Stamp duty holiday extension

[Randomtasks]

Speculative ofc but does anyone think its likely?

Friend of mine has just started the moving process thinking she had plenty of time but everything seems to be taking longer than expected.

Seems so wrong to just cut it off like that!

When we complete the first week in Jan it will have taken 18 weeks from offer on our property to completion. This is for a short chain of FTB, us and our vendor which is an empty property. When we bought this place it took 6 weeks in total. Mortgage offers, searches etc.... are all taking way longer than they should.

I don't think they will extend the stamp duty, I think it would be a mistake. It is propping up the market but they can't do that forever. When would they stop? Whenever it does stop there will be a price correction.

Where we'll be buying in London Zone 4, the new property will cost £600-£700k for a 3 bedroom unmodernised semi. With the stamp duty holiday as it currently stands, we'd still have to pay something, but the remainder could go towards refurbishment works, helping sustain economy. We are not rich, although we do earn good wages. I'm sure a lot of other buyers of similar properties would be in the same position.

I also live in London Zone 4 with identical house prices @Starseeking
Perhaps a bit higher.

The Stamp duty holiday has pushed prices up insanely here. There's no money to be saved at all. The rises in price have outreached any savings.

We need to move desperately - but are hoping the stamp duty holiday will stop in March so that prices can normalize.

Stagnation? Really? Not extending stamp duty holiday to benefit the wealthy will be the cause of stagnation? Assuming there’ll be stagnation?

@Didyousaysomethingdarling I talked about wealthier southerners and wealthy relative to those who need handouts from the government to meet day to day needs. If you can afford to buy at property at current prices you are not poor.

As to the rich, it was someone else who mentioned those buying 2nd homes worth millions.

If the argument to extend the stamp duty relief is based on continuing to help wealthy southerners buy property in a frenzy that has only led to prices spiralling up then the stamp duty relief will most assuredly not be extended.

If you can afford to buy a property at current prices you are not poor

I wouldn't say we are poor by any stretch but we aren't wealthy either. We are the 'just managing' middle who never seem to get much help.

Like @Didyousaysomethingdarling says, the holiday has helped us to buy a very ordinary family home that was just out of our reach before.

The wealthy could probably afford it anyway but for people like us up to £15K savings is enormous!

(Not in the south east)

I trust you're also petitioning for the government to extend the Universal Credit uplift? That £20 a week is the difference between people living on the bare minimum or being destitute, quite possibly facing homelessness. Which should be a priority for the government?

@Orf1abc exactly. We are not good at thinking about those less fortunate. What is fair in our eyes is that money is diverted from people who are truly on need to help already well off people pay less stamp duty. Often these people are not FTB. They already own a home. FTB already benefit from zero stamp duty.

Looking at the number of signatures for the two stamp duty petition I think it is safe to say that few people are bothered by this. From a Tory government perspective, they might reason that the majority of these signatures would come from London and its environs which are typically Labour. So they won’t lose sleep over the possibility of alienating their core supporters.

I wouldn't say we are poor by any stretch but we aren't wealthy either. We are the 'just managing' middle who never seem to get much help.

I don't think it should be the role of government to directly 'help' the middle class.

Government should: fund collective goods (like parks and healthcare), regulate markets for private goods (like food standards and preventing monopolies) and help the poorest (ideally in sustainable, productive ways).

The stamp duty cut is none of those- it's just giving away money we can't afford and getting nothing for it.

@Randomtasks

Bizarre to think it just benefits the MC. Surely they can afford it anyway? We aren't wealthy and the SD holiday allowed us to buy a property that would have been out of our reach without it. Same with my friend!

But the point of the stamp duty holiday wasnt to enable people like you to buy something that was previously out of your reach. It was to keep the market from collapsing in a time of national emergency, to stimulate ongoing sales. I think it should stop in March.

The pent up demand, combined with this holiday have resulted in ridiculous price inflation. We sold our house (we were selling anyway, not because of the stamp duty holiday) and it went for £30k more than it had been valued at a few months before. Continuing in with the holiday will just encourage further house price inflation. In time, it would be no surprise at all if values drop to correct the market and people who think they have saved money will be in houses that are worth less than they paid for them.

We got lucky and out an offer in the day before the holiday. Will save us a whopping £15 k. Obviously I’m glad, but I don’t think it was particularly well timed, give. The market was already hot. They should of left it for this year coming. The market will likely slow down once they end it, which they will.

Apparently Yorkshire Building Society has made a recommendation to extend the deadline by way of tapering: It supports the introduction of a stamp duty taper which would allow any agreed property purchases which have had a mortgage approval granted by 31 March until 30 June 2021 to complete their sales with the benefit of the temporary stamp duty reduction. New mortgage commitments approved after 31 March would not benefit from the reduced rates.

My suspicion personally is that there won't be an extension per se, but when the deadline comes close we may see an amnesty of some sort for certain transactions. Maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part, but the downside risk of lots of transactions falling through could cause the government more headache from a popularity perspective than they'd want to bear, especially amongst their target electorate...