“There’s a lot of things that could change, but I would say probably the thing that would be the easiest to do would be to get rid of stamp duty,” he said. “There’s so many other things you could do. We need to do planning reform, and lots of those things, but they’re complicated and we’ve been trying to do those for ages.”
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Why would scrapping stamp duty help first-time buyers?
Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) is paid by buyers of residential property in England and Northern Ireland. Under the rules in place since 1 April 2025, first-time buyers pay nothing on the first £300,000 and 5% on the portion up to £500,000, with relief lost above that. The impact varies sharply by region. Zoopla found that 79.7% of first-time buyers in London paid stamp duty in early 2026, at an average of £8,750, compared with 2.1% in the North East.
In Dana’s view, the gain for first-time buyers would come indirectly, by getting homeowners further up the ladder moving again.
“I think it creates an unnecessary friction in an already kind of struggling housing market,” he explained. “Fundamentally, we need to increase liquidity. We need properties to move around more, so people are more willing to move, particularly like downsizers.”
