If you were planning to sell your agency and had the old number in your head, the old number is gone.
Business Asset Disposal Relief used to take 10% of the first £1m of qualifying gain. From 6 April 2025 it took 14%. Since 6 April 2026 it has taken 18%. That last step happened six months ago, quietly, because it was legislated well in advance and there was no announcement on the day to notice.
On Wednesday 28 October the Chancellor, John Healey, delivers the Autumn Budget. Capital gains tax is being talked about again. So this is a sensible moment to separate three things that tend to get mixed together: what has definitely changed, what is only speculation, and what you should actually do about either.
What has already happened to the relief
The rate has gone up twice in two years. On gains qualifying for Business Asset Disposal Relief:
- 10% on disposals on or before 5 April 2025
- 14% on disposals from 6 April 2025 to 5 April 2026
- 18% on disposals from 6 April 2026
The lifetime limit has not moved. It remains £1m of qualifying gains per person. Gains above that are taxed at your main capital gains rate, which for 2026/27 is 18% within the basic rate band and 24% above it.
So the top of the relief and the bottom of the main rate now meet. For a higher-rate taxpayer, the relief still saves you six points on the first £1m. It used to save you fourteen.
The arithmetic is worth seeing written down. As Blick Rothenberg put it in August: a £1m gain fully qualifying for the relief would have cost £100,000 in tax at 10%. At 18% the bill is £180,000. An £80,000 difference on the same business, sold two years apart.
The qualifying conditions have not changed. You need to have owned the business or the shares for at least two years to the date of disposal. For a share sale you need at least 5% of shares and voting rights and an entitlement to at least 5% of profits or proceeds, and you need to have been an officer or employee of the company for that two-year period. If you are a shareholder who stepped back from the business a while ago, that last condition is the one to check first.
Each individual has their own £1m limit. In a business with two or three working shareholders, that matters more than the rate does. We cover the mechanics in more detail in our guide to tax when selling an estate agency — and none of it is a substitute for your own accountant looking at your own position.
What the 28 October Budget could do
Nothing has been announced. What follows is what is being discussed in public, and it should be read as possibility rather than forecast.
Rate alignment is the loudest idea. A submission from Labour donor and Ecotricity founder Dale Vince, reported by Property Industry Eye on 22 September, proposes aligning capital gains tax with income tax — which would mean rates as high as 45%. The submission estimates around £14bn of additional revenue, to be used to lift the income tax personal allowance. It is a submission, not a policy.
The reliefs themselves are on the list of things people expect to be looked at. Blick Rothenberg’s Malli Kini listed the plausible areas as the headline rate, Private Residence Relief, the annual exempt amount, the BADR lifetime limit and the capital gains uplift on death, while being explicit that “none of these changes have been announced.”
There is a quieter risk that matters more to company owners. John Endacott, head of wealth and succession at PKF Francis Clark, writes that HMRC’s attention is on capital distributions on a members’ voluntary liquidation, share buy-backs and preference share redemptions — in other words, on taxing more capital transactions as income rather than as gains. His advice to business owners is “not to panic, but not to ignore what’s coming either.” If your exit involves any of those structures, that is a conversation to have with your accountant this month rather than in December.
There is also a serious argument that rates will not move much. Endacott’s own view is that the Office for Budget Responsibility is unlikely to credit a capital gains rate rise with much extra revenue, because people change their behaviour. Craig Hughes of Menzies, speaking to Estate Agent Today on 24 September, made the same point from the taxpayer’s side: if rates rise significantly, or if uncertainty continues, “taxpayers may bring forward disposals, defer transactions following a rise, restructure their affairs or simply retain assets for longer.” Jessica Partridge of Mayo Wynne Baxter warned that policymakers “should be wary of viewing capital gains as an easy source of revenue.”
Our own trade body is pushing the other way. Propertymark wrote to the Chancellor on 29 September asking him to focus on “lowering taxes, supporting the property sector and giving all generations hope through housing.” Timothy Douglas, its head of policy and campaigns, argued that property transactions drive spending across the wider economy.
The timing point that matters most
Here is the part most owners get wrong.
A capital gains change does not have to wait until April. In the Budget of 30 October 2024, the main capital gains rates went up on the day — the lower rate from 10% to 18% and the higher rate from 20% to 24%, effective immediately. Blick Rothenberg makes the same warning about this Budget: changes may take effect on Budget Day rather than at the start of the next tax year.
And you cannot necessarily date your way around a change. The April 2026 BADR increase is a good lesson in this. Historically the rate followed the date of the unconditional contract. For this increase that principle was overridden: the 18% rate applies to disposals on or after 6 April 2026 whatever the contract date, with only a narrow carve-out for genuinely commercial pre-April contracts that were not created for a tax advantage.
So “I will exchange before the rules change” is a plan with a hole in it. If you are mid-process and someone is telling you to rush to beat a date, ask them what happens if the date does not work the way they assume.
Why a Budget is usually the wrong reason to sell
The buyers are not going anywhere. Agency acquisitions have been running hard all year, and nothing about the Budget speculation has slowed them.
Dwelly completed its tenth acquisition of 2026 at the start of September. Foxtons announced four regional deals on 23 September — Maguire Jackson and Davidson Estates in Birmingham, Warren Anthony in Watford and a lettings portfolio near Reading — for £4.8m initial consideration with a further £1.2m deferred and performance-linked, covering businesses with £3.2m of combined revenue. Sourced has £10m earmarked, four deals done this year and eight more in the pipeline.
