Moving costs £70k+

[Givemethesun]

Hi all
ive done rough calcs for moving and it totals c £70k (assuming buying a property for £1m - we are in London)
it seems extortionate! It factors in stamp duty and I’ve done estimates for all other costs as best I can. Just wondering how anyone ever moves in London as it’s a lot of money on effectively fees/taxes

Plenty of people in London are not buying £1M properties. HTH.

Stamp duty for £1M is £42k. How are you getting to £70k?
Solicitor and removal costs max £10k
Our last move was £1M (not London).

After April it'll be nearly £44k on stamp duty. Your other estimates seem high. But yes, the cost of moving is prohibitive for a lot of people. I've been looking and decided I don't want to spend that amount just to move. So staying put.

Partially why we have a stagnant housing market, but you are a bit overgenerous on your estimates. We paid 3k for packing and moving 2miles pre COVID I can't see IT'S gone up fourfold

Problem is the stamp duty. Then conveyancing fees based on the property you are selling and buying. Then factor in estate agents fees and Vat at whatever percentage you agree.

It’s expensive and gives multiple reasons as to why people stay put and do loft extensions, side return extensions etc.

We only budgeted removal cost up to £6000. Then we got quotations from removal companies, ranging from £5000 to £11,000, for moving distance of 80 miles from a 5 bed bungalow, tranship loading and moving over 3-4 days in total. These quotes do not include packing service, and all based on survey visits. (not online/video).

The average house price in the UK is £267,500. You are buying a house that is 4x that. If you think you can't afford the costs associated with buying such an expensive house then maybe you should buy a more affordable house.

As per @Doggymummar , this is one of the reasons we don’t have a healthy market.
Email to your MP asking them to review stamp duty.
It’s an unfair and hated tax. Would be better to scrap it and replace with a monthly fee for all homes, or a wealth tax based on value of your property.

Estate agent fees if selling a £1M house could be around £15.000. So along with stamp duty and the solicitors and moving fees that comes to almost £70k.

I didn’t say we can’t afford it I said it’s extortionate :) we wouldn’t leave London and it doesn’t make sense to compare London prices to the country average as they’ll obviously be different

Thank you. Prob all have over budgeted to be cautious but estate agent fees to sell this place have been quoted at 9k which is where a chunk is coming from

Thanks yes this is why - our selling costs on current place :)

Thanks everyone for your replies. I have probably over budgeted certain things such as removal to be cautious. I understand why people do stay put. I think I saw somewhere someone say without SD property prices would be even higher. We could add a loft here for the whole cost of moving, so we need to decide what is best for us

@Givemethesun it is expensive. We recently moved out of London £78k stamp duty, £2500 for our sale, £2500 for our buy in solicitors fees, £12500 commission to estate agent £2500 to movers. Total cost to move £98000. It’s extortionate and one of the reasons we didn’t do it in London, didn’t want to pay that then another £300k for a bigger house when we could move out and get much more bang for the buck.

wow! That’s a lot! Hope the move went well

It IS extortionate

We moved just before covid (2019) and it was about the same iirc 😵‍💫

Honestly it is why we were very picky about moving and went for something we could stay in for 20yrs plus.

Its just another stealth tax and ill be damned if i am throwing that kind of money down the drain every 5 years.

Is our house perfect? Absolutely not.
Are we stuck with it unless there is a significant meaningful change in circs? yes

The best you can do is ensure you are as confident in the purchase as you can be

I always feel sorry for people with awful neighbours as "just move" really isnt an easy option if you own especially in london.

Stamp duty is ridiculous

When you think about it, it would make a lot more sense to pay tax on capital gains on your primary residence

We bought our house in London from a retired couple a few years ago who bought it for very little 30 years ago, they got to keep that huge rise in value, around 900k tax free. But we got to pay c 50k in stamp duty. How does that make sense?

The result is that people try very hard not to move house often in London - whereas in other similar cities, you might move several times depending on your life stage/family size, in London being taxed so heavily just for moving house means people stay in unsuitable housing (too small/too big) for longer than they could

People just avoid moving any more than is necessary.

It’s obscene!

I’d imagined we would buy a bigger house in London at some point but it will cost us £100k+ to do so, just far too much money to basically get an extra bedroom.

Stamp duty is really getting to be prohibitive. Just be thankful you are not in Scotland where Stamp Duty (LBTT) on a £1m property would be £78350.00.

The average house price in London is ~£680k.

10% of properties in London are now worth £1m+ - what elsewhere is a bog standard 3-bed terrace can comfortably set you back £1m.

That’s the market in which OP is operating, that elsewhere in the UK you can buy a house for £267k is irrelevant. You couldn’t buy a one bed flat here with that.

As others have highlighted, it's not hard to get to that figure once you add in stamp duty, conveyancing, removals, estate agents plus other sundries such as surveys and anything you might lose if you have a chain fall through. We budgeted £50K for our move. If you are selling a decent sized property in London and moving a distance that requires a few day's effort, the costs can easily rack up. For removals, we were quoted from £5K to £11K for example.

We wouldn't be moving if it was within London. It's only the fact we are relocating so instigating a new chapter in our lives that it's worth writing off £50K.

According to the ONS it is actually £520K in London. So she's buying a house that is twice the average house price in the most expensive market in the country (as well as being 4x the average across the UK).

So?

Some people have more expensive houses than others. You couldn’t buy a family home for £520k in vast swathes of London.

Her point isn’t that she can’t afford it anyway, it’s that it costing £70,000 to buy a £1,000,000 house is extortionate.

Which, it is.

That you don’t think it’s relevant to you, or you aren’t interested because it’s higher than the average house price - what exactly is that adding to the thread?

London house prices are vastly different to other places in the country.

You will be hard pushed to find a house at £500k in loads of areas of London and I don’t mean central London either. It’s just the way it is.

Thanks everyone. Intended this to be a light hearted chat about how i was shocked at the estimated price of moving in London, which it mainly has been. Thanks for everyone’s replies. And I wanted to sense check my calcs weren’t vastly wrong - which they aren’t. That’s all :)