The Times newspaper has this evening reported that Chancellor Rishi Sunak plans to announce a 3 month extension to the Stamp Duty Land Tax holiday in the Budget on 3rd March
Currently due to finish on the 31st March, the 3 month extension would bring the end of the SDLT holiday in line with the proposed roadmap for the end of social distancing in England and Wales at the end of June.
Data from TwentyCi suggests that the 3 month extension would benefit over 193,000 property sales currently set to miss out on SDLT savings, at a cost of £1 billion to the Treasury.
More to follow
7 Responses
If this is accurate and there is going to be a three-month stamp duty holiday extension, with no kind of tapering or grandfathering scheme built in, it may assist many who are currently buying and selling and won’t make the 31st March deadline. However, it is likely that a whole new batch of buyers and sellers will be in the same situation in the summer, unless some hold off because of the reported property price increases over the last 12 months, hoping for a post summer drop.
It also won’t help the already creaking (and in some cases almost on its knees) property industry; including agents; conveyancers, surveyors, lenders; local authorities and removers.
Hopefully, the Chancellor will heed the requests made by many over the last few months that a soft (petering out) landing, rather than a cliff edge landing, would be a more desirable and practical. Extension or no extension.
Fully agree that a tapered, soft landing (rather than another cliff edge) is the most sensible, pragmatic approach for buyers, conveyancers and others in the process.
This crisis has shown that the home moving sector cannot meet customer demand without government support
The trade off for temporary support must be a no-holds-barred reorganisation to give movers a comprehensive, co=ordinated and consumer-friendly service permanently
The £600m+ cost of abortive transactions is unsustainable
It is, particularly given that the party who contributes most work and professional input usually cannot charge for it (ie the lawyer) whereas the agents often get paid hundreds for the placing of the wasted searches.
This whole SDLT period has certainly succeeded in magnifying the inefficiencies in our conveyancing processes. The delays on Local Authority searches for example have reached an all time low with their delays stretching sometimes I’ve seen up to 6 months’ wait. This is ultimately what is driving the extension the Chancellor is muted to be proposing as some lenders won’t accept search delay indemnity plus there are firms who would prefer to wait for the reports to be returned before completion. Conveyancers have never been pushed as hard as this, for as long as this and many have been shelving annual leave as they are encouraged not to take it as this cliff edge of 31st March approaches. It is likely now that many conveyancing staff will be in the same position in June and will be mentally and physically exhausted by then.
I hope it’s all worth it
Sadly, I couldn’t sell my house due to COVID and have been working/living 200 miles away with my daughter in a caravan for the past year. I decided to purchase a property but because I still have my other house for sale I would’ve been met with a fee of £5750 compared to £800 without having the other house! I for one am happy for the extension as I certainly don’t have just short of £6k to hand to pay the fee!
I wish he’d end it sooner. The property market has too much hot air in it already (pre pandemic) brought on by a historically low interest rate environment over a very long period and excessive lending multiples relative to incomes.
There are reports that a lot of the bounce back loans have ended up in the property market as well.
It seems to me that removing the SDLT has simply made prices rise so rather than the tax man getting his cut – the seller gets it. I wouldn’t normally advocate this – but again I think the excessive leverage in the sector is going to fall out soon anyway.