{"id":112028,"date":"2026-08-27T07:38:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T07:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/112028\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T07:38:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T07:38:14","slug":"can-we-fix-britains-ever-creaking-housing-ladder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/112028\/","title":{"rendered":"Can we fix Britain\u2019s ever-creaking housing ladder?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The metaphor of the housing ladder has been ingrained in the British psyche for decades. A flat purchase is the customary first rung, before a move into something more spacious, and then onwards into the family home, relocating as and when it is expedient for work. In the fullness of time, there is the option of downsizing for a more convenient retirement. Such imagery is now increasingly divorced from reality. <\/p>\n

Homeowners are instead staying put for longer, according to property group Connells. Vendors in 2026 have, on average, owned their property for 12 years before selling up, up from nine years a decade ago. <\/p>\n

Shorter stays are a shrinking minority. A mere 5 per cent of those sellers have owned their property for less than three years before moving, down from 15 per cent 20 years ago.<\/p>\n

\"Line<\/p>\n

Why is this? We have recently written about the stresses of moving house<\/a>, with painfully long completion times worsened by the perpetual jeopardy of a fall-through.<\/p>\n

Stamp duty is another hindrance, as buyers face feeding the fiscal beast thousands of pounds in tax each time they move. The typical mover in London will spend \u00a323,000 on stamp duty this year, more than half the median annual salary in the region.<\/p>\n

The negative stigma attached to flats doesn\u2019t help either, as buyers take a dim view of cladding scandals and astronomical service charges. The price gap between houses and flats is at its highest multiple for 30 years, according to Zoopla. <\/p>\n

Then there is tepid house price growth, especially in the south of England. The first-time buyers of today can no longer rely on house price growth to reduce their leverage levels and nourish their equity, limiting their ability to upsize. <\/p>\n

\u201cTrading up to a bigger property with limited equity is pretty tough,\u201d says David Fell, lead analyst at Connells.<\/p>\n

Read more from Investors\u2019 Chronicle<\/p>\n

This problem compounds if your inner-city new-build flat is shedding value while suburban family homes appreciate in line with inflation.<\/p>\n

Nearly a quarter of properties sold within three years of purchase are being sold at a loss, estimates Connells, double the rate of a decade ago when prices were soaring.<\/p>\n

All of these reasons disincentivise homebuyers, especially those in London and the south-east, from scaling the ladder rung by rung. Instead, they spend more years saving to buy a bigger property. <\/p>\n

\u201cIs it a rational decision to maybe hold off for a bit longer? I think so,\u201d says Fell.<\/p>\n

Many of the same criteria also discourage those with ample room from downsizing. <\/p>\n

This stasis matters for all of us. A dysfunctional housing market with fewer transactions hampers mobility and with it growth and productivity. <\/p>\n

This is especially the case in the capital, which remains the UK\u2019s economic engine. The average seller in London has owned their property for 13 years, a year longer than the national average.<\/p>\n

Fewer home moves also hurt ancillary industries. Estate agents and solicitors rarely feature at the top of Christmas card lists, but they do pay tax.<\/p>\n

So where do we go from here? Scrapping stamp duty would be an obvious plus, but this would leave John Healey with an annual \u00a315bn hole to plug in the nation\u2019s finances.<\/p>\n

His boss has ruled out replacing stamp duty and its increasingly ugly stepsibling, council tax, with a land value tax. Few contest that this would be sound economic policy. But there would be obvious losers, including those in affluent Labour-voting London boroughs whose house prices have shot up since the last council tax revaluation in 1991.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would certainly support more activity in the housing market,\u201d says Fell. \u201cBut the government has got to be very careful as it\u2019s a very big shift.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The metaphor of the housing ladder has been ingrained in the British psyche for decades. A flat purchase…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,563,613,152,702],"class_list":["post-112028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-britain","tag-house-prices","tag-opinion","tag-property","tag-stocks-shares"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117166336019292667","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}