County Durham
August delivered some fantastic holiday weather but did the property market sizzle like the summer? There were certainly good things to report from the mortgage market. Moneyfacts said the average two-year, fixed mortgage rate dropped below 5% for the first time in three years. The new average rate of 4.99% is great news for those who like the certainty of a regular repayment amount.
Borrowers with variable rate and tracker mortgages also received a summer boost. The Bank of England cut the base rate from 4.25% to 4%. Borrowers with an outstanding mortgage debt of £100,000 should see their repayment decrease by around £15 a month as a result.
All change for property tax?
Of course, it wouldn’t be a normal month unless the Government made an announcement that involved property. In England, Labour revealed a proposal to reform how property is taxed. To note, there are no planned changes for Scotland and Wales.
Stamp duty shock
We are at pains to point out that the following are mere proposals leaked by an insider that would need extensive consultation and legislative changes - nothing will change for quite some time. Still, the plan to abolish stamp duty ruffled many feathers.
Stamp duty, which is currently paid by purchasers, could be replaced by a tax imposed on sellers. Upon sale, sellers would pay a percentage of a property’s value above £500,000 every year. The idea, however, would not apply to the sale of additional properties, which would still be subject to stamp duty.
Other ideas floated include a new mansion tax on homes worth more than £1.5 million, and the scrapping of council tax in favour of a new local property tax. On the latter, it would fall to the homeowner to pay the new tax – not the resident – meaning landlords would be liable for a local property tax, not the tenants.
The Nationwide took time to analyse data in the latest MHCLG English Housing Survey. One area of interest was energy efficiency. In England, the private rented sector and the owner occupier sector lag behind the social rented sector
To illustrate, 72% of properties in England’s social rented sector have an EPC rating of A, B or C. This compares to just 48% in the private rented sector and 49% in the owner occupier sector. Of all dwellings In England, only 1.1% have a heat pump, while almost 6% have photovoltaic (PV) panels.
Scottish homes more energy efficient
The same figures in Scotland differed, with 69% of properties in Scotland’s social rented sector rated A to C. This compares to 52% in the private rented sector and 51% in the owner occupier sector. Twice as many dwellings in Scotland have a heat pump than in England (2%), with 7% having photovoltaic (PV) panels.
The UK’s rental market continued to strengthen. HomeLet’s latest rental index revealed UK tenants securing a new contract paid an average of £1,313 per month. This is an average monthly increase of 0.4%.
Scotland also leads the rent charge
The increase did, however, vary widely across the UK. Rents soared in Scotland (up 2.1%) and in the North East (up 1.2%). New tenants in the South West, the East of England and the South East experienced minimal changes, with rents rising just 0.1% in all three regions during the last four week monitoring period.
There was also anecdotal research backing the continuing appetite for renting. The most recent Landlord Trends Report from Pegasus Insight, based on data from Q2 2025, found only 4% of landlords reported demand in their area as ‘weak’. Conversely, 71% of landlords described tenant demand ‘strong’, with 33% of those reporting ‘very strong’ demand.
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