Stamp Duty Changes – Effects on House Buying

October 17, 2022 By: Admin0 comments

How will the stamp duty changes affect the house you want to buy?

In the recent mini-budget, cuts to stamp duty were announced. This is good news for buyers, but how will this change the conveyancing process? Will more delays happen? Stephen Ward knows what to do.

Gather your paperwork ahead of time to save time.

Many people thought that Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s recent “mini-budget” would calm their fears about the economy and the cost of living crisis, but it did the opposite.

Now that the pound is at an all-time low and interest rates are expected to rise quickly, many mortgage products, especially fixed-rate mortgages, have been taken off the market. However, the changes to stamp duty land tax are a small bit of good news (SDLT).

Under the new rules, the limit at which buyers must start paying the tax has gone up from £125k to £250k, and for first-time buyers, it has gone up from £300k to £425k.

Right Move says that this means that a third of the homes for sale in England do not have to pay any SDLT at all.

What do the changes to stamp duty mean for me?

Since the change made by the chancellor is permanent, we don’t think there will be as much activity as when a temporary stamp duty holiday was announced in 2020. At that time, conveyancers were working hard to keep up with demand.

But people who are moving or are about to move should be realistic about how long it might take.

Every situation is unique and depends on how the property is set up, but even a simple sale is taking more than three months right now.

Smoove’s Home Movers Report says that the average time it takes to buy a house has gone up by 23% since 2019, from 124 to 153 days. It says that the delays are because of the boom that happened after the pandemic. This caused a backlog, so things like local authority searches took longer to come back.

No matter what the reason, a conveyancer who says they can get you in by Christmas may have trouble doing so.

How can I make my house-buying process quick?

Your conveyancer’s job is to find any problems that might affect your decision to buy, like a dispute over the property’s boundaries, limits on what you can do with the property, or the fact that it’s in a flood risk area.

These kinds of investigations can’t be done overnight and shouldn’t be done quickly, but they are worth the wait if they help you avoid problems in the future.

In the same way, a lot is being done to digitise and simplify the legal side of buying a house, but there are still a lot of important checks that need to be done to make sure the transfer of ownership is solid.

 We can guide you on how to buy and sell a home.

Getting yourself together is what you can do.

There’s no reason why you shouldn’t look into and choose a conveyancer before you choose a property. But it’s important to make sure they’re regulated so you can get your money back if something goes wrong.

It is really not easy to find a conveyancer for you as you have a lot of options that are hard to beat.

For example, most firms no longer need you to come to their office in person. They can handle matters remotely, and some even have portals you can log into 24/7 to see how your case is going.

All licenced conveyancers must now put clear information about their services and prices on their websites.

If you have all the paperwork your conveyancer might need to move your case forward, you can also save a lot of time.

For buyers, this could include your passport, paystubs, bank statements, and household bills, as well as information about your mortgage or mortgage in principle.

Remember that the mortgage, in principle, could have changed since the mini-budget was announced.

Click here if you want to read more about stamp duty.

Sellers should gather all the information they have about the property they are selling, such as the deeds, mortgage information, and records of any work done.

Care Finacial Services do not offer the services of conveyancers or solicitors, but we might refer you to some reliable ones. 

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• Conveyancing
• Mortgage
• Solictors
• Stamp Duty