The nervous wait to exchange....

413x

413x

413x

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HangTime said:
Yeah it's difficult, we bought our house in 2008 (credit crunch) and that meant taking a loss on the house we were selling and a short term dip in the value of the new house (I never had it valued, but it's a reasonable assumption). It's risen in value since then though obviously.

The pandemic thing is interesting, I wrote on this forum over 14 months ago (https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/impact-of-wfh-trends-on-housing-market.18889738/) that I expected rising demand for bigger homes away from the traditional employment hubs and that seems to have materialised. Looking back now with prices rising over 10% a year and a stamp duty holiday I'm sort of kicking myself a bit that we didn't upsize. I have quite a bit of cash sitting around doing nothing, had I invested in property we'd be making money hand over fist and have a nicer house to boot. However, it would have been pretty ballsy, especially with uncertainty about jobs etc. As you say, there was quite a lot of intervention with furlough and the stamp duty changes that really propped things up.
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Went all in. All my savings (bar 2k) on first home. Was 260k maxed out mortgage but 85ltv. Wondering '**** is this a massive mistake?'

Fast forward and house is up 30k. Crazy. Disgusting really. I'd never have imagined this. In my head flat was my optimistic thought for a year.
And I genuinely think of natural causes played out flat would be kind of a best case.

But tories and house prices.. Didn't even think they'd prop it up like they did. I still think stamp duty break was a travesty for FTBs trying to get a house.
 

HangTime

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413x said:
I still think stamp duty break was a travesty for FTBs trying to get a house.
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I think it was completely unnecessary full stop and impacts not only FTB. Leaving aside the unwanted impact on house prices, it also reduces tax revenue at a time when the public debt is going through the roof.
It seemed like a surprisingly quick knee-jerk reaction before the impacts were fully understood. What made it worse was the extension in March adding another 3 months on against a backdrop of rising prices... bonkers.

The issue now for those of us who haven't moved house is we're sat there thinking we've missed the boat, so don't want to buy now paying an extra £15k stamp duty and maybe having a correction on the horizon as furlough is wound down.
 

Lonewolf

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Peerzy said:
I guess this probably indicates you are paying £15k too much? Have you pushed back to see if they'll accept less?

If you pull out the next buyers will have the same issue so meeting in the middle normally works out for everyone (assuming you can foot the extra in cash / equity).
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Tried meeting in the middle but the vendor purchased her next home based on our original offer so, was reluctant to lower the price. Paid £10,000 over in the end.
 

montymint

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koolpc said:
Madness
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Tell me about it, the first I heard was when my seller was threatening to pull out because of the lack of response at the bottom of the chain. I had to resell in 3 days to keep it going - lost 4k off asking. Now my new buyer nearly 8 weeks in is stuck on his 3rd WEEK of underwriting. He's got kids, 2 jobs (one self empl) and is the sole earner.

He's not strapped for cash (40+k deposit on a 126k house) but the underwriters are taking the **** atm, asking for more and more. They should have made an entire list of things they wanted and had at it. TSB are being really useless with him!
 

413x

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mikehhhhhhh said:
As a first time buyer in London, I was really grateful for the stamp duty break.

It saved me nearly £10k in SDLT allowing me to buy something like a year sooner than I otherwise would have.
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Definitely an outlier I guess. Most FTBs would not have benefited from the break outdoor London.
 

b0rn2sk8

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It only benefited those who had sales agreed before it kicked in.

Almost everyone else ended up paying more for the property because of price rises due to supply and demand, most people paid far more than that they saved in stamp duty.

I acquired my current house in 2019 and it’s up 10-15% based on asking prices for similar properties. The increase is multiple times what we would have saved in stamp duty plus all the compound interest on top via the mortgage.

Before the pandemic, back in 2019 the market was fairly flat and prices had risen slightly against the previous year due to Brexit uncertainty.
 
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mikehhhhhhh

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b0rn2sk8 said:
It only benefited those who had sales agreed before it kicked in.

Almost everyone else ended up paying more for the property because of price rises due to supply and demand, most people paid far more than that they saved in stamp duty.

I acquired my current house in 2019 and it’s up 10-15% based on asking prices for similar properties. The increase is multiple times what we would have saved in stamp duty plus all the compound interest on top via the mortgage.

Before the pandemic, back in 2019 the market was fairly flat and prices had risen slightly against the previous year due to Brexit uncertainty.
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Many will be grateful for that cost to be absorbed in the equity of the house and their mortgage over paying it in tax. Assuming prices don't plummet again.
 

b0rn2sk8

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mikehhhhhhh said:
Many will be grateful for that cost to be absorbed in the equity of the house and their mortgage over paying it in tax. Assuming prices don't plummet again.
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That’s sort of irrelevant because you could have always been able to do that via mortgage borrowing. If you can afford to pay the higher price due to stamp duty relief, under the pre-pandemic scenario, you could have afforded to borrow more to cover the stamp duty.

Not stoking the housing market would have just been cheaper because you are just spending less money period. It’s also a pretty regressive tax policy because it’s benefits those with higher incomes.

The increase in house price is also only ever relevant if you want to downsize to make future substantial borrowings against it.
 

413x

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b0rn2sk8 said:
That’s sort of irrelevant because you could have always been able to do that via mortgage borrowing. If you can afford to pay the higher price due to stamp duty relief, under the pre-pandemic scenario, you could have afforded to borrow more to cover the stamp duty.

Not stoking the housing market would have just been cheaper because you are just spending less money period. It’s also a pretty regressive tax policy because it’s benefits those with higher incomes.

The increase in house price is also only ever relevant if you want to downsize to make future substantial borrowings against it.
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Agreed. Without it the cost of houses would have not grown so no real net gain.
And even if you bypass that. Only people with secure incomes already able to buy could take advantage.

So anyone hit by the pandemic didn't really gain.
FTBs or anyone wanting to buy in next year, or anyone unable to due to job loss has just been hit hard. Now more homes that fell under the threshold will be elevated above it. So not only. Do you need to find more deposit because of rises. Might have to find even more for duty.

The divide is growing between have/have not.
 
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