Selling without Estate agent & stamp duty

tangoman2010

We are emigrating and in fortunate situation to have found a buyer without using an estate agent. Unfortunately we have had the house valued buy estate agents around 270,000 but because of stamp duty they have said we should realistically price around 250,000 because of the stamp duty threshold increase from 1% to 3%.

Is there any legal way we can sell the house for 250,000 and get the extra 20,000 as say fixtures and fittings to avoid our buyers paying stamp duty at 3%.

I don't want to break the law but would like as much for the house as possible & 250,000 is just too low for this house compared to the rest of the properties at that price.

We have not discussed the price with our possible purchaser but they have asked us not to put the property on the market as they have seen lots of properties & ours ticks all their boxes.

Just not sure how to approach them and want something that works for both parties

Sammy85_2

In short... No.

Unless of course the fixtures and fittings equal £20k.

timmyt

no one has £20k of fittings so no.

But keep the price at £270k, bad agents adice...if they has valued at £255 say I'd agree

Cannon_Fodder

You need to discuss price with the purchaser. They might be thinking £240k or even lower.

If you don't want to sell for that don't. Get it on the market and see what people offer.

Yes, the threshold is a stumbling block in some cases. But if it is clearly worth more than £265k, then you could get that sort of figure, if not quite up to £270k.

G_M

No.
Don't you think there are 1000s of people selling houses all the time faced with the same scenario?
HMRC are not stupid - they look at property sales around the threshold closely.

pjread

also - to play devil's advocate - is 250 too little for the house compared to all the other properties in the agents window, which have been on the market unmoving for months/years ?

A dude in a cheap suit can tell you it's worth anything they like, it's still worth whatever you can actually convince someone to pay for it. That might be more or less.

But I expect any property in the 255-270 bracket (asking price) will be lucky to get a better than 250k offer. Especially with the 0% stamp duty for FTB's. That's an extra 7.5k+ in tax for exceeding a 250k price.

Cazza

If you feel your house is worth the £270,000, you could agree with the purchaser that if they will agree to pay the full asking price, you will contribute, say 50% of the stamp duty, on completion (£4,500). This is completely acceptable and legal, as long as both sides' solicitors and the purchaser's mortgage company are fully aware.