Reply With QuoteSDLT holidays are the exception rather than the rule, thus it would be hard to attribute valid merit to that viewpoint imo.Originally Posted by thestore
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You could argue that prices are artificially low in general due to the stamp duty tax.
SDLT holidays are the exception rather than the rule, thus it would be hard to attribute valid merit to that viewpoint imo.
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I'm waiting to see how the people in commuter towns react when their local taxes shoot up to pay for the infrastructure that the millennials leaving the big cities will demand. Best start getting used to avocado on toast.
Meanwhile here in our apartment block (Kingston) there is an influx of Hong Kong enquiries.
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Can't be sure about the UK property market but the other day my fellow real estate agent who works in Spain said in between during our conversation that local real estate pffers will gradually dicrease in price due to the corona virus and the fact that people lost a lot of money in lockdown with their jobs. I looked through some offerings in the Costa Blanca area (apartments and townhouses) and noticed that as a rule they cost 10% lower compared to the price set 10 months ago or so.
Last edited by Owren; 14th February 2021 at 19:07.
Looks like the stamp duty holiday will be extended - https://news.sky.com/story/stamp-dut...ether-12227369
Predictable but the wrong answer, unless it is tapered, which is still not clear
I'm now cautiously in favour of a continuation, as I suspect there is a big knock-on effect and trickle-down benefits in not seeing the collapse of the housing 'industry' - be it in newbuilds or resales.
Time will tell.
But nobody is predicting a collapse and the market will settle back whenever relief finishes, 3 months is just kicking the can. It could result in prices falling 10% in some cases over say a 24 month period, before starting to climb back again. Not ideal if you are leaving the property ladder, no major impact if you are moving and the big point is first time buyers have a chance of entering the market. Instead we will continue to see tax payer money used to artificially inflate house prices and ensure estate agents and solicitors continue to get lots of work, whilst house builders make super profits.
Spanish property is already very low but will get hit again by a lot less UK buyers and the covid fallout.
I dont believe stamp duty holidays have made it cheaper to buy. Sellers have just factored it in to their asking price. 20k reduction in stamp duty will be a 20k increase in price. Also sellers wont be worried about SD tax bands for the moment so they can ask what they like.
Property prices wont really be affected until all the extra benefits/payments and covid freebies have finished. Then you will see some fireworks...
On the radio the other day they said the average saving using the stamp duty scheme was £11k and the avagerge price has gone up nearly £50k. The scheme was absolute nonsense.
AHA thought it might.
Sounds like the CGT allowance might get chopped from 12, 500p.a. to just 2000 pa.
Last edited by Passenger; 24th February 2021 at 15:01.
I've just accepted an offer on our place from a Hong Kong cash buyer. His sister (who lives locally) viewed the property on his behalf and took a video on her mobile for him. He hasn't seen anything apart from her video and the estate agents advert, but he's agreed to buy sight unseen and has passed all the financial checks. According to his sister there's a lot in his situation doing exactly the same thing due to the political unrest.
Knight Frank sold a house in St John's Wood the same way to a Malaysian buyer for about £6m not long ago.
His parents took him around the house on facetime and he was happy with the pictures, location, and facetime tour.
I’m trying to buy a property and had an offer accepted just of the basis of seeing the agents video, I have since been allowed inside and it all checks out.
I wondered what your buyer thought when they seen your watch room on the video!!
He must have thought "Wow, I've got to buy it!"
Without the SDLT holiday - I wonder how many more in lots of constituent areas of house building/selling/buying/renovating etc - would have ended up being furloughed?
Perhaps the cost of the 'holiday' is not much more than furlough costs? It seems a possibility, to me?
That of course discounts what the short-term repercussions are to the inflation in house prices, and possibly rents for a lot of that market.
So - will the end result (by next February, say) be, that prices will have risen and suddenly crashed to pre covid levels or beyond?
Will rents come back down though? (assuming they rose)
The stamp duty holiday was the biggest con going, most are worse off because of it. The future buyers of our inflated properties are our kid's generation ...Zero Sum Game.
It's the same market manipulation that goes on in Australia to keep the heartland voters onside by making them feel wealthy through ever-increasing house prices. Significant immigration has been the main cause, I guess the stories above are what the Gov expected to keep blowing more air in the balloon.
Stamp duty holiday was a sensible move to keep the house market buoyant, we don't know what would've happened without it. I think it's sensible to continue with it under current circumstances and I don`t think it should be blamed for house price inflation. Lots of other factors are to blame for that.
