“Monday is not going to be an induction week for Andy Burnham,” she said. “It’s going to be a breaking point, whether this Labour government is going to, for one time, not fail the public and not fail the market, or if they are going to carry on the failure from Keir Starmer.”
Stamp duty uncertainty is stalling decisions
At the centre of that hesitation, Moustafa said, is confusion over what Burnham intends to do with stamp duty. He has previously backed replacing both stamp duty and council tax with a proportional property levy, but no formal policy has been confirmed. That ambiguity, Moustafa argued, was already disrupting the purchase market.
“People are putting offers on houses and being like, is he going to scrap stamp duty?” she said. “And then other people who have worked so hard to buy nice houses in London are now wondering if he decides to scrap stamp duty, which we have already paid, and now he decides to do the percentage of the house value proposition, what are we going to do?”
Her prescription was direct. Burnham should move immediately to kill speculation, reverse the stamp duty changes introduced under the previous administration, and ease thresholds for first-time buyers to get the housing market moving.
“He needs to scrap the rumour of scrapping it, and on the other side he needs to take a U-turn on whatever Reeves and her failure of a prime minister did on stamp duty, return it back to the previous rules, ease the rules for first-time buyers, and get the housing market moving.”