No, the value of property exempt was increased until Sep'09, and then to Dec'09 – I have just bought a house at nearly £175k so would have just avoided the duty. Person buying my house would not budge on entry date (despite not having a property to sell – I think it was because they tried and failed to get my house at a cheeky price!) – therfore with duty and VAT increase on all fees I am now having to pay around £2000 more to move in Jan – just a couple of weeks into when the duty is payable 🙁
Don't think it will affect market much… people still need houses, in our case we needed to increase size of house due to family. The duty issue tends to just affect houses around the threshold IMO. When it was £175k we would not have payed £176k for instance – so if your house was valued at say 175 – 185k it would be hard to get more than £175k in a difficult market.
