With the March deadline for the stamp duty holiday on the horizon, the UK property industry has urged Chancellor Rishi Sunak to consider extending the exemption on the first £500,000 of residential property purchases.
MPs will debate the Stamp Duty Holiday extension following a hugely popular online petition, Estate Agent Today has reported. The debate has been triggered by the online petition calling for a six-month extension beyond March 31.
Here are the details:
When?: 1st of February
What Time? 4:30pm
How long?: 90-minutes
Who will lead the session?: Elliot Colburn MP, a member of the Petitions Committee
Jesse Norman MP, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, will respond for the government.
The current SDLT threshold for residential properties is £500,000, after the 1st of April it will go back down to £125,000. The threshold for non-residential land and properties is £150,000 and will continue to be.
However, the Chancellor has told Tory MPs he needs to make “tough choices” to start restoring order to the public finances, the Financial Times has reported.
At the time of writing, Mr Sunak and The Treasury had no plans to extend the housing market’s stamp duty holiday, so those in the market to buy or sell their properties should prepare for the 31 March deadline.
What happened on the stamp duty holiday?
The temporary stimulus was put in place to nudge the property along after the initial lockdown last year and to keep jobs. Prices and transactions soon became frothy when buyers took advantage of savings as much as £15,000.
Not all house buyers have reaped the advantages, though. One set of victims of the stimulus are first-time buyers as an active housing market rocketed houses prices. Residential prices leapt as much as 31.5% from December 2019 to December 2020, according to HM Revenue & Customs figures. UK average house prices increased by 7.6 per cent in the year to November 2020, numbers not seen since June 2016.
The average house price is now £250,000 while in London prices passed £500,000 for the first time.
From 1 April 2021, first-time buyers will get a relief or discount, meaning you will pay less or in some cases no tax if both the following apply:
- you, and anyone else you’re buying with, are first-time buyers
- the purchase price is £500,000 or less
You will be eligible for this discount if you bought your first home before 8 July 2020.
We need the extension due to the COVID lockdown status, it is difficult to view properties let alone buy them. I sold my house in October 2020, 24 hours after the online listing. I still have not purchased with the completion date on my sale now only weeks away. I am looking to move closer to my family in Norfolk after losing a grandson, from Bognor Regis, 200 miles. Difficult enough to arrange viewings under normal circumstances but under the current conditions, almost impossible. Cancellation after cancellation, due to Covid, why should I lose out.
M. MacArthur