Buying additional property - Stamp Duty implications

inkydolphin

p00hsticks said:

inkydolphin said:

So if you buy your next home before selling your current one (which has been your PPR for the whole time you owned it) and you don't rent it out, does that mean you are not liable for capital gains tax when you sell your current home? And you can claim the additional stamp duty back (as long as you sell within 3 years)? Or is it not that simple?

You can only have one PPR at a time - so if you hang onto your current home for longer than the nine months grace period that the CGT rules allow after moving out of it, even if it's just left empty and not rented out, then theoretically there is a potential CGT liability. In practise, however, this is likely to be tiny and well within the annual CGT allwoance.

Thanks. I hope to buy my next house before selling my current one to "break the chain" as it were and make the whole process less stressful, so the current house would go on the market immediately after buying the new one. Of course things could happen to delay the sale but it's reasonable to think it would sell within 9 months. If you can also claim back the stamp duty within three years of buying the new house, then it sounds like there are no significant additional costs of buying before selling.