While this means that the tax isn’t being totally removed, it does mean that you can buy a house for up to £500,000 without having to pay stamp duty at all. This will effectively boost the housing market, with conceivably more people looking to buy a house as stamp duty bills would fall by £4500 on average, with four out of 10 people buying a house not paying any stamp duty at all.

The changes take effect from today. We still await clarity on how stamp duty is to be charged 

• on properties above £500,000
• for additional homes 
• for those properties already exchanged. 

We will update the news page as soon as the details are announced.