Hoping Stamp Duty Holiday ends soon

[Awmum42]

Who else is hoping the stamp duty holiday ends soon and house prices get back to normal. Houses are being overpriced by more than the savings in stamp duty, it is so frustrating. Hopefully prices will come down soon.

Agreed

Yep lockdown hopefully over by June so people will be more focused on going on holidays and going out rather than moving 😂😂 and stamp duty holiday finishing.

I am hoping so, prices have shot up here when stamp duty was reduced. Prices have risen much higher than the £15k savings. Good if you want to sell up completely but not if you want to move up the ladder

I don't think you can blame the stamp duty alone. There was a lot of pent up demand from the first lockdown. Ending it will not help in the price bracket I'm looking at (£800-1m) and there are still plenty of buyers but not so many houses - that's what's driving the market in many areas.

Midlifephoenix the stamp duty holiday does have a benefit for your price bracket - the duty on a large sale price is calculated in tranches - so the first £500k is subject to the saving. I am buying a £1m property and the saving on stamp duty is £15k.

In my area of London the impact has been variable. The place I am buying is a large flat and I'm buying for £100k less than the sale they had agreed a year ago. The house I am selling also fell in sale price after an offer fell through but only by £20k. It's really about what people can afford to pay - and sales are falling through quite readily due to job insecurity and mortgages not being approved on valuation. So it's been a mixed bag.

The end of SDLT holiday won’t mean prices go down again. For two reasons, first govt backed mortgage guarantee means that people who couldn’t get or mortgages before will now be able to get them. Second, because of the fast moving market now, supply will become tighter later which keeps prices high. Most people who can, are buying and selling now, some are bringing forward their transactions, that means less supply later.
If you need to go OP, do it now, waiting will cost you more, you will never win that game with the housing market.

I'm happy it's been extended, house prices near me haven't gone up so we're trying to move asap

@sst1234

The end of SDLT holiday won’t mean prices go down again. For two reasons, first govt backed mortgage guarantee means that people who couldn’t get or mortgages before will now be able to get them. Second, because of the fast moving market now, supply will become tighter later which keeps prices high. Most people who can, are buying and selling now, some are bringing forward their transactions, that means less supply later. If you need to go OP, do it now, waiting will cost you more, you will never win that game with the housing market.

I don’t understand your thinking on tightening. Transactions have been brought forward meaning both number of sellers and buyers would have now completed rather than later in 2021. You can equally argue that a seller will struggle to find a buyer as many purchased in 2020. For the mortgage help, it remains to be seen how much impact it has on the market, flats in London are on a steep downward trajectory and may benefit from that, not sure it really helps for anything else as the threshold is very low for the capital.

we are currently on look out to buy the property and noticed the following trend: there are a lot of flats on the market in the area (London NW, Zone2) sold primarily by investors as BTLs are becomig increasingly expensive hard to let in the current market. however there is little demand for those. Houeses in this area are rare and expenive and there is quite a lot of demand now as people are concerned to invest in flats in central London should WFH trend prevail, so a bit of artificial demand topped up with SDLT holidays

I have a feeling they are going to scrap stamp duty anyway soon, but I agree. In 6 months prices in our range have roughly gone up 20k!

@Paulina23

It all comes to supply. Demand has been inflated for by SDLT holiday while supply has shrunk further. People are purchasing when they otherwise would not have - we can see those through price rises. When SDLT returns, housing will still be in short supply and people who purchased due to the holiday no longer have anything to put on the market.
The bottom line is that expecting prices to return to pre Covid levels is a losing game. The most that anyone can bank on is that price inflation will flatten. So waiting until the end of SDLT holiday will lose people more money than if they were to buy now. Especially if they are renting.

I have a feeling they are going to scrap stamp duty anyway soon.
Why do you think that? Stamp Duty is a very clever idea - it's the only tax that people want to pay. If you don't pay SD then you don't own your house so nobody evades paying it.
Why would the Govt scrap that!?