staircasing stamp duty and conveyancy query

prettyplease

Hi all,
This is a bit confusing so please bear with me.
I am staircasing my shared ownership property from 50% to 100%. When I purchased the property in 2006 I paid for stamp duty up front for 100% of the property so no stamp duty should be payable now. I have no evidence of this - cannot find solicitors letters from back then (I know...)

To make life easy I thought I would instruct my previous solicitors. They have however quoted me £1300 total fees which has shocked me somewhat. This includes all searches.

I have 3 questions:
Is my stamp duty paid on record somewhere I can easily find to prevent paying this again?
Are these fees of £1300 reasonable for a staircasing?
- or just what would you do in this situation?!!!

Thanks for reading

kingstreet

Have a look at this, but you'll need to find out the process from the solicitor you choose to act for you;-

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/sdlt/calculate/shared-ownership.htm#3

amnblog

prettyplease wrote: »

Hi all,
This is a bit confusing so please bear with me.
I am staircasing my shared ownership property from 50% to 100%. When I purchased the property in 2006 I paid for stamp duty up front for 100% of the property so no stamp duty should be payable now. I have no evidence of this - cannot find solicitors letters from back then (I know...)

To make life easy I thought I would instruct my previous solicitors. They have however quoted me £1300 total fees which has shocked me somewhat. This includes all searches.

I have 3 questions:
Is my stamp duty paid on record somewhere I can easily find to prevent paying this again?
Are these fees of £1300 reasonable for a staircasing?
- or just what would you do in this situation?!!!

Thanks for reading

HMRC & or The Land Registry should have record of the SDLT you paid initially. If you think your legal quote is too stiff (it sounds it), get another one.