Stamp Duty Land Tax Deadline
For those currently in the process of trying to buy or sell a property, they will be well aware of the extension to the Stamp Duty Land Tax scheme ends on the 30th June 2021. As we all know, this was a scheme put in place by the Government to assist with house buying during the pandemic. After the 30th June, up until 30th September 2021 the nil rate band will be £250,000 and thereafter it will return to the standard amount of £125,000 on 1 October 2021.
The uptake of this scheme has been huge which has been fantastic for the economy: It is not surprising that purchasers have been desperate for their transactions to be completed in time for this, given the savings that can be made. However as there is a deadline it comes with insurmountable pressure on everyone – not only the people in the transaction, but the Lawyers, agents and Surveyors who are all working to ensure these go through in time.
It was hoped that, when the last deadline was reaching the end, as lockdown was in force again, that the Chancellor would notice how much pressure this had placed on the different businesses and provide a reasonable solution such as confirming that any properties that had at least exchanged by a particular date would be able to have the benefit. Instead, the deadline was merely extended which as a direct result meant that more people bought houses and therefore more work and more pressure on everyone involved.
Sadly this has caused a huge amount of strain on all of the Property team, many of whom have been working on hundreds of transactions each – working late into the night and through weekends to ensure the deals are being done. But each and everyone of them has had one thing on their mind, to provide their clients with the high quality service that we are proud of, and nothing has stopped them doing this.
With such a looming deadline and a boom in the property market, our Property team are going above and beyond for all of our clients. They want them to achieve their dream as much as they do and all of us at Bennett Griffin will do what we can to ensure that it happens. We are all counting the days until the deadline has passed and all of the Property team will be raising a glass (or 3) to all of our clients that we have helped through this crazy period.