Remember, a buoyant house market has other spin-offs that benefit employment. People move house and usually carry out some work, be it decorating, home improvements, sorting out the garden etc, this involves spending and often involves work for tradesmen.
Some of you will take any opportunity to find fault with the government, you're entitled to your political bias but don't fool us (or yourselves) into thinking you're making objective comment, these threads provide a chance for the frustrated political animals to blow hot air so I guess they serve a useful purpose.
House market is exactly that, it's a market that's based on what people will pay and affordability. Let's not overlook the influence of historically low interest rates, some of us have long memories and recall interest rates over 13% in the late 80s.
What a load of nonsense - "we don't know what would have happened without it" - you could say that about absolutely anything. That statement adds nothing and is said by some who benefitted from it, right?
The demand for property has been unbelievable and people have been slamming through remortgage and mortgage applications quickly before they get put on furlough or made redundant.
It has cost buyers everywhere more and I say that as someone due to save £15k in 2 weeks once I exchange but in the grand scheme of things for a house purchase I couldn't care less if I save it or not.
Quite so, my parents tell me at one point in 1989 they were paying £1200 a month on a 3 bed semi in Helston in Cornwall that they only had a £36000 25 year mortgage on which had been at £600 or so when they bought in 1985. I remember my mum sitting at the table and actually having to write a budget in a little book for bills well into 1990/91 - I've never had to do that in my life. I think people tend to forget that actually the dual income nature of modern families also means that house prices have ballooned. Mine and my wife's parents easily survived on just the dad's being the main earners until the eldest child was in secondary school in same the houses that we now need dual incomes and a decade of savings and equity to afford and if one of us loses a job then 50% of that persons income is the mortgage. This means that a couple earning £30k a year each are going to be offered a 4.5x mortgage of a maximum £270k straight out of the gate repaying £1200 a month over 25 years on a £300k property - how are single income or joint part time families ever supposed to compete?
Really?
Not bothered to the tune of £15k?
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
Really? Christ - is that what people are doing? If I was worried about furlough or redundancy - the last thing I'd be contemplating was a mortgage or increase. Any clue as to the thought process there?
That does sound like total madness and only likely to end in heartache.
So, if your fix finished but you were 2% away from the next LTV break point, you might have decided to sit on the SVR for a few months until you could get preferential rates especially given house price increases. Equally, you might already have been on a fix and crossed a boundary and decided that actually, if you remortgage mid-deal and pay the ERC you're still saving based on lower repayments. If you can stretch out that fix from a 2 year to five year while still employed, you can cushion the blow of losing a job and having to find another while knowing that your mortgage repayments are judged on what you were earning at time of application which will generally be much more favourable. Additionally, you may choose to extend your mortgage repayment period from say 15 years to 20 years to reduce the monthlies.
Ah-hah! that makes a bit of sense - never considered the fixed interest etc.
I'm bothered by £15k in general of course but in the context of a £500k or £1m house you hope to be in for the next 20 years it really is miniscule and not a reason to do (or not do) anything. I was bickering over £10-£15k when buying my last house in Sept 2014 as I felt I was overpaying - the seller wouldn't budge an inch so we lumped it. We sold it in Nov 2019 after doing a fair bit of work for £155k more. It would have been short sighted to lose the house over £10-15k and that's before the £155k.
If we save the £15k we'll spend on windows or a new driveway. If we don't we'll just do windows next year and see if we have the money to do the drive the year after if we're still that bothered. £15k is a hell of a lot of money on a watch, but means nothing on a house purchase.Yep, the same as people who know they're about to go on maternity and rush to get things through now before their income changes and they won't get then what they will get now.
My wife just went through a restructure at work and she was fine in the end but if she was put at risk we would have tried to rush it through in all honesty. Her work have a great redundancy package and we would have been fine without her needing another job for at least two years based on usual spending and new mortgage commitment so long as my job was fine, longer if we economise.
I hate to say it, but you took advantage of it (as far as I'm aware anyway!), so of course you'd like it!
I'm a first-time buyer and have now had my only real transaction benefit removed, which is not paying SDLT (up to £300k anyway and I want to buy outside of an expensive area, so my exposure to it would've been minimal at best)... So now I have higher prices to contend with and need even more deposit than I did before, as lower LTV products aren't available; great, that's really aided me in this situation.
I can't wait for the holiday on it to be dropped, it'll bring reality back to the market. As has been mentioned several times, the saving is so small compared to the massive hike in prices, it's ludicrous.
