Busy periods are part and parcel of working in the removals industry. You are accustomed to seeing your summer months workload soaring, having a hectic end-of-the-month or being swamped with requests for a Friday move. However, are you prepared though for the imminent stamp duty rush?
What are the stamp duty changes?
Currently, there is no stamp duty due for the first £250,000 of a property’s price. From April 2025, this tax-free threshold will be lowered to £125,000 for England and Northern Ireland. This means you’ll start paying 2% for the first £125,001 to £250,000 of the property value. (The rest of the threshold rates can be found here.) As a result, buyers will most likely face higher bills for their single residence. For first-time buyers, the nil rate for stamp duty is increasing from £425,000 to £300,000. This is causing a rush of first-time buyers trying to purchase a property before the changes come into effect. Second-home buyers have already been hit with a hike. From 31st October 2024, stamp duty for second homes rose two percentage points to five per cent. All in all, it’s not a great story for the homemover who will likely have to fork out more to relocate.
With the stamp duty hikes coming into effect on 1st April 2025, removals demand in the next few months is highly likely to spike, as homemovers will be looking to complete before this date to save themselves potentially thousands of pounds. This anticipated surge in requests for your services in the first quarter of the year is reminiscent of the pandemic stamp duty holiday. As the last stakeholders in the homemoving journey, removal businesses are going to have to take the strain, just as you did in 2021.
How can you prepare for the increase in demand for your services?
1. Anticipate the surge with market insights
There’s a race against the clock for homebuyers to complete before April. Use market data for your region to gauge the potential volume of moves in your area. MoverAlerts sends out monthly regional stats with the number of instructions, SSTCs, exchanged and fallen throughs for the month. If you’re not already signed up to receive these for your region, you can request to be sent the monthly report here.
2. Scale your workforce
An increase in workload may not be manageable for your existing workforce. To prepare for the increase in house moves before April, it would be wise to hire temporary staff to support your core team. Do this now so you have time to get new staff fully trained up. You also need to ensure you’re retaining your top talent, so they don’t leave just before the surge hits. Offer incentives like bonuses or increased pay to encourage your staff to stay. Outline your overtime pay ahead of time and start gauging how available your team will be to cover any increase in demand so you can plan ahead.
3. Optimise your fleet and equipment
Ensure that your vehicles and equipment are all in top condition before the rush. Conduct maintenance checks and consider renting additional vans. Remember - fail to prepare, prepare to fail!
4. Adjust your marketing strategy
We could see demand cooling after April as the cost to move home surges and deters many potential movers, or simply outprices them. This means you need to make the most of any increase in demand while you can. Improve your marketing strategy to capture as many homemovers as possible. Target those in the moving journey already so you’re not wasting your marketing spend. MoverAlerts can help you to do so by providing you with the addresses of those people in the moving journey. Communicate in your marketing the importance of booking early to avoid disappointment.
5. Monitor and adjust
You need to stay flexible and adjust your plans as demand rises. There may be an opportunity to temporarily raise prices as home buyers vie for removal firms before they get booked up. Charge for provisional bookings and consider adding non-refundable deposits. Make sure everyone in your team is ready for the challenge. Have weekly check-ins to see how you can make the process smoother.
6. Be considerate of the homemovers plight
Remember, moving house is stressful! It’s going to be even more tense for homemovers in the first quarter of 2025 as they will be competing with everyone else in their chain, and all other chains, to get a removal business booked in. The 31st March is highly likely to be the busiest move day of the year just as the last day of the stamp duty holiday was the busiest move day during the pandemic, according to our analysts. The homeowner is often in the dark about their moving date until the exchange of contracts and has little time to try to secure a removals company for the day. You may have many frantic people calling you in the coming months as they try to get their completion over the line before the 1st of April. Be mindful of their plight – remember these are all potential referral clients so try to be as upfront and flexible as possible.
Conclusion
The property market is unpredictable at the best of times and demand for your services can wax and wane. It’s essential to prepare yourself as best you can for the peaks that you can anticipate such as this stamp duty hike. There could be a bottleneck for removals services in the first few months of 2025, a repeat of what happened during the stamp duty holiday. After April, demand is more likely to ebb so keep this in mind too when considering staffing and fleet.
Don’t miss out on the rush! Are you ready to attract more leads during this busy period? Our address removal leads can connect you with homeowners in need of removal and storage solutions. Get in touch with us to find out more about our moving company lead generation.