Asking vendor to pay stamp duty

sportbeth

nmiah786 wrote:

That would be me then!!! Actually, excel is a very good calculator if you find your calculator doing walkies!!!! :rotfl:

To the OP be very carefull if you decide to go via the £250k plus £6k for F&F, the Inland Revenue are very interested in this!!!

Why dont you just go to the EA with your offer but state that it will be dependant on the vendor paying the stamp duty, then negotiage between a 1% and 2% split.

As yourself, realistically how much are you willing to pay for this house?

Well, we saw another place at the weekend that we really liked. Asking price of £299,950. Offered full asking price on the condition that the vendor agreed to pay our stamp duty.

They came back yesterday saying that although they loved the offer, they wanted to leave it on a bit longer as it had only been on the market for a week.

There's no pleasing some people!!!

We've gone back with a counter offer of full asking price with vendor paying 2 thirds of the stamp duty and then if they don't like that we'll have to walk away.

With any luck it will stay on the market another 6 months now, so we can then save up £9k in that time and go back and offer £290k all in!!!!!

silvercar

£299,950 with vendor paying stamp duty is the same as offering £290,951. So why not offer that?

sportbeth

The problem is that although we've got £15k deposit and a mortgage agreed in principle, we haven't got the spare £9k for the stamp duty so that would put us in a bit of a spot when the treasury knock on our door 30 days after exchange!!!

We can either try and do a deal now or try and save for another 6 months for it

Andy_L

mr_fishbulb wrote:

Estate agents make their money on comission of the final sale price of the house. 1% of the full asking price is more than 1% of 95% of the asking price.

Estate agents are profiting a lot from the housing boom. They should lower their fees.
Say a house cost £200,000 10 years ago and the EA got 1% = £2000.
If the same house now costs £300,000 the EA gets 1% = £3000.

What is the extra £1000 being spent on by the EA? I don't see the associated costs of an EA selling a house going up by 50% in 10 years. It's all profit to them.

10 years of inflation, wage rises & rent increase perhaps?

sm9ai

Andy_L wrote:

10 years of inflation, wage rises & rent increase perhaps?

Perhaps 30% of it is. But they are certainly making a lot more due to the current housing boom.

graemecarter

We just sold our flat, and the buyer would not go up to asking price (£350k). They only offered £345k, so the estate agent dropped their fee by £3k to facilitate the process.
Worth asking.