the suggestions are truly terrifying for the housing market).

No. I choose not to expend too much time or energy pontificating about what hasn’t happened yet. I’ll save that for when we know what they’ve decided to do.

Instant Impact: Uncertainty

But there’s something that they have done, and it’s had an immediate impact on the housing market.

They have caused a spike in uncertainty, centred on policies on tax and housing, and this will throw a spanner in the works of current transactions and pipelines.
Yes, many people will continue with their existing move for life reasons, because they need to move no matter what the government of the day might be doing to make things harder for us all.

But there will be people who, without certainty about potential new taxes, will be forced to suspend their move, or purchase, until they know where they stand. This has already happened at the very highest end of the market. Not because people don’t want to move, but because the sums of money involved, the loans, the interest rates, the capital, and the tax implications are far-reaching.

If people think something is about to change that would affect their budgets, they will understandably hesitate. And that pours sand into the gears of the housing market, which will grind down to a slow crawl.
So, existing chains of three, four, or five transactions will break because of the one person who has to pull out due to the uncertainty, and the other three or four parties will be left holding their unmentionables until the chain can be restored with a new party.

The timing of this government torture is terrible.

The next 10 weeks or so, until we are put out of our miserable uncertainty, will be the first part of the delay. Then there will be 3 or 4 weeks of assessment, letting the dust settle once the facts of the budget are known. Then we’re into December and Christmas, when the housing market traditionally goes on hold, until the fabled, bullshit “Boxing Day Bounce” bollocks will be foisted upon us once again.

So basically, whilst this is admittedly something of an exaggeration, the housing market is going to go on hold now until 2026.

Hang on in there my home-hunting friends. We’ll get there, despite every government’s best attempts to stop us.

Have a great weekend and lots of love and luck to you all. Charlie

In case you missed anything this week…

Live Q&A for struggling sellers

Live Buyer Clinic: How to avoid a bidding war when in a bidding war

Most viewed post this week on X:

Most viewed video this week on TikTok:

@movinghomewithcharlie

UK average sellers only have a 54% chance of selling. The incentives are wrong and that's why the market's broken. Sellers need to underst... See more

That’s all for this week!

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Have a great weekend, lots of love and luck to you all.

Charlie