Frankly I have no idea what to do in the current situation, I was banking on furlough and SDLT holiday ending soon and starting to look again then. I pulled out of my previous purchase due to COVID-issues, almost a year ago and despite saving a lot more since, feel further away from buying than ever!
Best of luck, it´s a pretty rigged game tbh...will the possible announcement of Govt. help for FTB´s, rumoured as being a return of some 95 percent mortgage availability- Govt to providing some form of insurance to lenders, so I´ve read, perhaps be of some benefit to you.
The market could use some reality but in reality it´s such a totemic issue to the British mind set, I don't think that's high on the agenda.
Last edited by Passenger; 2nd March 2021 at 16:19.
I want the SDLT scheme to be extended to the end of July, for purely selfish reasons - fifteen thousand of them.
It isn't going to happen though so I've been caught in the double whammy of just missing out on the scheme and buying at a time when house prices have already risen because of it.
Still, it's my choice to move so that's the price I pay I suppose!
Thanks.
Wonderfully it was developer digging in heels over things that meant I hadn’t completed as quickly as possible before! Shysters the whole ensemble of ‘characters’. 🙄
It’ll be interesting to see about the 5% thing, but I suspect lenders will just price hard for those turning up with 5% deposit. I previously had a little over 10% deposit, but am now aiming for minimum 15% and buying a cheaper property than before.
Irritating, but it is what it is, it’s why I’d like some market stability frankly!
I’m very fortunate to be an above average earner, I dread to think how those on lower incomes manage it frankly; it’s at least offsetting some of the pain of buying on my own!
While I feel your aggravation, a drop in property prices will hurt some but benefit you, there is always winners and losers when it comes to anything going up and down.
Yes prices are inflated due to the SDLT but who is to say property will drop by a significant amount once the holiday ends?
If there was a 5% drop a £300k property would cost £285k, that 5% would not likely happen in the first month either and take several months of 1-2% reductions, then there is the delay for it to feed into the market, especially cities and towns outside London, I don’t see any big corrections happening for a long time.
If anything I’m thinking there maybe a good feeling/summer/vaccine/Covid gone asking prices bump..
Another simply mindless SDLT extension and this time with a sweetener of encouraging 95% LTV's too, what can possibly go wrong....
In the meantime nothing still for commercial landlords left with many tenants refusing to pay rent for a whole year
What's that they say about insanty...doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result.
There were even nuggets on social media telling tenants "You don't have to pay rent because your landlord has got a mortgage payment holiday".
Pal of mine gave his tenant (a couple) because they claimed to be furloughed. Then found out they were actually working from home.
I predict property prices to rise with all these added benefits especially first time buyers being encouraged with 95%/5% deposits, add in the fact of not enough housing and I cant see it dropping.
I buy and sell property and keep thinking about renting, but I'm sticking with selling and taking the quick profit, I cant be bothered with the agro and not sure how I would handle someone taking the piss out of my hard work and forcing me to give them a rent free roof over their head.
We gave some young ladies in one of our flats a part proportion 3 month discount last quarter of 2020, come discussions ahead of lease renewal time February, no thanks all going home to Mum and Dad or otherwise leaving the smoke...lolz...still could've been worse at least they left the place in good order and somebody else will come along, don't recall a void at all on that one for iirc going on twleve years, so really can't complain.
Last edited by Passenger; 4th March 2021 at 17:07.
Received a unsolicited letter through the door today from a family (not an EA) who had sold their property and looking to buy on our road.
Never had this in the boom times. Seems like the market is very much still alive and kicking despite COVID.
Being recently in the selling and now the buying market, my opinion is, if it's the right house, then the market is going crazy!
For example, last Thursday, at 7pm, I got an email of a new to market property. We immediately got an email off to the agent. The next day we were phoning non stop from 9am. Couldn't get through. At c. 10:30 finally got through and the reason why couldn't earlier was, apparently, the phone engaged with calls about this house. So we were told they were taking bookings for 15min viewings. Later on Friday we get an email, our slot was Saturday at 3:40. So we go and view and REALLY like it. When we asked about other viewings the agent said he'd done 30 so far and had a load more booked for Tuesday/Wednesday this week! In fact, when we arrived we had to stand outside for the previous viewers to leave and there was another couple waiting on the doorstep when we left.
The agent said there would be emails going out later this week for people to give their offers. It's like the boom of the 80s :-(
tbh I didn't like the agent. It was very much a case of the attitude 'I don't know anything about the house but I don't care because it's going to have a dozen people putting offers in'.
