Buying and quickly reselling - Stamp duty question

dominoman

We are thinking of buying a house and then quickly reselling it again.

If we do that do we need to pay stamp duty? What if we never even move in?

I know it sounds like a silly question but I think I read somewhere that if you sell quickly, for example to buy another place, you don't pay stamp as it is part of a wider transaction?

I'm not looking for tax avoidance advice here. Just wondering if there is a way we can buy, quickly resell and get our money back.

Rapished

Would you have an early repayment on your mortgage?

theGrinch

can you assign the contract?

Yorkie1

Don't know about the question, but beware a different difficulty in your proposal: if the buyer needs a mortgage, they may well have difficulty in getting one if it's fewer than 6 months since you bought it.

googler

Yorkie1 wrote: »

Don't know about the question, but beware a different difficulty in your proposal: if the buyer needs a mortgage, they may well have difficulty in getting one if it's fewer than 6 months since you bought it.

This. Lenders are reluctant/unwilling to lend on any property that hasn't been owned for less than 6 mths.

Stamp Duty guidelines/rules are on the HMRC website.

G_M

SDLTis payable on [STRIKE]sale[/STRIKE]purchase (!) (unless the value is below the SDLT threshold.

The length of time [STRIKE]you've owned[/STRIKE] youplan to own the property is irrelevant, as is what [STRIKE]you've done [/STRIKE]you'll do with it (lived there, left it empty, let it, used it as a cannabis farm etc)

dimbo61

You will pay STAMP DUTY if the sale price is over £125K

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/sdlt/intro/rates-thresholds.htm#1

You will also have to pay solicitors, searches, survey, mortgage fees, moving costs, etc
It is not cheap buying and selling a property so consider this carefully.
Something they do not show on " Homes under the Hammer " are ALL the buying and selling costs Never mind CGT ( capital gains tax)

observations_from_a_hill

Just realised this may be why moneyistootighttomention limits her viewings!

OP, you are liable to SDLT (if price is over £125,000) as soon as the property is transferred to your name.

As theGrinch said, if you can assign your contract to purchase then you are OK, since your purchaser takes over the contract & pays SDLT. You take your cut in assigning the contract.

On a practical level, this could be very hard to manage. You would need to find a property, agree a purchase, and then find a sub-pchser asap. Your seller then has visits from you & "friends" for how long?

If you are happy you have made a sub-sale, you will still need to exchange contracts (i.e. be in a position to pay balance of purchase price, SDLT, LR fees etc.) THEN, if your contract is assignable, you assign it to your sub-pchser for £x. Assuming they're prepared to pay you that as a finder's fee.

This sort of thing happened in the 1980's - in a rapidly rising market. I can't see a place for it now except perhaps for London.

ging84

if you are planning to essentially broker a sale then there might be some way of doing it
i can't find any details about it, but if there isn't that would mean house builders that do part exchange and these we buy any house companies could end up taking quite a hit with stamp duty