Seller pays stamp duty - has anyone actually done this?

[threeleftfeet]

Our flat is priced at just over stamp duty. A lovely mumsnetter suggested we consider paying stamp duty for the seller.

This makes total sense for us as we have a buyer interested, who can't go over £250 because of stamp duty, but is interested in this offer.

However, I have been warned that some lenders don't like this.

Can I ask - has anyone actually done this successfully?
I'd also be interested to know if you've tried doing this but it didn't work.

I'm definitely up for it in principle, but I'm wary of going down this road only to be told it won't work after we've all invested time and money in this sale.

TIA :)

I apologise! That was very sexist! I'm sure the Inland Revenue (or is it Customs and Excise? ) has lots of women working there.

We're at the opposite side of a similar situation, the house we're looking at is between £250k-£300k, aufaniae. In our situation, we'd love it and be able to offer closer to asking price if the vendor was offering to pay stamp duty - or even part of stamp duty.

The reasoning is that we have a reasonable deposit and a mortgage agreed in principle for the amount. However, every few percentage our LTV drops, the higher the interest rates on the Mortgage gets. So the difference between having the £8k or so in our deposit or paying it on stamp duty equates to several hundred pounds pounds on the mortgage each month.

With very, very rough figures, our mortgage payments would be around the same if we offered £270k or if we offered £290k and had the vendor paying our stamp duty. With the latter, the vendor would be paying around £8k, but still gain another £12k on our lower offer.

The jump to stamp duty above £250k is ridiculous!

Exactly Spirael! It does make total sense to do this in some situations, like ours and yours.

I agree the jump is ridiculous.

Stamp duty should either go up gradually - or be paid by the seller as standard IMO.

The way it is now, it's actually making it difficult for heaps of people to buy / sell if we're near the threshold.

Does anyone have any experience of seller paying stamp duty?