Can stamp duty be added to HTB 95% mortgage?

Keekles

Not necessarily 'adding on' but there is a lender offering to pay stamp duty below £250k if that's what people have heard and / or are considering.

exoteric

Keekles wrote: »

Not necessarily 'adding on' but there is a lender offering to pay stamp duty below £250k if that's what people have heard and / or are considering.

Thanks Leon and kingstreet - I don't think that's the one. My friend is intending to buy an existing property and it will definitely be over the £250,000 threshold, so this won't apply. I do wonder what's going on here; either they've been given bad advice by the broker and will end up having to pay stamp duty, or there is some way of doing it with a 95% HTB mortgage (either in accordance with the lender's requirements or not).

I suspect that all the answers I've had on here are correct, being as they are from a number of experts - so the solution looks to be to keep on saving, or wait for the government to realise how ridiculous the current stamp duty bands and structure are!

Mortgage_Mark_2

Talking of that H2B incentive - it's a bizarre incentive really, as if you're buying below £125k they'll give you £250 in lieu of SDLT, however buy at over £250k and you get nothing.....

exoteric

Mortgage_Mark wrote: »

Talking of that H2B incentive - it's a bizarre incentive really, as if you're buying below £125k they'll give you £250 in lieu of SDLT, however buy at over £250k and you get nothing.....

Costs the lender less but still looks like they're doing something to help First Time Buyers!

The problem with being in London is that it's almost impossible to get a house below the £250k threshold, so stamp duty is at 3% of the total house value which in many cases is an extra £10k on top of the 5% deposit. Ridiculous really, especially when the idea of HTB was to make it possible for FTBs to buy with limited savings!

Keekles

Without going into too much detail; I've always said HTB is a political tool as opposed to a positive influence on the housing / mortgage market; especially with respect to London.

Can't comment on the further reaches of the country.

leveller2911

exoteric wrote: »

Costs the lender less but still looks like they're doing something to help First Time Buyers!

The problem with being in London is that it's almost impossible to get a house below the £250k threshold, so stamp duty is at 3% of the total house value which in many cases is an extra £10k on top of the 5% deposit. Ridiculous really, especially when the idea of HTB was to make it possible for FTBs to buy with limited savings!

Simple answer is to move out of London.........The HTB scheme has propped up house prices which in turn are unaffordable for FTB........Ironic really....

Pathetic political ploy to buy votes rather than to go on a mass building programme of building "affordable" housing or allowing a house price correction which would see many indebted fall into negative equity.

Keep home owners thinking they are getting richer by the year all because their houses are worth more on paper than they were the previous year.