We are selling my late mother-in-laws house and the estate agent is pushing us to accept an offer about 30k lower than we'd like citing the stamp duty break and that things need to move quickly if buyers are to get the advantage of it.
It's only been on the market 6 weeks and my wife and her sister (sole beneficiaries) are in no rush to sell.
We're kind of the position that that's a buyers problem not ours but just after other opinions.
Not sure as I follow the logic there. If the stamp duty terms change it'll affect all properties of a given value, not just yours.
Plus if they're taking advantage of the stamp duty break they can afford to pay more, not less. Offer to sell it to them for 10k over the asking price to take into account Attitude Tax. (-:
Depends on what the price is, doesnt it?
A little 2 bed semi, falling just over the threshold, it might not make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things and theres a good chance you might be looking at first time buyers.
A great big detached posh country house - its gonna make a big difference in absolute cost to the buyers.
Also, you've got a while yet before it ends.
Regards it being a buyers problem - if its a buyers problem, its your problem.
(We are due to move in December having scrapped planes earlier this year due CV, Stamp Duty Holiday was a partial factor in moving now however note that prices are also very firm currently for decent houses. We got a very good figure on ours but little room to haggle on our new, bigger property).
Finally - be realistic - are you saying that the new, 30k lwoer figure is less than you'll take because they have unrealistically priced it to begin with? If no-one or few people have viewed it in 6 weeks that would suggest its priced wrongly, as the property market in most areas of the coutnry is like an unstoppable freight train currently.
All 3 estate agents we had round valued it at a comedy price of £470,000 - we told the one we went with to try it at that for 2 weeks (as hey we're no estate agents!) and if no offers drop it to £400kto £425k which we originally thought was a decent starting point.
We've had offers of £350k and £365 which is on the low side knowing what other properties in the village have gone for. We've had about a dozen viewers.
We're talking a detached limestone 3 bed barn conversion with double garage and parking for 8 or 9 cars if you stacked them well! A rarity in this village. Small garden but this could be easily fixed if you grabbed back some of the parking area.
You could slap some paint round, a bit of titivating and live in it perfectly well, or spend a 100k on an extension and have something easily worth £600k or more.
This thread is useless without photos or a Rightmove link
😉
As a seller should we care about stamp duty break ending?
IMHO yes, you should. It's a small nudge to motivate people who are considering moving but haven't started looking seriously. It might increase the volume of buyers interested in your house.
Edit: And I suspect the absolute benefit is less important than the fact that it exists and will be withdrawn soon.
Depends on what the price is, doesnt it?
That's a good point. Less of a hit if you're selling a mansion perhaps, 30k under the asking price of mine would have halved it.
The offers you have are what it is worth in the current market. The stamp duty saving is effectively yours as a seller.
It's your call whether to accept the best offer or hold out. Post march 21 the stamp duty element would be deducted from the best offer, plus other factors, economy, covid, desirability of area etc.
I just spent 6 weeks in UK looking at houses to buy, even average ones were selling quickly so I will wait till things settle down. The stamp duty holiday is a smoke screen to me to disguise the real market, but I may be wrong...
I seem to get a rightmove email every day about new house for sale in our area, seems everyone is trying to sell.. I presume to upgrade? Is it a good time to sell/buy now? or will the downturn in 2021 due to covid and brexit mean extending your debt now would be a bad idea?
Listening to property experts on the radio they're already seeing a flattening of demand and prices - add the uncertainty around Covid and Brexit to the economy/jobs and it would be difficult to see that this summer's jump has been a mini-boom. People making offers now aren't going to moving in until next year too. Its only worth what somebody's prepared to pay - what condition is the property, particularly kitchen and bathroom because some people might be factoring in the cost of a refurb?
Not sure what Poolman is on about, sellers do not pay Stamp- the Covid reduction is an incentive for buyers to bolster the market.
Not sure what Poolman is on about, sellers do not pay Stamp- the Covid reduction is an incentive for buyers to bolster the market.
And who also benefits from there being more buyers in the market?
If you have £100k to buy a house and stamp duty is £10k then you can only spend £90k on the house. If stamp duty becomes £5k then you can spend £95k on the house. It pushes prices up.
