To be depressed about how much it costs to move house now

[Pavementworrier]

Purchase tax alone where I live is about £30k on a very ordinary bungalow. Then there are all the random compulsory extra costs (an energy report which always concludes that you'd get a better rating if you used energy saving lightbulbs... Even though you already do because aren't they the only ones available now?)

I want to move house and I've found a lovely place but scared to do it because if it turns out not to be manageable I can't just move again I'll be stuck for years.

Stupid modern world.

However it's well documented that prices rise when stamp duty goes up, so your smaller steps you'd be making would be smaller than they are now. Giving you less incentive to move, why bother moving to a house only marginally better than the current one if the increase in price is considerably more in comparison to your annual income.

I also don't hear the same people complaining about stamp duty complaining about changes to mortgages which has increased the amount of people on 2/5 year fixed terms with ERCs which are also known to reduce people's willingness to move. Or arguing for a Scottish system where searches and surveys are commissioned up front.

Be honest you just don't want to pay tax.

We already do penalise second home ownership with higher stamp duty and higher council tax. We do it to reduce people investing in property rather than seeing it as housing, reducing the amount of buyers with more affordability to help dampen house price rises.

@BadgernTheGarden why on earth would you think they wouldn’t have exemptions for those who had just bought? Are you agreeing older voters won’t vote for it?

@Namechange234567 ok are these recent changes ? How much higher stamp duty do they pay please - maybe it should be higher still. I can't understand why second home owners should be given any breaks.

I agree that people still think they can get to 2021 prices. Local to me (southeast) I know of someone who put their house up for 900k back in 2021 and has recently sold for 500k

You are still not understanding the difference between the cost of housing, and the cost of the transaction.

If stamp duty was scrapped, prices would increase but you wouldn’t lose the value of the stamp duty when you moved. So moving multiple times wouldn’t impact the value of your assets.

That is what incentivises people to not move - they lose money between each transaction.

No one wants to pay tax they deem unfair no - and a £100k tax bill to buy a terraced house isn’t a reasonable level of taxation IMO, and yes it stops people from moving.

It's a 5% stamp duty surcharge and councils can charge up to double council tax. I'd agree with increasing it, particularly council tax.

Very expensive. I have been renting in the South east for 10yrs plus, after splitting with ex but am relocating this summer to the North West where I can finally purchase my own home. I am scared though as costs are high. I am undecided how much to spend, as don’t want to have to move again, at least not until I retire (and don’t have to be as close to the office).

someone who works in fiscal policy here, stamp duty is regarded as the very worst tax for a whole host of reasons. Just look at any economic policy website for their views of the worst tax and I can guarantee you’ll see stamp duty sat there proudly at the top of the table. You are correct that just ditching it will mean that house prices will go up by that amount, but that doesn’t excuse keeping it.

We’re a country with a housing shortage and this tax stops people living in the optimal house for their needs. It stops people moving for their career so prevents us making the most of the skills old our populace, it penalises those who move regularly as though that’s a bad thing when it’s a good thing. The conservatives are in the right here in calling for it to be ditched. It should have been binned years ago but it’s a tax pensioners sitting in big houses don’t have to pay so it’s popular with some.

That Scotland’s stamp duty is double englands just goes to show how economically illiterate the Scottish government is. And they’ve just been handed down powers to add a Scottishy mansion tax at the next Scottish budget. I’m betting it will be on all houses over £500k because that predominantly hurts Edinburgh, and the SNP hates Edinburgh.

Exactly!

Same in Australia and what it’s meant is there are all these people who should be downsizing due to age who are not because it costs too much. So you have families trying to find a family home and more elderly rattling around in big houses unable to keep up the demands of looking after the house!! Then when it’s time to sell urgently they have to take a hit on the price as it so run down.

Thanks yes I think they should up this significantly. People are taking homes from those with greater needs.

What people are also missing is that you have to actually have the money for stamp duty (or LBTT in Scotland in our case) on top of your deposit and other fees and moving costs. You can't just borrow extra on a mortgage to cover the stamp duty. In our case - Edinburgh where most family homes go for over valuation - that meant saving for years before we could afford to upsize from our starter flat. It simply wasn't worth moving up a rung and then doing the same again three years later because as someone else has pointed out, you lose that money each time you move, rather than it being part of an asset you own (if the house price was increased instead of needing to pay stamp duty). Raising the mortgage was never an issue and we would have moved much sooner had LBTT not been so high. With tax of nearly 50k, and needing to pay another 50k over valuation to secure a home in the area we needed, that's a lot of capital to save up. We know lots of families still living in 2 bed flats, it's a real issue here.

