Category: General

Often when a property is very expensive the property is held in a single asset company (this is Stamp Duty saving).

This means that the taxpayer misses out on a windfall of stamp duty from all the expensive properties sold.

Is this fair?

Some stamp duty avoidance schemes are doomed to fail and for less expensive properties take independent legal advice if you are offered a way of not paying it.

You can reduce the amount you pay by sticking under the limits. Up to £125,000 it’s zero percent, and for a limited time it’s zero for first time buyers up to £250k.

There’s an article about single asset property companies here on accounting web

Just reading this morning about two people asking whether to accept offers on their houses.

One was on for £535k and has an offer for £500k. They want to hold out for the extra but seem unaware of the extra stamp duty costs. I do feel the estate agent should have said to them that they shouldn’t expect over 500k because of the stamp duty increase. It increases from 3% to 4%!

Another person was asking about an offer of £300k on a property after 50 viewings over many months on at £335k. Again if it’s the only offer you’ve had and you want to move then you are going to have to consider taking it! Whilst there’s no stamp duty issue on this one it is really something to bear in mind that an offer is better than no offer amd refusing what is a small reduction in asking price is a big risk if you don’t have lots of other offers!

Disadvantaged areas – residential land or property SDLT rates and thresholds

Purchase price/lease premium or transfer value	SDLT rate	SDLT rate for first-time buyers
Up to £150,000	Zero	Zero
Over £150,000 to £250,000	1%	Zero
Over £250,000 to £500,000	3%	3%
Over £500,000 to £1 million	4%	4%
Over £1 million	5%	5%

More about stamp duty here

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Win a 1 night stay at the 5* Rotunda Apart hotel and tickets to Grand Designs lIve in Birmingham 2011 and a subscription to Grand Designs magazine

Grand Designs Live Birmingham is on 7-9th October 2011

You know the fine art of staging a property for the photos for the listing … well this is a new extreme version invoving two vases of flowers.

If you spot any examples of this then why not share them with us!

I’ve spotted a few oversize clocks recently in listings. Are huge clocks now the new twigs?

Why not share the ones you find! I bet if you hadn’t noticed them before I mentioned it, you will now!

If you watched Location Location Location this week you could be forgiven for thinking we were in the middle of a property boom again.
However we’re not. We’re at risk of entering a recession with growth teetering on the brink of collaspe.

Perhaps LLL has been told not to be negative about the housing market but I feel it gives a really false impression of how things are.
There are concerns that interest rates will rise. Worryingly people already seem to not be able to manage their debt even with the lowest interest rates for hundreds of years. That tells me one thin g – that there is too much debt!
To have a house buying program on TV not try and barter down the prices, or at least explain about how to find bargains in the current market was a suprise.

Maybe there’s a need for a new property program that shows you how to buy a repossession, where to find distressed sellers, and how to bag a real bargain through a normal estate agent.

You could explain how various online tools work. Things like property bee, property snake, and how to find out house prices of properties not listed in the usual places. Sometimes a little imformation would go a long way. Enabling people to know where to find out how much the house last sold for, what the neighbouring houses sold for recently, would enable someone to see the rather cheeky asking prices as something to ignore and offer lower on!

Watch the news when you’re looking at property prices – see how cheery that is. It’ll indicate how long term job prospects are going which is important if you’ve got a mortgage to pay. You should also take note of the up and coming area indicators like chain cafes opening, delis and posh shops. Are there any opening or are they closing? What’s the opposite of an up and coming area? It’s one in decline and it’s perfectly possible all the niceness that happened over the previous boom years could be undone.
As people cut back on their morning £3 cup of coffee perhaps they’ll eventually start thinking about how unaffordable a massive mortgage is too?

Mortgage comes first, owners warned

Thousands of homeowners are to be warned by taxpayer-owned banks to forget renewing their subscription to Sky TV or buying a new BlackBerry and instead focus on paying their mortgage.

More than 30,000 Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock customers will receive phone calls over the next few months from UK Asset Resolution (UKAR) warning them about the possibility of them losing their homes.

Read more here

This might come as a shock to some people who will feel their fancy phone and satelite tv subscription is a life essential.

Whilst this may sound very fair and sensible if you go bankrupt then you can often have these “luxury” items allowed in your permitted expenditure list.

We’re not the only site that points out odd houses…
This site has found a really creepy house full of dolls.

Oxford City Council is to become the first authority in the country to enforce a controversial new planning regime which will force landlords to seek planning permission if they intend letting a small property to sharers. It has warned that planning consents will be strictly rationed as it bids to control HMOs.

This is great news if they can stop areas declining because of huge number sof HMO. Whilst some people argue that students bring in money, they also bring in huge problems. Areas where they congregate in large numbers become known for noise nuisance, parking problems and excessive levels of crime including burglary.

It is interesting to note though that the government has changed the LHA allowance for people up to under 35 now so this might lead to more sharing.