Homebuyers won't pay stamp duty on properties up to £500,000 until next April - MSE News

Former_MSE_Naomi

Homebuyers won't pay stamp duty on the first £500,000 of a property's purchase price, in a temporary measure announced by the Chancellor today...

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'Homebuyers won't pay stamp duty on properties up to £500,000 until next April'

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danlightbulb

There's already 10+ topics on the forum for the same subject? Perhaps merge them in?

As I said on other topics today, for this to benefit the low end of the market it needs to be enough to incentivise people to sell and trade up at the low and mid end. I'm not sure it is enough. We shall see. 

BeechamA100

My son has just paid a £500 holding fee to Wimpey's for a new build house that hasn't been built yet, 1 week before the stamp duty announcement. One of the incentives was that Wimpey's would pay the stamp duty worth about £9500. Where does he stand now with claiming that back off the developer or appropriate reduction in house price? Other developers weren't offering this incentive, which is why he decided to purchase with them. He can now afford a better house in one of the other developments, but would like to continue with purchasing on the Wimpey development if they reimburse him the stamp duty.

pricedout_1

Is this not simply going to push up FTB property valuations as demand will surely spike with all of the latent FTB purchasing before the deadline? ... And then subsequently cause some kind of flash crash in this market segment with FTB transactions dropping off a cliff on 31 MAR 2021?

grumiofoundation

pricedout_1 said:

Is this not simply going to push up FTB property valuations as demand will surely spike with all of the latent FTB purchasing before the deadline? ... And then subsequently cause some kind of flash crash in this market segment with FTB transactions dropping off a cliff on 31 MAR 2021?

Changes don’t just apply to FTBs. 

 A FTB buying a property under £350k would have paid 0 stamp duty anyway. 

pricedout_1

grumiofoundation said:

pricedout_1 said:

Is this not simply going to push up FTB property valuations as demand will surely spike with all of the latent FTB purchasing before the deadline? ... And then subsequently cause some kind of flash crash in this market segment with FTB transactions dropping off a cliff on 31 MAR 2021?

Changes don’t just apply to FTBs. 

 A FTB buying a property under £350k would have paid 0 stamp duty anyway. 

But many FTB in London would be paying over £350K + the BTL army will also be wading in as applies to them too? So It's still likely to cause prices to increase in the price range?

danlightbulb

pricedout_1 said:

grumiofoundation said:

pricedout_1 said:

Is this not simply going to push up FTB property valuations as demand will surely spike with all of the latent FTB purchasing before the deadline? ... And then subsequently cause some kind of flash crash in this market segment with FTB transactions dropping off a cliff on 31 MAR 2021?

Changes don’t just apply to FTBs. 

 A FTB buying a property under £350k would have paid 0 stamp duty anyway. 

But many FTB in London would be paying over £350K + the BTL army will also be wading in as applies to them too? So It's still likely to cause prices to increase in the price range?

Its hard to tell what will happen. The problem in my area is a lack of good quality houses at the low end of the market.

So I need more people at the bottom/low-to-mid end of the market to want to trade up, freeing up the cheaper/low-to-mid properties. Obviously the stamp duty change will make it cheaper for someone to trade up, and so on up the chain, and so in theory should increase supply. But is the incentive enough for those low/mid range homeowners to decide to sell and trade up?

pricedout_1

danlightbulb said:

Its hard to tell what will happen. The problem in my area is a lack of good quality houses at the low end of the market.

So I need more people at the bottom/low-to-mid end of the market to want to trade up, freeing up the cheaper/low-to-mid properties. Obviously the stamp duty change will make it cheaper for someone to trade up, and so on up the chain, and so in theory should increase supply. But is the incentive enough for those low/mid range homeowners to decide to sell and trade up?

Surely it would. They have a window of opportunity to trade up without SD. More demand... upward price pressure? + sellers with an excuse to accept higher % of asking price?

Crashy_Time

"BTL army wading in"  LOL.

SMerchant

BeechamA100 said:

My son has just paid a £500 holding fee to Wimpey's for a new build house that hasn't been built yet, 1 week before the stamp duty announcement. One of the incentives was that Wimpey's would pay the stamp duty worth about £9500. Where does he stand now with claiming that back off the developer or appropriate reduction in house price? 

In the same position - the developer DANDARA have offered to ‘share‘ only half the ‘saving’, pocketing the other half for themselves. Will vary and may be case by case, most are getting nothing in its place because “we’re not contractually obliged”.  This is effectively diversion of a government windfall (taxpayer / public money) that was intended to help people with the funding and confidence to proceed.  For the moment they have us over a barrel as we need to progress and don’t want a row with them to lead to them pulling the rug from under us. Why should these opportunistic chancers profit from public money?

Crashy_Time

Very good question.