Frustrated. What would you do?

leftieM

I don't know! I would ring the solicitor and get him/her to answer those questions. (S)he must have encountered this kind of thing loads of times.

silvercar

however many estate agents you use, paying £258k on a property means stamp duty of over £7.5k. paying stamp duty on £250k is £2.5k. No-one is going to want to pay you an extra 8k to pay the taxman an extra £5k.

houses do not sell at £258k.

noyk

Thats exactly what i was going to say silvercar - Unless you have a stupid buyer they are simply not going to want to pay that little extra to you and thus pay the extra 5k in stamp duty. I think you need to re-evaluate your position, people do not like paying tax needlessly - maybe you do but most people i promise you don't!

Ivrytwr3

also if you did go for the deal and accepted £8k cash/cheque outside of the sale as soon as you deposit that amount of cash the bank is legally obliged to ask where the money came fromand in some circumstances inform the Police (it used to be amounts over £5k).

So if you do go for it make sure you have a watertight reason for coming into such an amount.

leftieM

Houses here sell for a few k over the sd threshold. Buyers bid over £250k to scare off the underbidders.

roswell

id lower the price, most buyer are probably put off by the fact there paying and extra 8000 that they doesnt add anything to the property that could be a new car / money to do work in the house / holiday etc

woudl you pay the 8000 extra ? of course you could pay there stamp duty for them or half it if you feel so strongly for your asking price but bear in mind that if you paid it for them the extra in the asking price means you only sell for 250 000 anyway. Your estate agent fees will be cheaper if you lower the price as well. That 8000 is only 3 % of your price.

suffolkb

They were happy with the 250k price to begin with. Could you offer to pay the extra stamp duty for them?. It would cost you 5k,but you would still get the asking price. Or even go halves on the extra.

mr218

i find it difficult to believe that nationwide have told them to do it. it seems like they have been all along trying to avoid stamp duty. they are backing you into a corner so that you would agree through emotional blackmail and your need to close the sale.

i would not do this. if you think that your house is slightly overpriced then by all means reduce it to the value of the stamp duty. then see if they come around. i think you will find that they might want to pay the stamp duty and purchase the house legally .

going2die_rich

Tell them where to go and also do the same to your estate agent and if they want to keep your house in their business they best not send anyone else who has pulled out previously.

The estate agent wants it sold for their commission, they don't care if it means selling your home for less.

silvercar

if your house is unique someone might pay £258 and suffer the stamp duty.,

if there are a few houses on the market, they will just buy the one where the seller realises that people are not going to stomach the rise in stamp duty.

search on one of the house price websites for your area and see how many people have actually paid between £250k and £260k for a property.
https://www.houseprices.co.uk is good because you can search a whole area.