Anyone else holding fire on moving due to potential stamp duty change

[happybug1234]

Stamp duty on our next property will be around £21,000. I am terrified of taking the plunge only for stamp duty to be phased out and replaced by land value tax under Andy Burnham.

I can’t wait forever but tempted to wait until at least after the autumn budget…

What’s everyone else doing?

I know he has ruled out imminent changes recently, but of course he would say that wouldn’t he, otherwise the market would completely stall. I just don’t trust them.

Also to add, we are based in SE upsizing and property prices are stagnating in our area, so no pressure to move.

Well, I am already not moving because of stamp duty.

I’d be looking at £100,000+ just in tax to move.

I can’t bring myself to do it, it’s quite difficult to earn £100,00 - I can think of many better things to spend it on…!

At some point I suspect we will have to, but there’s no ‘housing ladder’ with stamp duty like this - absolutely no chance I’ll be making multiple purchases.

LVT, mansion tax, higher interest rates… all just make it even less attractive. It’s an awful lot of energy and outlay to get a fractionally bigger house…!

Agreed, stamp duty shouldn’t be for primary residence. It is completely dead money and is really putting me off moving. The thought of paying it for it to be scrapped and being landed with LVT makes me feel sick…

Yeah, in talking about it he has stalled the market even more than it was already! I am sure people will wait unless they really need to move.

https://hoa.org.uk/news/andy-burnhams-potential-policies/

We are trying to sell a house and no one is even coming to look. I definitely think it's because of all of the uncertainty. Unless they absolutely have to move I think many people are just waiting until things are decided.

That's the trouble. They are simply not to be trusted. Say something one day and nobody knows if it will change. I did not sign up for an Andy Burnham left wing government.

Well if you can afford a 2 million house.... ?
stamp duty bill of exactly £100,000 on a main residential home in England applies to a house purchase price of roughly £2.125 million for standard buyers, or £2.275 million for additional home/second property buyers.

Whatever the value of the house £100k in tax is obscene.

If you need to move or if you've found your dream house, just go for it. There's no sense putting your life on hold (or indeed rushing unnecessarily) for maybes and what-ifs, particularly not when it comes to something as important as a house.

If you don't need to move yet, then why put pressure on?

We're not far from exchange now after being stuck in a chain for months. I will be devastated if stamp duty is later scrapped 😅 I definitely would've held off if I'd known about it earlier.

We've only lived in our current house for 4 years, since then we've become parents and the property no longer suits us as well. We went to see a house a couple of weeks ago that we loved but we've decided to stay put - no chance we'll get caught up in 'mansion tax' in our price bracket (yet, until it becomes general home ownership tax) but we're concerned about paying a massive load of stamp duty then having to pay extra land taxes. We don't have the money to take that risk so we're waiting to see how thing go. It's a shame because we could use the extra space now but we can make do.

Almost the opposite here we'd ruled out moving imminently due to stamp duty and we can probably do work to the house we have to make it bigger, although that's bloody expensive now too, although we'd get some of it back when we sold. If stamp duty is scrapped I'll be looking to move in the next year

I think that stamp duty should only be paid on the difference between sales price and purchase price so say moving from a £300k house to £500k the tax liability would be on £200k

£100k is the stamp duty on a £1.55m house.

It’s over £150k at £2m.

Whats your source for that data…? Its wrong.

Yes or you can deduct previous stamp duty from the next purchase.

I can’t see how the housing ladder works with high stamp duty and slower price growth.

I mean, you could put the house on the market shortly and it’s highly unlikely you would exchange before the budget - average sales are 12 to 16 weeks - and likely rven longer if in a chain (granted if you pulled out after a couple of months there would probably be some sunk costs - and the tact could be considered immoral).

What happens if you delay and then get to October and there is no change? Do you then proceed, or do you then get concerned that there will be changes in the Spring budget so you then hold off again? It possibly depends on your reasons for wanting to move (I.e need v want), but I’d just be cautious of putting your life on hold for a ‘what if’.

You dont need to move if you have a property of such high value & yet feel so adverse to paying the stamp duty levy that currently applies. So that's great and you can stay as long as you keep finding the residence meets your needs.

It’s certainly a concern to us. We live in a small 2 bed and are looking to upsize to a bigger house but the stamp duty is such a stumbling block for us. Also live in the SE with some of the highest property prices around. There are not many properties coming up for sale locally and I feel it’s also due to people hesitating about moving. The whole market is slumped right now.

The only thing I would say though is by changing stamp duty it often just inflates house prices. Such as during Covid when the gov had a stamp duty ‘holiday’ the house prices inflated in 2020/21. So its swings and roundabouts in a way. You still end up paying more!

I know what you mean @redblock about the stamp duty holiday just pushing prices up, but I wonder if the cut was permanent it might not have such an effect - the problem with a 'holiday' was it concentrated demand in a really small timeframe. A permanent reduction wouldn't cause a stampede of people who didn't actually plan to move in the next six months but pull forward their plans to avoid paying extra next year