I'm not sure what you mean here? Increase property taxes for everyone, even many very low waged people so you don't have to pay as much stamp duty on a £850k property in a highly desirable area of Edinburgh which is probably one of the most desirable cities to live in in the UK if not Europe? Lots of people would like to live in a nice part of Edinburgh in the catchment for a good school but they have to accept that they will need to pay a lot to do so or look elsewhere. They don't wish they could off load some of the costs to everyone else!

The housing market is completely broken, I live in a 2 bed detached house in Sussex, bought it for £480k 3 years ago, we have a child and want another, we’re hoping to be able to extend to add another bedroom to the house so that we don’t have to move, but I’m worried about the cost of extensions nowadays. We live in a nice area, and houses don’t come up for sale too often, when the bigger houses do come up for sale round here they’re at least £700k and haven’t been updated in at least 20 years so often need new kitchen, bathroom etc! So we’d be spending an extra £300k plus moving fees and also need to do work to the house! It does make me wonder what will happen to all these houses that haven’t had any work done to them in years, some people have potentially made a lot of money on those houses, having not invested any money into them, but who will be able to afford to buy them? Huge mortgage and super expensive to do home improvements!

There are plenty of options that are far more sensible than a super high stamp duty and are fair for all. And I’m not looking to pay less tax - where did I say that - just that if you want to raise tax, stamp duty is a very stupid way to propose to do that.

In most of Europe they have an annual property tax of x% of the value of your house instead of council tax or stamp duty. So the poor pay far less than they do now and those with wealth in housing pay far more, whether or not they’ve moved house therefore catching all those living in big houses every year.

This is another way in which those with a bank of mum and dad / inheritance can get ahead of those without one. Those with no money from parents have to save the stamp duty and the deposit and the money over the valuation because you can’t take a mortgage out for these. You need a high lump sum to buy a house, regardless of the level of mortgage your salary allows you to borrow.

Wouldn’t a full survey have brought that up?

I'm also Scotland and our lbtt (stamp duty) when we moved to our house (400k, ex new build 45 mins from Edinburgh so hardly anything special) felt unbelievably high, when you consider that's money just gone. If we needed to sell now we certainly wouldn't get that back as house would probably sell for around what we bought it for. However it suits our family and needs. I wish they'd scrap stamp duty for downsizers, my parents would love to downsize but house prices are really expensive around here and our LBTT feels prohibitive to them as they (rightly or wrongly) see it as just lost money. Families in their village would love to buy their house, it's a perfect family home and they rattle around in it.

If you pay £62k in stamp duty as we are budgeting for (£850k, 3 bed semi Edinburgh) and you stay in the house for only 5 years (a LOT can happen in 5 years) that would be more than £1k a month in stamp duty costs alone which is INSANE!

I see, its just that you said "Scrap stamp duty and increase annual property taxes on everyone instead" So it very much read like you personally wanted to pay less and have everyone else pay more to compensate for that.

We are in Scotland. We are try to build I swear, to get planning we have spend about £10k in fees to architect and council and various tests and surveys, still getting nowhere. We calculate we'll be around £40k before even breaking ground (on top of what we already paid for the land). On the other hand, buying a house worth £500k will attract a ridiculous LBTT bill (much higher than if we were in England).

Removing SDLT would be inflationary. The SDLT an average UK house is quite reasonable, these SLDT threads are always about moving between high value houses. The high SDLT on these high values houses keeps a lid on inflation.
There are many other threads om MT complaining of high house prices and high inflation, young people and accumulated wealth. impossible to buy etc etc... Well the housing market can't be both at the same time?

People seem to want low prices when they buy, to "bag a bargain" and then later, high prices when they sell. to "make a killing", while having everyone else pay for it all. My conclusion given both sets of moaners is that it must be about right, there is no crisis and both sets ABU

You're not being unreasonable.

Here’s my unsolicited opinion: unless there’s a compelling reason to move and spend money on things like stamp duty (which is an absurd tax), solicitors, extra fees, and assorted taxes and bills, it’s usually better to stay put and adapt your home to fit your needs. Keep making changes until it’s no longer possible to modify it, and then enjoy living there comfortably for the rest of your life.

If the country needs more houses, then it should build more.

I get the sentiment, but it’s doing a lot of emotional heavy lifting that the maths doesn’t actually support.
Someone buying a £1.6m house is already paying a huge amount of tax — stamp duty alone is eye-watering, never mind income tax, council tax, VAT on everything they consume, and so on. The idea that they’re somehow opting out of funding society until an extra £100k is demanded is a bit misleading.
And linking individual tax bills directly to child poverty or the NHS is comforting but simplistic. Those problems exist not because one person didn’t hand over enough, but because of long-term policy choices, inefficiency, underinvestment, and a system that’s very good at spending money without fixing root causes.
If writing a bigger cheque automatically fixed the NHS and ended poverty, we’d have solved this years ago. Unfortunately, society is messier than that.