Stamp Duty

[YellowChick56]

My partner and I are looking into buying a property together. I already own a property which I rent out, too costly to sell up as I have rented it out for a number of years and the tax man will want a massive chunk. I have very good tenants as well who have been there since I first rented the property out and they have no plans to move.

Issue is, my partner is a first time buyer so if he did buy in his own he wouldn't be liable for any stamp duty. I will be liable for extra 3% which I'm happy to pay.

Would you pay the full stamp duty amount or get your partner to contribute? He wouldn't be able to buy without me but then I feel mean making him pay any. Stamp duty will most likely be around £10k on a new property so not a small amount.

Personally I'd spilt the cost of buying a place together 50/50 whatever those costs entail, but lots of ppl on MN seem to have a "my money and your money " sort of relationship so I'm not that representative!
How are you planning to split the deposit and mortgage payments and what are your relative incomes?

Currently we split bills 50/50 as we are renting and earn similar amounts. Although, I am in line for a promotion so my earnings will increase and I will pay more towards bills etc in the future. Currently our set up works well and we have a good amount of savings between us in our joint account which we can use for holidays or nights out, house bits, our dogs, so we want to keep building on that.

When we buy we will both put same amount of deposit in (we are not married) and we will go 50/50 on legal fees etc, it's just the stamp duty which I've been pondering of how to fairly do it. I guess we are buying together so we will need a certain amount of deposit so we could just put in 1 pot and then whatever we have leftover after stamp duty, fees is our deposit.

I just wondered if anyone else had come across this scenario or been int his situation? If I have to stump up the whole amount for the stamp duty I won't have as much deposit as my partner. We do try to keep things fair so we both have enough spending money for the fun things

When you say you earn similar amounts, are you including your rental income from that? I guess if you owning the flat, which is causing the high stamp duty, is giving you income you wouldn't otherwise have, could you put that into the pot? But if it's just covering mortgage I'd be more inclined to just go halves.

So you will continue to benefit from the rental income and the overall increase in capital value of your rental property, but your DP will not?

In which case I think you have to suck up the extra cost that your property incurs on this purchase.