For most buyers, the Autumn Budget on Wednesday 28 October 2026 is not by itself a good reason to rush a purchase or to put one off. Chancellor John Healey has confirmed the date, saying in a video statement on 31 July that “my first Budget as Chancellor will be Wednesday 28th October”, but not what it will contain.
In short
- The Budget date, 28 October 2026, is confirmed; its contents are not.
- Asking prices are falling and more homes are for sale than at this point in any of the last 12 years.
- Rents are forecast to rise, which favours a buyer who wants the income sooner.
- Reuters reported the Prime Minister ruling out changing or scrapping stamp duty.
- Test any purchase on today’s price, mortgage rate and stamp duty, not on a hoped-for tax change.
What the latest data shows cuts both ways. Asking prices are falling and more homes are for sale than at this point in any of the last 12 years, which helps a buyer who negotiates. Rents are forecast to rise, which helps a buyer who wants the income sooner. The better test is whether a purchase works on today’s numbers without any tax change at all.
What buyers are doing before the Budget
Net mortgage approvals for house purchase fell to 56,053 in July, according to the Bank of England’s seasonally adjusted series. That is 15% below July 2025 on the Bank’s current, revised figures, and below an average of around 60,800 over the previous six months according to the Bank’s July money and credit release.
Approvals are agreed mortgages rather than completed sales, so they point to fewer purchases coming through in the months ahead rather than measuring sales already made.
Berkeley Group, the London-focused housebuilder, said in its trading update of 11 September that enquiries remain good and stable. It added that customers without an immediate need to move stay cautious, and that some buyers may defer transactions until after the Budget.
That is one housebuilder describing its own customers, in an update that also asks the government for stamp duty cuts. It is consistent with the approvals figure, not proof of a wider freeze.
Asking prices are falling, not holding
The Rightmove House Price Index for August found the average asking price of a newly listed home fell 2.0% in the month to £364,999. Prices usually dip in August, but the ten-year average for the month is a 1.3% fall, making this the largest August drop since 2018. Asking prices are now 1.0% lower than a year ago, and the number of homes for sale is at a 12-year high for the time of year.
Rightmove measures asking prices on its own portal, not the prices homes actually sell for, and it has a commercial interest in the market it reports on. Even so, the direction matters for anyone deciding whether to wait. Rightmove has cut its 2026 forecast to between no change and a 2% fall, and names the uncertainty around the October Budget as one reason.
A buyer who waits for a clearer picture is waiting in a market where sellers already compete harder for attention. That gives a buyer more room to negotiate than a rising market would.
That room may not last. Rightmove recorded buyer demand up 5% since Andy Burnham became Prime Minister on 20 July and says this could lead to a busier autumn, although buying activity is still around 10% below last year. It also puts the average two-year fixed mortgage rate at 5.09%, up from 4.95% a month earlier, so the cost of borrowing has been moving against buyers while prices soften.
For the regional picture, including the areas where prices are still rising, see our piece on where house prices are going down and where they are still rising.
Rents are moving the other way
The rental market is tightening while the sales market softens. Zoopla’s rental market report, published on 14 September, found 3% fewer homes for rent than a year ago, with the flow of new homes coming onto the rental market 6% lower. Rents are 2.6% higher than a year ago, and Zoopla expects UK rental growth to reach between 4% and 5% by the end of 2026.
Zoopla is also a property portal with an interest in an active market, and that growth figure is a forecast rather than a result. Zoopla links the shortage to low new investment by landlords facing higher costs and more regulation, and says market forces are shaping rental trends more than new regulation is.
For a buy-to-let purchaser, that is the other half of the waiting decision. A softer purchase price improves the yield on day one, and a rent forecast of 4% to 5% improves it again if it arrives. Neither depends on anything in the Budget.
What landlords want from the Budget
The National Residential Landlords Association has set out its asks in a written Budget submission:
- It wants the base cost of a residential property for Capital Gains Tax indexed for inflation using CPI, covering the purchase price, stamp duty, other acquisition costs and qualifying capital improvements, with relief graded by how long a property has been held and none for a sale within three years.
- It also wants Local Housing Allowance unfrozen and re-linked to at least the lowest 30% of rents.
Berkeley’s update separately asks the government to consider a targeted stamp duty intervention to support new build, including a 1% cap for first-time buyers and for downsizers and removal of the 5% stamp duty surcharge on additional homes.
These are lobbying positions from a membership body and a housebuilder, and none of them is government policy.
The Prime Minister: Reuters reported on 27 July that, asked whether the government would change or scrap stamp duty, he said: “That won’t be happening.”
The stamp duty asks also run against what the Prime Minister was reported as saying. A buyer who delays a purchase in the hope that one of them appears on 28 October is making a bet on a proposal, not waiting for a known change.
The rates in force today are the ones to price on, and our stamp duty guide for investment property sets them out, including the surcharge on additional homes.
What this means for property investors
Run the purchase on today’s price, today’s mortgage rate and today’s stamp duty. If it works on those numbers, the Budget is not a reason to wait, and the current supply of homes for sale gives you room to negotiate.
If it only works because you expect a tax cut or a rate change, it does not work yet: nothing confirmed supports that assumption, and Reuters reported the Prime Minister ruling out changing or scrapping stamp duty. Do not rush to beat a Budget whose contents are unknown, and do not hold back for relief nobody has promised.
Sellers face the mirror image. With asking prices falling and stock at a 12-year high for the time of year, a property priced on last spring’s expectations is competing against a lot of alternatives, and the price it achieves will be set by comparable sales rather than by the Budget.
This is general information, not advice on your situation, so take independent advice before acting.
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