Wanting to buy at £250k, what should I view?

song_of_calliope

We're hoping to soon be in a position to buy and would like to find something for £250k due to the jump in stamp duty for anything beyond that. So what should my cut off price be for viewings as we don't want to waste anyone's time. Before this whole help to buy thing I was thinking up to £280 and then offer the £250 but not sure that's realistic now as prices are rising. We're in the northwest. What would you do? Thanks.

Wyndham

The problem with the stamp duty thresholds, is that both buyers and sellers know about them. If your house is worth £255K, you won't put it in the market for that, you'll either put it on for £250K, or something like £265K. You won't find many (any?) houses prices from £251K-£265K. And if someone has their house on the market for £280K, then they will be looking for something closer to the asking price than £250K.

We looked around this level a few years ago now, but in the northwest. We were looking at houses up to £250K, and not finding what we wanted. We then reassessed our budget and spoke to the bank again, and we went to look at some houses at around £280K. We were amazed by how much more house we could get for that price, which I think is because of the artificial boundary that the stamp duty threshold creates.

I_have_spoken

Now the market is moving ahead, knocking anyone back from above £265k is pretty unlikely unless they are desperate to sell. 18 months ago, negotiating down from £280k was do-able.

AndyGuil

There has been some news and expectation that the stamp duty level at £250k will change so that the 3% rate is paid on the amount over £250k rather than the entire amount. My understanding is this is already going to happen in Scotland and it is expected to be announced for England soon, perhaps next month.

martan01

Interesting, potentially big news, I've googled this and can't find anything...

Can I ask how you know?

AndyGuil

martan01 wrote: »

Interesting, potentially big news, I've googled this and can't find anything...

Can I ask how you know?

http://citywire.co.uk/money/stamp-duty-tipped-for-autumn-statement-shakeup/a705299

katejo

AndyGuil wrote: »

There has been some news and expectation that the stamp duty level at £250k will change so that the 3% rate is paid on the amount over £250k rather than the entire amount. My understanding is this is already going to happen in Scotland and it is expected to be announced for England soon, perhaps next month.

For a long time I have wondered why this is not the case. It seems more logical to me. After all higher rate tax payers don't pay that rate on their full salary (minus personal allowance)

martan01

Thanks for the link, autumn statement due on 4th December and it looks like it won't be implemented until 2015, still very interesting

harrys_dad

Yet another short term bribe to gain votes from over-inflating the housing market. All that will happen is that sellers will not reduce prices as they know the tax burden has been reduced. So, a simple transfer of money from tax to vendor, ridiculous.

benson1980

280k is a good figure search-wise. We have been extensively looking at houses just over the stamp duty. Asking price of 265k we found generally means they want 250k. Anything above this they want more. There are several houses priced at 275k that we looked at- where they've been on the market a while and the people were in a hurry to sell we found the EA would indicate that 250k would seal the deal, but generally with the nicer houses that were clearly worth more than 250k people were generally refusing to budge.

Can you afford to go over? If you're willing to go just over into the 260-265k region you'll find that this pretty much eliminates all the competition and you may get a comparative bargain. Our max budget was 250k initially but we found that going a little bit over got us a lot more house.

song_of_calliope

Thanks, benson, that's good advice. We would actually hopefully be in a position to go slightly over because of work paying about half our stamp duty via a relocation package. The thought of less competition is also very appealing in this market. I think we'll look up to £280 and reign ourselves to paying £265.