The Prime Minister placed housing at the centre of his government’s agenda. The headline for buyers is Your First Home, a scheme allowing first-time buyers of new builds to purchase with deposits as low as 2.5%, supported by a 20% government equity loan that is initially interest-free, with full detail to follow at the Budget. Its stated purpose is to “open up ownership to those not backed by the bank of mum and dad”.

The Conservatives took a different route entirely. Kemi Badenoch pledged to remove inheritance tax from family homes and raise couples’ tax-free allowance on other assets to £1 million, linking it to an earlier promise to abolish stamp duty on home purchases. “The Conservatives are and always have been the party of home ownership,” she told members, although she stopped short of committing to abolish inheritance tax altogether, saying that would not be affordable. It is an unashamed appeal to middle Britain, with ownership framed as a journey from the first purchase to the last bequest.

Reform’s pitch leans on supply. Deputy leader Richard Tice has set out a five-year emergency plan that would remove affordable housing requirements outside a handful of English cities, alongside a promise that “all new brownfield residential homes would be stamp-duty free” for a decade, with capital gains and rental income tax relief on top.

North of the border, the SNP was returned to government in May with a commitment to relaunch the First Home Fund, offering up to £10,000 towards a deposit on homes priced up to £300,000, with the Scottish Government taking a recoverable stake in the property. John Swinney described it at his party’s spring campaign conference as giving people “the help they need to buy their first home”. Notably, the SNP manifesto contained no specific proposals on LBTT.

This is where the conversation becomes especially relevant to buyers and sellers in the West of Scotland. Housing and property transaction tax are devolved, which means the stamp duty promises made in Birmingham would not, on their own, change anything for a family buying in Bearsden or Newton Mearns. Inheritance tax, however, is set at Westminster, so any reform there would reach Scottish households directly.

What a UK-wide stamp duty debate does is shine an uncomfortable light on a gap that already exists. LBTT rates and bands were held at their existing levels for 2026-27, with the top 12% band applying above £750,000. On a £900,000 purchase, a buyer in Scotland pays £66,350 in LBTT, against £35,000 in stamp duty for the same purchase in England, and from around £400,000 upwards, England tends to be the cheaper place to move. For the premium family market, that is a material cost sitting directly between a family and their next home.

It is also, in my view, one of the principal causes of the downsizer log jam that so many in this industry recognise. Commentators have been reporting that older homeowners are choosing to stay put rather than downsize because of the LBTT involved. When the people in the larger family homes do not move, the families who need those homes cannot move up, and the whole chain stalls from the top.

The ideas are already on the table. At the Holyrood election, the Scottish Conservatives proposed scrapping LBTT on primary residences, Scottish Labour proposed lifting first-time buyer relief from £175,000 to £200,000, and the Scottish Liberal Democrats proposed consulting on LBTT exemptions for older people downsizing to free up stock. Reform went further, proposing to abolish LBTT and replace it with an annual property tax.

The Scottish Government already has a comprehensive review of LBTT underway…although we will see just how comprehensive it actually is. None of this is cost-free, given that LBTT raises around £1 billion a year, but the direction of the conversation has shifted, which in itself is significant.

We appear to be entering an era of bolder politics, and if property lands at the heart of it, the potential to unlock this market is considerable. The West of Scotland is in exceptional form. Buyer demand is deep, prices are holding at historic highs, and the premium end continues to perform strongly. For all that strength, the market has felt constrained, with too many would-be sellers concluding that the cost of moving outweighed the value of selling.

Policy that genuinely eased that friction, whether through a more considered approach to the upper LBTT bands, targeted relief for downsizers, or stronger support at the bottom of the chain, would do more for movement across Scotland than almost any other single lever.

For now, the market is poised for detail. The Budget on 28 October should set out how Your First Home will work, the LBTT review will tell us whether Holyrood is prepared to act, and the First Minister’s speech in Aberdeen today may yet add to the picture.

Ambition has been plentiful this autumn. Detail is what will decide whether any of it moves the market.