4 May 2022
If you are covering the Quarterly Stamp Duty Land Tax statistics this morning, please see the following comment from Karen Noye, mortgage expert at Quilter:
"The 2% surcharge on the purchase of residential properties by non-residents up to the end of Q1 2022 has raked in £111m for government coffers on just 10,400 transactions. This will be welcome news for many and especially Londoners, given they have complained that parts of the capital were becoming ghost towns due to overseas buyers seeing prime real estate in the likes of Mayfair and Chelsea as an investment opportunity rather than as somewhere to live and this, for some, detracted from any residual sense of community in these areas.
"However, it is still yet to be seen whether the tax has had a big impact on demand as overseas buyers couldn’t get to the UK during the lockdowns. With the UK now free of any restrictions, overseas buyers may start to look at UK property again and feel that the 2% surcharge is a cost worth bearing especially in light of the recent rampant property prices.
"Zoopla estimates this morning that spiralling house prices during the pandemic have pushed 3.5 million homes in England and Northern Ireland into a higher stamp duty threshold, despite the stamp duty holidays during the past two years. However, increasing property prices may already be a thing of the past. Across the whole market, there has been a fall in transactions in the last three quarters and total SDLT receipts in Q1 2022 were 19% lower than in Q4 2021. The heat is finally coming out of the UK property market, and this may have an impact of house prices. With interest rates likely to go up tomorrow and lots of other factors squeezing people’s finances a gradual drop in house prices is highly likely."
