Stamp duty holiday
Estate agents are gearing up for a second housing mini-boom after the Chancellor extended the stamp duty holiday until the end of June.
It means an extra 300,000 home buyers could benefit from the break.
House hunters swarmed property websites within minutes of the announcement, suggesting the market may once again go into overdrive.
The extension was widely anticipated, but Rishi Sunak went further than expected by announcing an additional tapering-off period.
Property experts said the news would be a huge relief to buyers stuck in transaction bottlenecks and would save up to 100,000 sales from collapse. It prompted the Office for Budget Responsibility to predict house prices would grow by 5 per cent this year, a startling turnaround from its November forecast of a 4 per cent fall.