IMHO the stamp duty holiday has done nothing except fuel a massive demand with an associated big jump in prices. If the aim of the chancellor was to help first time buyers on lower budgets then no-way! Even though I'm now in the buying market, and would benefit from it (assuming we can find somewhere and get complete in time), I still don't agree with the stamp duty holiday.
That happened on an existing development near me - a group of 30? New England style houses in a very neat development.
One guy from around 50 miles away - distributed flyers through all doors, and got one taker.
After he and his wife moved there - one of their friends from around 80miles away - asked him to do the same for him!
Two houses shifted - the easy way (the development house prices had actually dropped in 15yrs).
Always worth a punt.
I am sure it is very busy and the demand is hot, but also be aware that EAs will usually do everything in their power to ramp and achieve maximum selling price in the interests in their client.
A particular trick is the open house tactic and get all house viewings in a limited timeframe to give the impression the demand is higher than it is.
Before the oil crash in 2014 - flats in Aberdeen were being offered on and sold without viewing. Such was the market at the time. That changed in a month!
Next door neighbour just sold theirs in a similar fashion. Although it was an agent that made the direct approach and offer. That sale actually fell through but the agent came back the next week with a new buyer which completed in no time.
Yep I 100% know what you mean but we've been monitoring properties in the areas we want to move to and the goods one seem to goto STC within a week. We did the prowl of a few of the agents web site and, for example, one had over a hundred on their books with only 7 showing available.
The issue we have is what to offer. I'm leaning towards offer or offer+10K. We've done some fag packet maths and we're thinking 50-60K to do up and that's with us doing 75% of the work. We've lots of experience wrt to gutting houses and doing them up and will lend our hands to most things: Plumbing, electrics (where permitted), reboarding, overboarding, heating, doors/frame, floors, bathrooms, kitchens, &c. I draw the line at plastering (I simply can't do it) and doing a total rewire (basically because of the rules rather than the competence). Our worry is that a younger, less experience couple, will see it and not appreciate all the work needed so they'll put in a daft offer. :-(
Here in West Lancs stuff is going very quickly - two of my neighbours sold the same day the houses went up.
Always a problem. You may think "All that needs doing within the first 6m", and offer accordingly. Others may say "The kitchen, bathroom and windows need renewing, but we can do that over the next 5yrs" and basically ignore the cost.
We've just changed our mind and offered on a different house which was accepted on Friday morning. By Friday afternoon searches and draft contracts had been submitted/gone out too.
In the end we're paying asking price and buying a house we originally saw in September and rejected but since then it's come down £50k and we've seen a few more, become a bit more realistic. We also just need to buy a house, move on with our lives, and stop waiting for perfection. It doesn't exist.
Searches will be back on 19th April and there's nothing to do apart from some paint and carpets. We're already underwritten at a similar amount on our current purchase so the offer should be easily switched subject to survey. They're leaving the freestanding cooker which the agent made a big deal about. I didn't see the such a fuss over a cooker until my wife looked online and it's in John Lewis for £4k.
We're probably overpaying but in 10+ years time 30-50k will be totally insignificant and due to the stamp duty it's probably more like 15-35k anyway... or 11-31k if you're a keen chef!
As much as I tried you just can't time the crash, but you can lose out on life while you wait for it to happen.
Different rules/practices - but in Scotland, an offer "subject to survey" is seen as a "note of comfort" and taken with a pinch of salt.
£50k is a fair chunk of change - surely not still overpaying?
Very wise Wileeeey. Congrats.
Wrong!
I didn’t ‘ take advantage of it’, in a somewhat protracted transaction involving purchase of a property that came to market following bereavement, a process that got stalled owing to a legal dispute between the owners, I ended up saving around £2.5k. However, that’s scant consolation for having to pay £9k more than the price originally agreed with one party who subsequently found he couldn’t legally sell it. Other party played hardball over price as a matter of principle and we were caught in the middle, sometimes in life you have to suck it up and pay, this was one of those times. I sold my own house for slightly more owing to the slightly stronger market ( perhaps £3k more, possibly £5k) which also helped slightly, I see no point in dwelling on the money aspect because we’ve moved forward, its now history.
My views on the Stamp Duty holiday are not prejudiced by my own situation, in the grand scheme of things it made v. little difference. I do see the advantages in keeping the market buoyant but it sounds like it’s created unhealthy price inflation in some areas.
My advice to anyone who finds prices in the South too high is simple: move North and get value for money, you might even find you like it.
I still think there’s a risk of prices falling when the economic reality kicks in.
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