Our figures suggest that owners keen to move have decided to press on, not await Budget tax changes unlikely to affect their reasons for wanting to move home. This seems pragmatic: they are avoiding delay knowing that, with a buyer and a price, the impact of any tax variation can be crystallised and addressed. As to the nature of such changes, it must be hoped they are driven by the need for a thriving market, not revenue.

When the budget does come, it appears likely that any property tax changes made will seek to advantage owneroccupiers, especially first time buyers at lower prices, at the expense of those buying for investment or a second home, and of those with more expensive homes. Potentially unsettling news for owners and buyers of country houses at, say, three or more times the current national average price (around £323,000 in England & Wales) there is an argument that such changes are in their long-term interests. Why? Because they should give young buyers of today a greater chance, in eight to ten years’ time, of having the equity, earnings and desire, to buy a classic family country house. A healthy first time buyer market is the foundation of future demand and the extent to which it can be underpinned by parental wealth, is too narrow for long-term viability.

In 1995, home ownership was common (43%) amongst 27 year olds. Among those aged 25 to 34, it stood at 65%. This collapsed to just 27% by 2015 and is at 31% today*. Many – probably most – of those who rented have been unable to save for a deposit, keeping them out of the market and restricting demand. Combined with slow wage growth, this limited house price growth at the bottom end of the market from 1996 to 2003, even as the availability of cheap credit, for those with access to it, prompted a big increase in investment in low-end properties to rent and sharp rises in the value of more up-market properties. In addition, at the very top end, worldwide macroeconomic events increased the number of exceptionally wealthy people. For example, if we take (somewhat arbitrarily) six times the national average price as the starting point for ‘exceptional wealth’ properties, Cornwall had no such sales in 1995, but now has 15 to twenty each year. In Cheshire, the number has trebled to nearly 100 a year and Devon has gone from 15, to around 50.

In rural areas, this growth in the number of houses at the top end of the national price scale has contributed towards the long-term spreading of market values, with relatively low price growth of the least expensive homes and the highest growth, until constrained by taxes and interest rates, seen in these top end houses. Such properties are, as indicated above, small in number, yet still help to drag average prices well above the mid-point, below which half of all sales take place.

Thus even, say, a couple who did buy a modest home a decade ago, today face a much bigger jump to a large family home than they might have anticipated, even with recent wage rises and growth in bottom-end prices. If the Treasury opts to help such a couple to realise their hopes by, say, giving them a tax advantage over non owneroccupiers, that should, in the long-term, be to the advantage of all.

* Sources: Resolution Foundation, ONS