Stamp Duty

essjae

Hi Everyone,

I could do with a little advice on this -
Basically, I have just found the house of my dreams. It's on the market for 130,000. I went to see it for the second time yesterday, and when I enquired if there had been any offers on it, the agent said that the vendor had turned down an offer of 125,000 last week, as he was looking to get closer to the asking price.
Now comes my quandary - I can afford to go to the full asking price, but had thought that given current market conditions, I could probably get it for 120,000, and so kinda begrudge going higher. To be fair, it's definitely worth the whole amount, in fact it may be worth more.
So, I was considering offering 125000 + a bit more for fixtures & fittings / chattels (as they now seem to be calling them).
Could anyone advise me on sensible amounts that I could allow for carpets and curtains and so on that I could legitimately include in order to avoid the extra cost of stamp duty?
Or am I going to have to bite the bullet and pay an additional 1300ish?

(I am a FTB by the way)
(also, sorry for the lack of pound signs - I have an American keyboard which is very annoying at times!)

Thankyou!

Dr_Moe_2

I personally wouldn't offer more than £125,000 on a property priced at £130,000 because of the stamp duty threshold. You can try offering 125,000- tell him that you are a FTB, no chain, ready to complete etc and take it from there. If he won't budge then you can try negotiating a reasonable price for F&F. Having been through this myself recently, I know that Inland Revenue check most sales at the stamp duty threshold and £5000 in F&F will probably be treated as tax evasion.

Cazza

As Dr Moe says, you're probably not going to get the Inland Revenue to believe fixtures and fittings in a property of that value will be worth c£5000! If you REALLY want the property and YOU think £130,000 is a fair price, offer £130,000, on the condition that the vendor pays the Stamp duty. That way you don't have to pay it and the vendor still gets the equivalent of £128,700. It's not illegal or dodgy to do this, whereas the fixtures and fittings option is more of a grey area!

essjae

Thanks for your suggestions guys.
Maybe offering asking price with vendor to pay stamp duty is the way to go then...

I wasn't intending to put down 5k worth of fixtures and fittings - I'm well aware that this amount would be far too excessive! Plus providing an itemized list of this would be rather difficult!
What do you consider to be a reasonable price for fixtures and fittings on a property of this value?

thanks for your help

m00m00

Any Seller with a property on the market at 130k, who won't drop to 125k in the current market, is probably looking at being on the market for a very long time indeed.

Sammy85_2

Are you in a rush to buy?

If not then hold out on this one. As previously said, if he wont budge for £5k in todays market and so close to Stamp Duty threshold then its going to be around for a while.

Im suprised they didnt price at £125k in the first place. Stamp Duty closes the door on a lot of potential purchasers, not really worth risking months on the market for the sake of 5k in my opinion.

I personally look at anything upto around £140k and never offer above £125k, they can take it or leave it. Im in no rush. We even had one come back 3 months later, but we werent interested by then.


Good luck.

m00m00

if you are a FTB in a good position to proceed, make your 120k offer, and ignore what the agent has said about previous offers.

trudiha

I just really want to echo what m00moo has said. Don't take a blind bit of notice of what the EA has said. put your offer in at what the house is worth to you and stick with it for at least a week and probably a month. Just because someone rejected an offer last week, if indeed they did, doesn't mean that they will do the same again this week.

When you make your offer the EA will sneer; despite what everyone says about Estate Agents having no training they have all been to the School Of The Dismissive Sneer and graduated with flying colours. The sneer means nothing and neither does the phone call 2 hours later asking you how much you want to increase your offer by.

THSHARIF

you can offer 125k. and ask the ea to settle the rest as a cash deposit to avoid the stamp duty, you have to ask the seller if he will agree.

but the land register will show 125k but you have probably paid a bit more.

just an idea i heard.

Jorgan_2

THSHARIF wrote: »

you can offer 125k. and ask the ea to settle the rest as a cash deposit to avoid the stamp duty, you have to ask the seller if he will agree.

but the land register will show 125k but you have probably paid a bit more.

just an idea i heard.

And not a very good idea either. Tax evasion is illegal.

Essjae, have you checked that the area isn't in a disadvantaged area? This doesn't have to mean its on a run down, drug riddled housing estate from hell. Check the Inland Revenue website with the postcode, its about 98% accurate in my experience. Stamp duty starts at £150k in a disadvantaged area.

essjae

Hey guys,

cheers for all your advice.
In the end, after a long chat with my mum, I phoned the estate agent on monday to put in an offer of 120k - unfortunately, the seller had already accepted an offer of the asking price.
Rather gutted about it, but I guess it just wasn't meant to be!
Am going to keep a sharp eye out in case it falls through though!;)

thanks
sj