by Gary Webber
26. September 2009 16:24
Chancellor's temporary raising of Stamp Duty threshold has helped 112,000 homebuyers
Halifax, the UK's biggest mortgage lender and part of the Lloyds Banking Group, has released research figures showing that 31% of homebuyers have been able to duck under the Stamp Duty threshold in the ten months between September 2008 and June 2009.
The figure represents 112,000 homebuyers who were buying houses priced between £125,000 (the normal threshold) and £175,000 (the current threshold, temporarily increased to ease up pressures on the housing market).
For first time buyers (the group clearly intended to benefit most from the temporary measure), pushing the threshold up to £175,000 has had the most pronounced impact outside the south-east. Consider that in Greater London only 34% of first time buyer purchases came in under the threshold, whereas in all the other regions combined the figure was 63%.
All this is great news for the market, but it does make us pause to think how it will be received by buyers if (or when) the threshold comes back down again.
What's more, it makes us ask two questions about Stamp Duty in the first place:
- Should this tax (and it is a tax) apply to first time buyers at all?
- Should Stamp Duty thresholds really be calculated on as raw a measure as the purchase price, since prices vary so widely between regions?
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