Missing SDT holiday deadline has little effect on existing transactions

Since working from home during the Covid-19 lockdowns, many buyers in England are still keen on moving to a bigger space, despite the knowledge that they will not meet the Stamp Duty Tax Holiday deadline on 30th June.

Approximately 1.3 million buyers have saved money and benefitted from the Stamp Duty Tax holidays across the country since they were announced in July 2020, according to the online property portal Rightmove.

The sharp rise in demand for property has helped drive up property prices, with the online property website reporting that the national average asking price of a home has increased by almost £16,000 since July 2020.

Rightmove discovered from some of their recent research, that amongst those buyers expecting to benefit from the Stamp Duty Tax holidays, only 4% would abandon their plans to purchase a property if they missed either the June or September deadline in England. A quarter of those – 25% – said that if the deadline was missed, they would instead try to renegotiate the price with the seller.

There is a large group of people however, still buying property knowing that they will almost certainly not meet today’s deadline of 30^th June. Particularly motivated by the necessity to work from home during the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, many buyers are now keen to move somewhere bigger that offers them more space to live, work and preferably with access to a garden or balcony/terrace.

Tim Bannister - Rightmove’s Director of Property Data said: “Over the past few months the race for space has overtaken the race to beat the stamp duty deadline, with buyer demand and deals being done at higher levels than 2019.

“Undoubtedly there are a group of buyers doing all they can to complete in time for Wednesday’s deadline and we hope they manage to make it through. It will be quite a chaotic day for removal firms with some buyers and sellers confirming last minute that they need to move.

“We haven’t yet seen any significant increase in properties falling through so it looks like most are going ahead regardless, though inevitably there will be some properties coming back onto the market later this week and next week if a buyer and seller are unable to agree new terms if the buyer misses out on the maximum stamp duty savings.

“Activity is still strong despite this first phase of the stamp duty holiday coming to an end in England, as prior to the extension being announced there was already a huge group of buyers deciding to move regardless of the stamp duty holiday.

“The high level of activity is despite the fact that buyers are now faced with prices almost £16,000 higher than July last year on average, with the number of sales agreed up across all regions this month so far compared to June 2019.”