Stamp duty holiday boost for housing market

Henry Adams welcomes the announcement today from Chancellor Rishi Sunak that a stamp duty holiday is to be introduced with immediate effect until March next year. Sunak has lifted the threshold on stamp duty on the first £500,000 of all property sales. 

Gareth Overton, head of residential sales at Henry Adams, said:

“We’ve already seen a resurgence in activity since the lockdown was eased, with more properties coming on to the market and a sharp rise in demand, especially from people moving out from London to the country towns and villages. 

“This stamp duty holiday is very welcome and we expect it to maintain the bouyancy of the market throughout the summer and into next spring. 

"It’s certainly going to boost the confidence of buyers who will have more money in their pockets which in turn means for many sellers this is a good time to come to the market. Transactions can take some time to go through so it’s best not to hang around if you want to benefit from the stamp duty holiday, either as a buyer or a seller.”

The stamp duty holiday will benefit all buyers across all price ranges especially those buying homes priced under £500,000 as their main home, on which stamp duty no longer applies at all during the ‘holiday’ period.  

Henry Adams currently has 281 properties available within this price range to choose from. 

The average UK house price according to Land Registry in March was £232,000 on which the normal stamp duty would have been £2,140 and is now zero, and of course savings on properties above this level will be even higher. 

Stamp duty levels vary according whether you are a first time buyer, an investor, whether the property is residential or non-residential, freehold or leasehold. We have therefore provided a stamp duty calculator on the Henry Adams website to provide an instant calculation as a guide or you can use the HMRC calculator to work out how much you might have to pay on completion of your purchase.

Get in touch with any of our Henry Adams sales specialists across West Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire and we’ll provide you with a professional appraisal of your property and talk through how these stamp duty changes could affect your local marketplace.