Stamp duty calculator: Don’t try it if you just bought a house- you don’t want to know how much you missed out on saving
If you have just bought a house and are patting yourself on the back for getting in at the right time in an ever pricier market, the new stamp duty just rained on your parade.
Do you enjoy seeing your hard earned cash disappear before your very eyes? No? Then don’t try out HMRC’s Stamp Duty calculator to see the money you could have saved under the new pricing regime- it’s slightly depressing seeing how much you could have saved.
While lucky buyers in the future will make savings, anyone who recently completed their purchase of a property worth £501,000 is losing out the most, with a stamp duty saving of £4,990 now on offer.
Buyers paying just over the £250,000- and £500,000-mark are the ones missing out the most, as the savings come from the evening out of a previous “slab” system, whereby there was a large step from one charge to another at those particular price points.
Here’s how the savings look distributed across house prices (scroll over the price points if you really do want to see how much you could have saved.)
Of course, buyers who have missed out on making stamp duty savings are still lucky to be in a property market that has priced out many, particularly in London.
The changes to stamp duty may make it cheaper for people to get on to the property ladder by lowering the initial amount required to get a foothold, however the effect of this may be to push up prices of properties below the £935,700 threshold, according to the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR).
So, house prices are expected to rise by more than the saving made on stamp duty.
While that will make anyone calculating the stamp duty saving they could have made a little less depressed, the stamp duty savings could make it even more difficult for those hoping to gain a foothold in the future.