A call for downsizers to be allowed to claim back stamp duty, a concession that would free up 3.8 million homes for growing families.
Barclays, the UK’s fifth-largest mortgage lender with a 9.9 per cent market share, has called on the government to incentivise “under-occupiers” to move to smaller homes.
Among the suggestions in a report released today, the bank says the government must introduce a programme of grants and vouchers, including the ability for downsizers to offset moving costs against their onward stamp duty bill when they buy a new home. It believes that 3.8 million families could ultimately be encouraged to move house if the costs were reduced which, alongside Labour’s plans to build 15 million homes within five years, would help to ease the housing crisis.
As well as financial incentives, Bar-clays also called for initiatives to simplify the moving process, better advertisements for suitable developments and the building of more retirement housing . “A stronger, more holistic strategy the agency’s director of residential re-ability for downsizers to offset moving is needed to tackle the immense issues faced by the housing market,” Mark Arnold, head of mortgages and savings at Barclays, said.
An analysis for Savills, the estate agent, found that over-60s account for 44 per cent of all homeowners but downsizers accounted for less than 10 per cent of the market in the year to March. “Overcoming the reluctance to downsize is crucial to getting more liquidity into the housing market and making more efficient use of the housing stock we have,” Lucian Cook, the agency’s director of residential research, said. “Measures to reduce the costs stamp duty burden on downsizers would undoubtedly play a part in encouraging that.”
Critics, however, said that the move would constitute a tax handout for the wealthiest, rather than hard-pressed families or first-time buyers. “Why incentivise the generation that have been the biggest beneficiaries of house price inflation over the past few generations?” Martin Stewart, a mortgage broker at London Money, said.
This article was first published in The Times on O10 October 2024.