House building giant Barratt is offering an incentive for potential purchasers of their new properties by offering to pay the stamp duty on properties up to a certain value. The government has already recently announced a temporary exemption in stamp duty, but this only applied to properties between the value of £125,000 and £175,000. No stamp duty is payable on properties up to £125,000 anyway.
Officials from Barratt have now stated that they will pay the 1% stamp duty on properties purchased between £175,000 and £250,000. They will also pay the higher level of 3% stamp duty on properties purchased for between £250,000 and £500,000. This could save some buyers up to £15,000 in stamp duty costs. The builder hopes that the incentive will help to breathe some life back into the homes and mortgage market having suffered losses of nearly 70%.
A spokesperson from the firm said that the housing market was experiencing huge problems, and that both prices and sales levels were falling rapidly. He said: ‘There is little prospect for any material improvement in trading conditions until mortgage loans and customer confidence return.’ The government’s recent suspension of stamp duty has been described as too little too late, although the government had hoped that it would boost housing sales figures and would help first time buyers to get onto the housing market.
It has also been pointed out that some first time buyers, such as those buying in the London area, will not benefit from the higher threshold for stamp duty exemption because the average property prices in this area are higher than the maximum £175,000 suspension limit.