Rishi Sunak, chancellor of the exchequer, will likely extend the stamp duty holiday until the end of June. The extension is expected to appear in next week’s Budget.
The tax holiday was due to end on 31 March and around 100,000 ongoing transactions were at risk of not completing in time.
The stamp duty threshold has been temporarily increased to £500,000 for property sales in England and Northern Ireland.
The stamp duty holiday could be extended by three months, according to a media report.
As part of his Budget plans next week, Chancellor Rishi Sunak will be moving the deadline from 31 March to the end of June, The Times has reported.
The chancellor had been urged to push back the deadline as many people have been left scrambling to complete their transactions before the end date - with the property website Rightmove estimating 100,000 could miss out.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak has been urged to extend the deadline
Under the current rules, announced by the Treasury last year in a bid to fire up the property market, the stamp duty threshold has been temporarily raised from £125,000 to £500,000 for property sales in England and Northern Ireland.
In Scotland and Wales, it was increased to £250,000.
The holiday appears to have had a positive impact on the housing market, with right-leaning think tank the Centre for Policy Studies reporting house sales had increased to their highest level since before the 2007 financial crisis.
Some 129,400 transactions went through in the UK in December, compared with 87,040 in 2014, according to provisional figures from HM Revenue & Customs.
