CHOICES - buyer's commission may be required. How do I make an offer?

AnotherJoe

Agreed with everyone else, if this is of interest to you, make your offer saying its contingent upon you paying zero fees to their EA. 

"everything is negotiable" and that includes whether you are paying the sellers fees or not.

If they insist on you paying the fees and you really want it still, drop your offer by at least 5%. Maybe the sellers will even wake up,  smell the coffee and realise theres no such thing as a free lunch and the "no agency fees' is costing them.

I suspect you could be in a strong position here a lot of people will be put off by paying these fees and many buyers may not have the cash, since theres no way it can be included into a mortgage offer. So I would low ball your initial offer also.

dimbo61

I would love to know what HMRC will think of this when the Stamp duty holiday ends !
Tax Avoidance 

eddddy

dimbo61 said:

I would love to know what HMRC will think of this when the Stamp duty holiday ends !
Tax Avoidance 

The EA's T&Cs explain that Stamp Duty is payable on the total amount, including the commission fee - so there's no tax avoidance:

iv) You must be aware that HMRC have indicated that the commission fee will be considered as part of the ‘chargeable’ consideration for the property and may therefore be included in the calculation for any stamp duty liability which you will pay on transfer of the property to your ownership. 

Link: https://www.choices.co.uk/buyers-terms-and-conditions/

SDLT_Geek

@eddddy is correct.  Discharging a debt of the seller’s counts as chargeable consideration for the property for SDLT purposes.  
That is regardless of the figure the conveyancers would put in the transfer for the price.

teachfast

greatcrested said:

So you have 2 choices

1) find another property

2) decide what you are prepared to pay/ would offer under normal circumstances, then deduct 3.6% and offer that.

Just to be clear, there's nothing there that means you have to pay when offering? The fee is only due if/when you acually purchase yes?

No because it will be deducted again before being passed to the vendors. 

AnotherJoe

teachfast said:

greatcrested said:

So you have 2 choices

1) find another property

2) decide what you are prepared to pay/ would offer under normal circumstances, then deduct 3.6% and offer that.

Just to be clear, there's nothing there that means you have to pay when offering? The fee is only due if/when you acually purchase yes?

No because it will be deducted again before being passed to the vendors. 

Not necessarily it may be that the seller pays it directly, and it makes a difference because of what their mortgage offer would be and how much cash they will need to put into the purchase. Just offering roughly 3.6% less but them paying the fees within that might still lead to them needing to put more cash into the purchase than they have or their LTV being a higher band and a higher repayment interest rate.