Buyers rush to get properties completed before stamp duty holiday ends
November 26, 2009
Last year saw the government take steps to try and revive the struggling property market in the UK, and one of the measures that was put into place to do this was to suspend stamp duty on properties up to the value of £175,000. Previous to this stamp duty had to be paid on properties over £125,000 so the move involved increasing this threshold by £50,000 on a temporary basis.
As the measure was only a temporary one the government did warn that it would come to an end at some point, despite calls from some industry groups to get rid of stamp duty altogether.
The extended stamp duty holiday is set to come to an end at the end of this year, which means that those looking to avoid paying stamp duty will need to move quickly unless the property that they are considering is under the value of £125,000.
The stamp duty holiday has already been extended once since it was launched, as it was originally set to expire in April of this year. However, most people think that it is highly unlikely that it will be extended again.
This means that first time buyers now only have a matter of weeks to complete their deals if they want to avoid paying the stamp duty, and these buyers are being urged to ensure that their solicitors and other parties involved are working at a speed that will allow them to meet the deadline.
Richard Morea of mortgage broker London & Country said: “While the average chain takes six to 12 weeks to complete, first-time buyers are in a strong position to get in before the deadline, as many will be buying new properties and developers will be keen as mustard to get sale proceeds on their books before the end of the calendar year.”
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