Can a seller pay Stamp Duty for the buyer?

pokey128

Sorry if this has been asked before but I was wondering about Stamp Duty. My friends have a 1 bedroom flat on the market just now for a Fixed price of £142k (in Scotland btw) - it has not sold nor had much interest in it (been on the market for 3 months now). I work in Commercial Conveyancing so my friends think I know everything about residential as well so are always coming to me for advice!

I told them to lower the price in the first instance as that was clearly a barrier for some people (its a fairly small 1 bed place but in good nick). They don't want to go below £135k for whatever reason but that is still obviously above the Stamp Duty level.

Could they offer to pay the Stamp Duty for a buyer (would only cost them £1420) and would leave the buyer with more money for a deposit??

Would that get more interest do you think and is it even possible?!

Thanks

MOONLIGHTVELLA

pokey128 wrote: »

Sorry if this has been asked before but I was wondering about Stamp Duty. My friends have a 1 bedroom flat on the market just now for a Fixed price of £142k (in Scotland btw) - it has not sold nor had much interest in it (been on the market for 3 months now). I work in Commercial Conveyancing so my friends think I know everything about residential as well so are always coming to me for advice!

I told them to lower the price in the first instance as that was clearly a barrier for some people (its a fairly small 1 bed place but in good nick). They don't want to go below £135k for whatever reason but that is still obviously above the Stamp Duty level.

Could they offer to pay the Stamp Duty for a buyer (would only cost them £1420) and would leave the buyer with more money for a deposit??

Would that get more interest do you think and is it even possible?!

Thanks

Yes thats i s correct they can pay the Stamp Duty we did when we sold almost two years ago and the buyers were over the moon this was one way of clinching the sale at the time ..

PasturesNew

Yes, it is quite common to offer to pay stamp duty. I'd suggest that the way it would happen is:
- their solicitor, having received the cash from the sale, would send back the amount equivalent to the stamp duty to the solicitor of the buyers
- the buyer's solicitor would forward the cash to buy the house, they would receive back the stamp duty amount, the stamp duty would be paid.

So it would happen between the solicitors, the seller wouldn't write a cheque out to the buyer. It would all happen by magic through the solicitors (of course they'd know this was going on and it isn't illegal at all)