Is stamp duty really the issue?

[Alexalee]

Seeing as unless you are buying a house over 935k then you will be paying less stamp duty than you would have in the last 10 years.

I think the issue is the demographic of people buying the more expensive properties and therefore having to pay more than they can afford in stamp duty

Even 10 years ago a 1m property was a preserve for the very rich. Now it entirely conceivable that a couple earning around 50k who bought their first house for around 300k 6 years ago will need to be paying nearly 1m to move to a bigger house in the same area (with their current house being worth around 600k now). Even if their wages had doubled in that time stamp duty would be nearly a years net household income.
Whereas before the 1m houses were bought by rich people using their huge city bonus to pay it.

No wonder people cant afford to move, the rungs of the ladder are too far apart and too many ordinary people on average salaries cant afford to move

I'm confused. What are you asking?

I live in a huge house in a nice area. It wasn't nearly a million quid. However, as I own other rental property stamp duty could've been a huge issue had I not already owned second properties before the new rules came in a couple of years ago.

If we move, we'd have to pay around £20K just in stamp duty (small house, but London suburbs). This despite the fact that our flat hasn't gone up in value since we bought it, and may potentially have gone down. Yes, stamp duty is a big issue.

Since the house prices have gone up by much more than salaries, so has the stamp duty, because even though the amount as a percentage of the house price has gone down, we are paying disproportionately more per move.

They could solve this by moving the thresholds up with house price inflation, rather than leaving all the thresholds for stamp duty the same for years and years. I doubt they will though because they want to stop house prices increasing even further.

We were going to buy a house for £640,000 but the £38,000 LBTT paid in Scotland put us off. £50,000 to move house just doesn't seem worth it. We can extend our current house for not much more.