£470,000 – we told the one we went with to try it at that for 2 weeks
Trouble is by doing this you've already shown you are willing to lower your price. Seems to be very difficult to gauge the market right now, pretty sure no one saw the mini summer boom coming, sure as hell the estate agent will just want any sort of sale right now. I think if it were me I'd check out exactly how ready to buy are the offers on the table are & see if you can bump them up a little more if they are serious, not sure I'd want to hold onto a vacant property right now in expectation of higher offers 🤔
Be aware that to take advantage of the stamp duty holiday you need to have completed the sale by the time it ends. So given how slowly some of the paperwork is moving it's not actually as long away as you think. Plus as it gets nearer to Christmas people tend to stop looking.
For you ElShalimo! I've commented on enough of these threads so I can hardly refuse!... 🙂
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-73177902.html
..if we could afford to buy it we'd join up the house with the garage to make another downstairs living area and new master bedroom. Planning shouldn't be an issue as a large 4 bed detached house was built in the orchard that used to be belong to this property.
Not sure what Poolman is on about, sellers do not pay Stamp- the Covid reduction is an incentive for buyers to bolster the market.
It's not direct, but as a buyer the Stamp Duty holiday increases your budget by the amount you're going to save. Of course, doesn't mean it's what it would be allocated to.
Your agent wants you to take the offer precisely because you are in no rush to sell, it's costing them money to advertise and chase up viewings etc.
I think average time from offer to completion is ~4 months. Add in Christmas and a buyer should be looking at having their offer accepted by the end of October if they want to ensure they avoid the stamp duty.
The stamp duty on a £400k house will be £10k when the rates revert but I don't think that directly equates to the amount it will affect sale prices. Buyers will either need the extra £10k as cash or they take it out of the equity in their current property (assuming they have one) - if that's the case, it could affect the mortgage LTV and disproportionately impact their ability to afford a house.
No idea what area you live in or the desirability of that type of property in that area, but here (Cambridgeshire) homes have been selling fast. The really desirable stuff goes in days and even the ropey stuff has gone in 4 weeks tops.
An offer of £365k sounds like a genuine one. Did you counter offer?
That's nice. Would you take £325k? Can chuck in a couple of bikes 🙂 Stayed in Brassington last year on Hillside, so about 100 yards from there, lovely village.
Stamp duty might be a factor if assessing whether the house is "affordable" to a potential buyer, it's an extra ~£10-15k for them to find over and above the purchase price, but the house is worth what it's worth relative to local prices, serious buyers won't be making offers massively below market value and probably shouldn't be looking at homes they can't really afford.
My assessment would be that lobbing in a very low offer and then citing stamp duty as the reason strikes me more as someone trying to speculatively score a bargain on a property, perhaps based on the assumption that it's only being sold right now due to poor financial circumstances for the vendor.
I'd hold out for more if there's no pressure to sell, and if CV19 is really hammering property values, once the estate agent fails to sell it, maybe consider talking to a local letting agent. Just to let it generate some income/cover costs while the market rebounds?
The Estate agent will of course want the faster sale rather than more commission, and I'm sure you've got a time limited contract with them, no sale no fee within 6 months?
Yes the stamp duty holiday has just driven prices up so it's a not real saving to the buyer, but a gift to the seller. It's not just the stamp duty holiday driving the current mini boom, here in Spain purchase tax is c10% and no current holiday. I advertised a property pre covid, trickle of interest, post lockdown, increased price and it sold straight away.
Next year you have brexit, covid, real economy.
Your Agent obvs just wants it off off their hands out the door asap.
Hold steady with your price.
👍🤠
Pretty much every bit of the property market is up on 2019 - sales agreed surpassed total 2019 already, however, exchanges are only 40% of 2019. As mentioned above, you’ll probably need to be Sstc this month to get it exchanged before the window closes. Perhaps we’ll see an extension for sales which have gone sstc by end Feb or something and cover-off the conveyancer/surveyor bottleneck. Average house price £380k has increased everywhere except for London.
no rush to sell.
doesn't sound like you do.
If you want to sell surely now is the time while this mini boom is still going. I'm looking to buy at the moment and it's nuts, had several houses where we arranged a viewing almost straight after the house came on the market, but had the viewing cancelled because the seller had already accepted an offer at asking price or very close to.
I can't see it being as easy to sell in a few months when everyone is unemployed 🙁