And the shape of what they buy has shifted. When we looked at completed deals from 2024 to August 2026, the pattern was consistent. As Martin Bunney put it: “The clearest pattern that we are seeing, confirmed by our research, is that the acquisition of lettings books is now favoured over entire agencies.” If your lettings book is the valuable part, you may have more options than you think — see how a lettings book is valued.
A rushed sale costs more than the tax it saves. This is the honest point, and it is worth more to you than any tax tip. A seller working to an artificial deadline negotiates badly. You take the first buyer rather than the right one. You accept more of the price as deferred consideration, on terms you have not had time to pick apart. Eighty thousand pounds of tax is a lot of money. It is also a small fraction of what you can lose by selling to the wrong buyer in a hurry.
And if a meaningful slice of your price is deferred over one, two or three years, the rate risk does not end at completion anyway. That is another reason to get your accountant to model it properly rather than guess.
What to get in order before 28 October
None of this depends on what the Chancellor says. All of it is worth doing anyway.
Know your own relief position. Have you used any of your £1m lifetime limit before, on a previous business? Does the two-year clock run clear? Are you an officer or employee, and have you been throughout? Do your fellow shareholders each qualify in their own right? These are factual questions with factual answers, and an afternoon with your accountant settles them.
Get the numbers modelled at more than one rate. Ask for your net proceeds at 18% on the first £1m and 24% above it, and then at a higher rate, so you know what a change would actually mean rather than how it feels. If you want a starting point for the gross number before tax, our free valuation tool will give you one from your own figures in a few minutes.
Get the business itself sale-ready, which takes months. You should be able to show, without digging: clean client money reconciliations that someone outside the business has checked; compliance and licensing records complete property by property; landlord and vendor terms that are standard, signed and findable; and a business that does not stop working if one person goes on holiday. Richard Murray, chief executive of the property software firm Veco, told The Negotiator on 30 September that buyers “want compliance kept up properly and a business that doesn’t depend on one person. That’s what trips agencies up when they try to sell.” He is selling software, but the point stands on its own.
Do not sign anything you would not have signed anyway. If the deal is right, the tax position is a reason to get your timing advice right. It is not a reason to accept a worse deal.
Three situations, three different answers
You were going to sell in the next year or two
Bring the preparation forward, not necessarily the sale. Get your relief position confirmed and your records straight now, so that if the Budget does change something you can move deliberately instead of scrambling. Our guide to selling an estate agency sets out what a proper process looks like.
You are in a process right now
Speak to your accountant this week, before 28 October, specifically about what happens to your tax position if rates change between exchange and completion, and about how your deferred consideration is treated. Make sure your lawyer knows what you have been told. Do not let a buyer use the Budget as leverage on price.
You were not planning to sell at all
Then the Budget changes nothing for you, and you should ignore the noise. The one thing worth doing is finding out what your business is actually worth, because that number informs retirement planning, succession and partnership decisions whether or not you ever sell. Start with how much an estate agency is worth.
How we can help
The Acquisitions Group acts for agency owners, and the team has acquired 156+ businesses in five years. We know who is buying, what each buyer wants, and how to run a sale without your staff, landlords or competitors finding out.
We are not tax advisers and nothing here is tax advice — your accountant should always be the one who signs off your position. What we can tell you is what your business looks like to the people who buy agencies, and what a realistic timetable is.
Start with our free business valuation tool. It takes a few minutes and works from your own figures. If you would then like to talk it through, book a confidential conversation with Martin. There is no obligation, and nothing leaves the room.
You can read more about how we work with agencies on our estate and lettings agencies page.
Sources
- GOV.UK, “Business Asset Disposal Relief” (rates of 10%, 14% and 18% by disposal date; two-year ownership, 5% shareholding and officer/employee conditions), accessed 1 October 2026
- Brodies LLP, “Business Asset Disposal Relief (BADR): what is changing on 6 April 2026”
- Blick Rothenberg, Malli Kini, “Capital Gains Tax and the Autumn Budget: what taxpayers should be thinking about now”, 19 August 2026
- PKF Francis Clark, John Endacott, “What tax changes might John Healey introduce in his Budget on 28 October?”
- Property Industry Eye, “Property investors face 45% capital gains tax as Labour weighs major hike”, 22 September 2026, updated 24 September 2026
- Estate Agent Today, “Burnham Capital Gains Tax threat could disrupt sales market”, 24 September 2026
- Estate Agent Today, “Tax plea to Chancellor issued by Propertymark”, 29 September 2026
- Which?, “Autumn Budget 2026: when is it and what will it contain?”
- HM Treasury, Budget of 30 October 2024
- Foxtons Group plc, RNS, “Four regional acquisitions to augment growth”, 23 September 2026
- Property Industry Eye, “Fast-growing estate agency completes tenth acquisition of 2026”, 1 September 2026
- Property Industry Eye, “Property group targets £10m agency acquisition spree with eight deals in pipeline”, 23 September 2026
- Property Industry Eye, “Lettings portfolios become hot property in estate agency acquisition race”, 9 September 2026
- The Negotiator, “Software firm says technology can help agencies become sale-ready”, 30 September 2026