After days of preemptive warnings, Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement didn’t hold many surprises. But coming on the heels of last month’s mini-budget chaos, predictability and stability seem to be the order of the day.
One of the few policies that remain in Mr Hunt's fiscal plan from his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng is the rise in the stamp duty threshold to double the previous rate. However, Mr Hunt confirmed the cuts will be phased out from March 2025, “creating an incentive to support the housing market and the jobs associated with it.”
For those hoping to get on the property ladder, there wasn’t much more to take away from today's budget. Still, Mr Hunt acknowledged concerns over a slowing housing market which were later underlined in a follow-up statement by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicting a 9 per cent drop in house prices over the next two years, driven primarily by the increase in mortgage rates and the economic recession that the UK is now officially in.
