What If? Imagine a Britain Where Moving Is Easy

What If? Imagine a Britain Where Moving Is Easy

A what-if piece. Phil and I are imagining a possible future here, not predicting one. Nothing below is current policy. None of it is tax, legal or financial advice. Today’s rules are the ones that apply.

On 7 October, in Birmingham, Kemi Badenoch made two promises that had every estate agent in the country reaching for the kettle. No stamp duty when you buy your home. No inheritance tax on your home when you pass it on.

Phil and I aren’t economists. We sell houses. Most weeks that means sitting at someone’s kitchen table in Edinburgh or on the East Lothian coast, talking through a move. So we’ve done what we always do with a big announcement. Thought it through from where we sit and wondered what it would actually change for the people we meet.

First, the small print

The inheritance tax pledge covers the family home, not the whole tax. Couples would also be able to pass on an extra £1 million without paying it. The stamp duty pledge dates from last year’s conference and still stands.

None of this is law. It’s a pledge from opposition for the next general election and those are easy to make. Nothing changes today.

Still, the idea is worth playing with. So imagine it anyway.

The millstone house

A good share of the appraisals Phil and I do are for downsizers. They’re not always who you’d expect. Plenty are in their fifties now, not their seventies or eighties.

The children have flown. The house that once felt like the dream has quietly become a millstone. Five bedrooms to heat, a garden that swallows every weekend, a roof that needs looking at again. There’s a dawning realisation that space you don’t use still costs you, in money and in time. Then they sit down, add up the costs of moving and decide to stay another year. Then another.

Take one of the biggest numbers off that list and the maths changes. The downsizer moves while they still have the energy to enjoy the next chapter. Their family home goes to a growing family who need the space. That family’s starter home goes to a first-time buyer. One decision unlocks three moves. In Scotland, that biggest number is LBTT, which is where this gets interesting.

That’s what a property market is meant to do. Lately it does it slowly.

One sale, a dozen invoices

A house sale is never just a house sale. Behind every one sits a solicitor, a surveyor, a mortgage broker and a removal firm. After the keys change hands come the painter, the joiner, the kitchen fitter, the carpet shop and the café where the paperwork got signed.

Multiply that by every move that isn’t happening right now. That’s a lot of local businesses waiting on the phone to ring.

Confidence is catching. When people move, they spend. When they spend, others feel safe to do the same.

Stamp duty is going. Just not here.

This is where Scotland parts company with the headlines. Stamp duty only applies in England and Northern Ireland. Here we pay LBTT and that is set at Holyrood, not Westminster.

So a buyer in East Lothian would see no change at all. Whether Holyrood follows is a decision for the Scottish Government, and so is finding the money to replace it.

The pressure would be real though. A family weighing up a move to the Borders against one just over the line in Northumberland would notice the difference. Scotland has set its own course on property tax before. We’d watch this one closely.

The tax that does cross the border

Inheritance tax works the other way. It’s a UK-wide tax, so a change made at Westminster applies here too. Holyrood has no say in it either way.

Today the tax is 40% on estates above £325,000, or £500,000 when a home passes to children or grandchildren. Those thresholds have been frozen for years. House prices have not stood still. Plenty of families along this coast bought decades ago and are sitting in homes worth far more than they ever imagined.

For them, this pledge is the one that would land on their doorstep.

The farmer’s clock

For me, Annabelle, this one is close to home. My parents are farmers, and they’re in their eighties. So the farm changes were never just a headline in our family.

From April 2026, farm assets above £2.5 million became liable for inheritance tax at an effective 20%. The original threshold was £1 million, and the Government more than doubled it last December after more than a year of protest. That helped a great many families. For elderly farmers above the line, it still left an old calculation. Pass the land on now and hope to live seven more years. That’s a grim sum to ask anyone to do over the kitchen table.

We’d love to say this pledge stops that clock. As announced, it covers the family home. The farmhouse may be included. The fields are not. The Conservatives have separately promised to reverse the farm changes, and that’s the pledge that would let farming families like mine breathe out. Worth knowing the difference.

The honest bit

There is a cost. Inheritance tax raised more than £8 billion in 2024-25. Fewer than 5% of estates pay it, which is why critics call this a giveaway to the wealthiest. Economists have also questioned whether the spending cuts meant to pay for it all add up.

We should own our bias too. We’re estate agents. More moves is good for business, so take our enthusiasm with a pinch of salt.

It’s a pledge from a party currently behind both Labour and Reform in the polls. Please don’t delay a will review, a gift or a sale on the strength of it.

Imagine it anyway

Picture a Britain where moving home is a decision about life, not a sum about tax. Where the right house finds the right family a little sooner. Where the local trades are busy and the High Street feels it.

Whatever your politics, that sounds like a more confident country to us. We’d love to hear your view. Should Holyrood follow suit on LBTT?

For now, the rules that count are today’s rules. If you’re weighing up a move, Phil and I will happily talk it through with you. No obligation. No pressure.

One last reminder. This is a thought experiment built on a party conference pledge. It may never become law, and if it does the detail could look very different. Before making any decision about a sale, a gift or your estate, speak to a solicitor or a qualified financial adviser.

Sources

• BBC News, Badenoch says Tories would scrap inheritance tax on family homes, 7 October 2026

• LBC, Labour U-turns on inheritance tax raid for farmers, December 2025

• The Independent, Stamp duty, tractor tax and doctors’ strikes: Key takeaways from Badenoch’s Tory conference speech, October 2025