Ridiculous stamp duty costs

[Ffsman]

No stealth boasting, one upmanship etc. and I know it’s first world problems.

We have a relatively expensive house, but only because the area is expensive, it looks very average and truly unremarkable. I don’t actually earn that much, the house is certainly more than 5x our join salaries.

We’d like to move, but the stamp duty amounts are horrendous, above around 900k it really goes up and above 1.5m and you’re paying 12%.

We’d like to move slightly out, around 15-30mins walk from the city centre which will give us a little more space, price will be around the same as ours give or take a couple of hundred thousand.

I’m struggling to come to terms with just how much we’ll lose in stamp duty.

The people in my position, did you just do it? Stick where you are? Etc

Also I can’t afford to keep moving, one bad neighbour who makes our lives hell and we are screwed.

We have no realistic option to extend our current house. Its city centre and the plot is good but small.

Any thoughts?

We’ve all done it 😂

Although these are large amounts, you should be thankful you’re not in Scotland!

900k means 67k of stamp duty..more than double of England.

Wow @Pammela2

Though can’t you buy an enormous house with land in many parts of Scotland for 900k?

Yes, but just in the same way that you could in England too.. and those aren’t usually the most desirable areas.

Scotland also has areas of high house prices and our system means you pay over the value (10-15%)- and that also must be capital because the bank won’t lend to it. So you need large amounts of equity or cash to buy anywhere considered desirable.

It’s not the fact higher value properties pay more necessarily, it’s that the % go up to 12%!

Looking at the tax take it seems it’s going to get exponentially worse in future.

I guess we’ll keep an eye open and see what comes up, talking to my husband we are considering a run down property, or even a self build.