Mortgage industry urges longer stamp duty holiday

December 2, 2020 by Brendan O'Neill

Property Market

Major figures from within the property and mortgage industries are calling on the government to keep the raised stamp duty threshold in place for longer, after Rishi Sunak failed to announce this in his spending review.

The Chief of Strategy for Mortgage Brokerage at Habito, Martijn van der Heijden, told Mortgage Introducer that his company and a number of others had been urging the government to extend the current stamp duty measures in the run up to the spending review, and that they were very disappointed that it was not one of the steps announced by Sunak.

Van der Heijden went on to say that the individual circumstances of homebuyers and sellers were determining whether they were able to get deals over the line before the threshold is restored to its normal level.

With that in mind, van der Heijden stated that he is telling buyers who have an offer for a house accepted by the seller to hire a solicitor and contact a mortgage advisor to get the sale completed as quickly as possible, before adding:

“And, if you can, it would be prudent to set aside now your full stamp duty tax liability just in case you do end up completing your house purchase on or after 1 April 2021.”

It was not all bad news for the property market in the spending review, as an investment of £12 billion in the Affordable Homes Programme was announced.

It is certainly true that bringing in an advisor with CeMAP training can speed up buying a house.