"Tories urge stamp duty decision"

As Tories go, I actually quite like Philip Hammond, who points out that floating a stamp duty suspension without confirming it one way or the other had "created a significant incentive for people to delay the purchase of a property in the hope of avoiding the payment of stamp duty on the transaction. The uncertainty can only undermine the market further, reducing the volume of transactions when they are already at historic lows."

Good logic. But read on ...
Mr Hammond said the government should adopt shadow chancellor George Osborne's "fully-funded" proposal, announced last October, to lift the stamp duty threshold for first-time buyers to £250,000. "This would lift nine out of ten first-time buyers out of stamp duty altogether and provide badly needed assistance to a group who are finding it increasingly difficult to enter the market."

Sorry, he's spoiled it all again now. The last thing that a first-time buyer should be doing is 'entering the market'. My advice to them, FWIW, is wait another couple of years and wait until prices have bottomed out.