Rishi Sunak delivered his budget speech today in the Houses of Parliament
In the budget today (3rd March 2021), Rishi Sunak announced that the stamp duty holiday that was previously going to run until 31st March 2021, has been extended until 30th June 2021.
This extension was anticipated by the press and industry alike, as there has been a lot of action in the housing market to take advantage of the stamp duty holiday.
The stamp duty holiday had led to a busy period for conveyancers and estate agents and meant that it was likely that quite a few people would miss the deadline of the 31st March due to a bottleneck in the transactions.
Many people decided that this was an opportunity to move house and save some money – although it did seem that house prices rose because of the stamp duty holiday and so any saving may be difficult to gauge.
The stamp duty holiday, that was introduced in July last year, meant that there was a nil rate band for transactions up to £500,000 (above that amount normal rates applied for the excess above that level).
The Chancellor also announced that once the nil rate band for £500,000 was over in June, there would be a tapered approach to reverting to the previous amount of £125,000. This means that there will be a nil rate band up to £250,000 of the purchase price until the end of September (so for 3 months) and then on 1st October the rates would revert to normal, where only the first £125,000 of a purchase is tax free.
The £500,000 nil rate band potentially saves house buyers up to £15,000 which is the amount that would normally be charged on the purchase of a property worth £500,000. Obviously the saving is less if the purchase price is less than £500,000.
If you want to find out how much stamp duty that you will need to pay (with or without the stamp duty holiday) then you can check out our page with our stamp duty calculators.