Despite the Government’s decision to end the stamp duty holiday, first-time buyers should not be too disheartened, according to Seddon Homes’ Denis Maddock.

Maddock believes that there are currently enough incentives for buyers to ease the impact of Chancellor Alistair Darling’s decision to revert to the lower £125,000 Stamp Duty threshold on January.

Maddock said: "The fact is that a large sector of home-seekers were trapped in the tax net, despite the so called Stamp-duty holiday. Most movement in the market which statisticians had credited to the raised tax threshold was in fact the result of incentives offered by builders and property developers, all designed to make it easier to buy in these difficult economic times."

As the UK is still in mid-recession, many property market representatives had lobbied the Chancellor to allow the lower rate to continue until at least the end of 2010. The National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA), the Building Societies Association (BSA), and the Home Builders Federation (HBF) were among key organisations which had pressured him to extend the holiday.

However, their pleas were ignored as he continued with his original plan, bringing the threshold back down to £125,000. Subsequently anyone who purchases a house in 2010 will have to find an extra 1% on top of the asking price to give to the taxman.

Maddock also pointed out that many buyers would not have escaped the Stamp Duty net, even if the threshold had been maintained at the higher level of £175,000 as according to property website Rightmove, home owners increased average asking prices for properties to £221,463 in 2009.

He said: "If Stamp Duty were raised even higher than £175,000 then fewer people would be subject to the tax and that might have some real impact, making it less expensive for house-hunters to buy and therefore spurring on the market. But in the current situation the lower threshold is not the crunch factor facing buyers. That is the ability to obtain mortgages."