Capital gains tax is doing something to the property market before a single rate changes: the rumour of a rise is moving stock. Some landlords are reportedly bringing sales forward to bank gains under current rules ahead of the Burnham government’s first Budget, though no published data yet quantifies the scale, and buyers are meeting more motivated vendors where it happens.
Rumour is not a basis for a decision, so here is the position sorted into the three boxes that matter: what is already law, what is announced with a date, and what is pure speculation. Checked against HMRC guidance on 2 August 2026.
The capital gains regime in force today
For individuals, capital gains are taxed at 18% within the basic rate band and 24% above it, rates that have applied to residential property since 6 April 2024, and to other assets since the Autumn 2024 Budget aligned the two on 30 October 2024, so property and other assets are now taxed the same way. The annual exempt amount is £3,000. A UK residential property gain must be reported and the tax paid within 60 days of completion, which still catches sellers who remember the old January timetable. Your own home is generally exempt; investment property is not.
Those are the rules a sale completed today actually faces, and they are milder than many sellers assume: the old 28% residential band is gone.
Announced and dated, not yet in force
Two property tax changes sit in the dated column, and their legal status differs. A rise in income tax on individually held rental profits, a 2-percentage-point surcharge taking the property rates to 22%, 42% and 47% from April 2027, is already enacted in the Finance Act 2026, which received Royal Assent on 18 March 2026 and simply has not commenced yet. It applies to individual landlords only, not companies. The high-value council tax surcharge on £2m-plus homes from 2028 was set out at the same Autumn 2025 Budget but has not been legislated at all, and on the current consultation it would catch company-owned homes as well as individually owned ones, so treat its design details as provisional until a statute exists.
The EPC C requirement for rented homes by 2030 sits in the same column, confirmed policy awaiting legislation, and we track it separately in our EPC C guide.
Budget speculation on capital gains
The current selling wave is driven by the third box: talk that the next Budget could raise capital gains tax rates or align them with income tax. As of today there is no consultation, no announcement and no date. It might happen, it has been predicted before every Budget for a decade, and a decision made purely to beat it is a decision made on a rumour. Label it accordingly.
The same discipline applies in reverse: nothing rules a rise out, and a seller already planning to exit within a year has a genuine timing question rather than a panic.
Selling property before the next Budget
Whatever the Budget does, the anticipation is visible in behaviour. Foundation’s Q1 2026 landlord research, lender-published rather than independent, found 42% of landlords expecting to sell at least one property within a year, and trade reporting describes sales brought forward to crystallise gains at 24% rather than a feared higher rate. For buyers this is the useful part. A vendor selling to beat a tax deadline has a diary, and vendors with diaries negotiate. The structural side of buying from them, including when to buy the company rather than the buildings, is covered in our share sale versus asset sale guide.
Sellers: if you were exiting anyway, completing under known rules at 18% and 24% has real value, and the 60-day reporting clock starts at completion. Do not manufacture a sale you did not want purely on Budget fear, and do not let a buyer use your deadline against you without paying for the privilege. Buyers: the months before a feared Budget are a motivated-vendor window, and the weeks after one often reprice in your favour whichever way it goes, because uncertainty clears.
What this means for property investors
Underwrite on the law in force: 18% and 24%, £3,000 exemption, 60-day reporting. Note the April 2027 income surcharge in your holding-structure maths now, because it is already enacted in the Finance Act 2026 rather than merely proposed, and it strengthens the company case our Section 24 guide sets out. Treat Budget CGT talk as weather: worth watching, not worth steering by, and best used as the reason the vendor across the table is suddenly reasonable.
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