Stamp duty holiday extended to September 2021

Following today’s Budget announcements, homebuyers are set to save up to £15,000 as the Chancellor extended the stamp duty holiday for a further six months.

The decision is partly designed to ease the current bottleneck of residential property sales which has been building up ahead of the original deadline of 31 March 2021.

The stamp duty holiday was originally introduced in July 2020 as part of a coronavirus stimulus package. The exemption means buyers do not pay stamp duty on the first £500,000 of a property’s value (increased from a previous threshold of £125,000).

Following today’s announcement, these terms will be extended until 30 June, after which time the threshold for paying the tax will be reduced to £250,000 until 30 September. The maximum stamp duty saving is currently £15,000 and this will reduce to £2,500 when the threshold is lowered to £250,000 from 30 June.

Today's announcement should secure those property deals which were previously at risk of collapsing because they were in danger of missing the original end of March deadline.

According to Zoopla, around 230,000 buyers were set to miss the original March 31 deadline but will now qualify for the exemption. However, Zoopla is also warning buyers, due to the backlog, anyone agreeing to buy a property from March onwards might still miss the June deadline.

For advice on buying or selling a property please contact our conveyancing experts in Halifax, Huddersfield or Brighouse.