Healthier Housing Market, It Needs to Make Moving Home Easier

By Dougal Hutley, Founder of OffAgent

Ahead of every Budget, there is always plenty of discussion about helping people get onto the housing ladder, and I expect this year will be no different. We will almost certainly hear about measures aimed at first-time buyers, whether that's support with deposits, mortgage affordability or access to finance. Those initiatives are important, but they only address part of the challenge.

What receives far less attention is the cost of moving itself.

For all the debate around affordability, the reality is that buying and selling a home in Britain remains surprisingly expensive, time-consuming and complicated. Even when people are financially able to move, they're often discouraged by the cost, uncertainty and length of the process. At a time when consumers can book holidays, buy cars and manage investments online in a matter of minutes, it's remarkable that selling a home can still take months and cost thousands of pounds.

That matters because a healthy housing market isn't simply one where people can afford to buy. It's one where people can afford to move. Whether it's a young family needing more space, someone relocating for work or an older homeowner looking to downsize, economic mobility often depends on housing mobility. The easier it is for people to move when their circumstances change, the healthier both the property market and the wider economy become.

The same principle applies to business growth, which I expect will be another major theme of the Chancellor's speech. Growth is always an easy ambition to support in principle, but for SMEs the reality is often more complicated. While government talks about encouraging entrepreneurship, many growing businesses continue to face rising employment, regulatory and operating costs.

As a founder, I know that every investment decision involves trade-offs. Money spent complying with additional bureaucracy is money that cannot be invested elsewhere. It can't be used to improve products, attract customers, develop new technology or recruit talented people. For many SMEs, the decision to hire another member of staff is already finely balanced, which is why policymakers should be looking for ways to encourage that investment rather than making it more expensive.

Alongside growth, technology and productivity are also likely to feature heavily in the Budget. That's undoubtedly positive, but innovation is often framed too narrowly. The conversation tends to focus on entirely new industries, emerging technologies and artificial intelligence, when some of the biggest productivity gains may actually come from modernising sectors that have changed very little in decades.

Modernising property transactions to unlock productivity

Property is a good example. Consumers increasingly expect transparency, convenience and choice in every aspect of their lives, yet the home-selling process remains largely built around models that many people would recognise from twenty or thirty years ago. Technology now gives homeowners more control and more options than ever before, allowing them to access large audiences of buyers without necessarily paying thousands of pounds in commission.

At Off Agent, that's exactly what we're trying to do. We believe consumers should have a genuine choice in how they sell their homes, and that technology should be used to remove unnecessary cost and friction from the process. More broadly, government should support businesses that are challenging expensive and outdated ways of doing things, because that's often where real productivity gains are found.

One area where caution is needed, however, is taxation. Any measures that increase the cost of moving home risk reducing transaction levels at a time when activity is already under pressure. Housing doesn't exist in isolation. Every property transaction supports a much wider network of businesses, from mortgage brokers and conveyancers to removal companies, surveyors and local tradespeople. When people stop moving, the effects ripple right across the economy.

That's why my biggest wish for this Budget is a change in perspective. Too often housing policy is judged primarily through the lens of house prices, but that only tells part of the story. We should also be asking whether people can afford to transact, whether moving home is becoming easier or harder, and whether innovation is helping reduce the cost of doing so.

If government is serious about boosting productivity, increasing economic mobility and supporting long-term growth, making it easier and cheaper for people to move home would be a very good place to start.