A stamp responsibility raid by Chancellor Rachel Reeves has hammered earnings for property buyers and delivered a hammer blow to the market for flipping properties.
Official figures show the quantity of properties purchased and resold within a yr, usually by people looking for to flip a fast revenue, has dropped to the lowest stage in more than a decade.
Just 2.3% of properties in England and Wales were flipped in the first quarter of 2025, down 1.3 share factors since 2024 and the lowest determine since 2013, according to evaluation by Hamptons property company.
The quantity of flipped properties bought between January and March stood at 7,301, 27% below the ten-year average for the same period.
The collapse in exercise has been blamed on the determination by Ms Reeves to hike stamp responsibility prices and axe the low cost launched under Liz Truss. Experts say the hovering tax invoice has wiped out returns, with Hamptons warning it now swallows up almost a third of gross revenue on each flip.
Aneisha Beveridge, head of analysis at Hamptons, said: “Bigger stamp responsibility payments are wiping out a lot of revenue from flipping.
“The 5% surcharge for investors, coupled with a reduction in the point at which buyers start paying stamp duty, means it’s harder than ever to make the sums stack up.
“Stamp duty bills now account for nearly a third of gross profits. And in some cases, these bills are now higher than the cost of renovating the property. This, together with rising material and labour costs and, in some places, falling house prices, makes flipping homes an increasingly tricky business.”
Ms Reeves’s first Budget in March saw the stamp duty surcharge on second homes increased from 3% to 5% – a move designed to curb landlords and favour first-time buyers.
At the same time, she allowed the Truss-era threshold for stamp duty exemption to expire in April, slashing the tax-free band from £250,000 to just £125,000.
The policy shift has pushed up costs sharply for anyone buying and refurbishing a property. According to Hamptons, the average stamp duty bill on a flipped home has more than tripled in the past decade, from £1,900 to £6,375.
Ms Beveridge said: “Rising upfront costs have pushed investors further North, where properties can still be bought without paying any stamp duty. It’s also where more house price growth has been concentrated over the last few years.”
In some cases, stamp duty alone is now larger than the cost of the renovation work itself. While 80% of flipped homes still sold for more than the purchase price earlier this year, just 66% delivered a profit once tax was accounted for.
Ms Beveridge added: “The second home stamp duty surcharge was introduced to tilt the market towards first-time buyers at the expense of landlords, something that it has successfully done.
“These are typically empty properties which need a lot of love and are usually tasks that most first-time consumers and movers have shied away from.”
The typical revenue on a flipped home in the first quarter of this yr was £22,000 – up from £16,000 in 2024 but still far below the peak of £38,000 recorded in 2022, and decrease than ranges seen ten years in the past.
Hamptons said flipping now only makes sense in areas where property costs and taxes are decrease. In the first three months of the yr, 61% of flipped properties were in the Midlands, the North and Wales – up from 50% a decade in the past.
Ms Beveridge said: “While the returns aren’t as high as with homes in the South in cash terms, higher yields and lower tax bills continue to make the North the homeland of flipping.”
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