Chancellor Rishi Sunak is reportedly planning to extend the stump duty holiday until the end of June.
As reported in the Times today, the extension will be for another three months after the Chancellor was urged to extend the holiday as people were left scrambling to complete transactions before the end date.
The extension could cost the government a further £1bn and covers homes that cost up to £500,000.
The housing market has boomed since the ending of the stamp duty. the average number of days it took to sell a property fell from 67 to 49 over the month of November.
UK house prices rose this month. Rightmove’s director of property data, Tim Bannister, suggested working from home may be motivating people to seek new properties.
“Last year the market was unexpectedly buoyed by buyers’ determination to move and satisfy their new lockdown-induced housing needs,” Bannister said.
“We may well be seeing a continuation of that this year. Rightmove’s early 2021 buyer data shows that despite the imminent end of the stamp duty incentive, all of the key buyer metrics are ahead of early 2020, itself an active period as the market was boosted by the post-election ‘Boris bounce’.”