Stamp Duty troubles

natalienashville

Dear all

Can we ask the vendor to pay stamp duty? His asking price is our offer PLUS the stamp duty - its all hypothetical as he may well reject our offer anyway, but its the only way I see of being able to get a foot on the ladder!

Thank you

Pixie5740

You can certainly ask but I don't think it will help you. The vendor paying the SDLT will have to be declared to the mortgage lender which could affect your LTV.

Would using the government's HTB scheme where you only require a 5% deposit with a 95% LTV mortgage mean that would would have enough money to cover the SDLT?

goodwithsaving

Unless it's a new build in which case it's used as a sales point, I don't think I've ever heard of the vendor paying SDLT for the buyer.

It's always been that one budgets for the house price and the additional legal fees (inc SDLT) on top.

Good luck asking though. Don't ask, don't get etc.

Pixie5740

Check with your solicitor though as I could be wrong.

Rollinghills

Not sure I follow - you offered on a house and when accepted you want to suggest the owner pays 20k+ of stamp duty for you?

DTDfanBoy

No one is going to accept an offer then agree to pay your stamp duty, perhaps you should only make offers that you can actually afford in future

Pixie5740

I think what the OP is suggesting is that say the vendor is asking for £640k, they have offered £620k (which has been accepted). Except the OP doesn't have £21,000 for SDLT so instead the OP will pay the vendor £640k and get a 90% LTV mortgage based on a £640k purchase price (assuming the survey valuation agrees with this). The vendor would then get the £620k offered and pay the £20k SDLT to HMRC.

It's just a way of trying to add the SDLT to the mortgage which I'm pretty confident you can't do.

Mortgage_Mark_2

Regardless of what's changing hands - YOUR solicitor will have to pay HMRC the SDLT, not the vendor, so at some point he/she has to have those funds available. How will it work if the vendor is paying this, unless you falsify a mortgage application?

Randomjargon

...buy somewhere cheaper...you can't afford it.

HouseBuyer77

YOUR solicitor will have to pay HMRC the SDLT, not the vendor, so at some point he/she has to have those funds available. How will it work if the vendor is paying this, unless you falsify a mortgage application?

I believe that following the recent changes the purchaser now has to pay the SDLT directly (or so my solicitor says for the purchase I'm currently engaged in).

So I guess you could arrange a side-deal with the vendor to just give you the money and then you pay. Though that'd be extremely dodgy, and I can see no reason why a vendor would want to do it.

Jhoney_2

Putting aside the side details of your SDLT idea which is just over complication at best, you are asking us whether your vendor will accept an additional 21K reduction.
Why don't you resubmit your revised offer and the vendor will be able to give you a factual answer?

At 600K, it would appear you are over stretching yourself and have many alternative properties available to you.

Suggesting that you would otherwise not be able to get onto the property ladder is somewhat over-dramatic or disingenuous.