Frustrated. What would you do?

silvercar

OK just done it for my area.

Since 2000, 1016 houses have been sold. Ranked by sale price, there is not one single house sold for anything between £250k and £262,500!

Daniel_B

Ivrytwr3 wrote:

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).

Not on topic as such, but I paid in a cheque once for 30K, and apart from the HSBC asking me if I wanted to open a new account (I'm an FD customer) I had no questions asked of me whatsoever.

This would have been about 2.5 years ago - is this a recent change then?

A year ago I withdrew 7K to purchase a car, which fell through, and then paid it back in again, again no questions asked.

Back on topic I have the following house sales in my area between 250 & 260:

12/06/2002 £259,995 Det.
18/05/2006 £259,950 Semi
15/10/2002 £259,000 Det.
25/08/2004 £259,000 Det.
09/12/2005 £258,750 Det.
21/04/2006 £258,500 Det.
10/06/2005 £258,000 Det.
03/06/2003 £257,800 Det.
08/04/2004 £256,000 Det.
20/03/2005 £256,000 Semi
09/02/2004 £255,000 Det.
12/08/2005 £255,000 Ter.
11/08/2006 £254,000 Ter.

And there are another 6 at 260K.

Personally I wouldn't bow to their demands, but each to their own.

Thanks

Dan

barnaby-bear

silvercar wrote:

OK just done it for my area.

Since 2000, 1016 houses have been sold. Ranked by sale price, there is not one single house sold for anything between £250k and £262,500!

3700+ in the first half of my postcode

5 between £250k and £260k. Was really surprised so few.

benood

Well done! I bet you put the frighteners on your buyers, at least Gordon will spend the extra tax wisely on their behalf.

Your dilemma and silvercar's research illustrates that stamp duty really should be reformed to work more like income tax because at the moment it encourages normally law abiding people to become criminals.

lynzpower

Clairy wrote:

I was obviously unclear. Our house was marketed at £265,000 and we accepted an offer of £258,000 (sale price). I would not wish to accept £250k for our house. We have had three offers so far, for £260, £255 and now £258.

Anyway, an update. We emailed the buyers expressing our concern that what they were suggesting is tax evasion and that maybe they should talk to their solicitors. They obviously did, because they are now prepared to pay the stamp duty. We are very pleased

I'm a little surprised at how emotive the issue of stamp duty is.

I bet you are! Well done for standing firm :T

courtjester

benood wrote:

Well done! I bet you put the frighteners on your buyers, at least Gordon will spend the extra tax wisely on their behalf.

Your dilemma and silvercar's research illustrates that stamp duty really should be reformed to work more like income tax because at the moment it encourages normally law abiding people to become criminals.

You can forget any prospect of this government (or the next!) giving up revenue from stamp duty - such easy money or what and it means they can legitimately claim that they have NOT increased the rate of taxes as it is the rise in property values above thresholds which have not changed in line with inflation, bringing the money in.

Stamp duty from property over the £250,000 now rakes in £3.4 BILLION for the treasury, up 175% from 2001, and the total rake off for all stamp duty and inheritance tax now stands at £6.7 BILLION.

See:
http://www.ifaonline.co.uk/public/showPage.html?page=ifa2006_articleimport&tempPageName=356127