John Jones, director and head of residential property at Liverpool and Wirral law firm Jackson Lees, expressed disappointment with the chancellor’s failure to reference stamp duty land tax first-time buyer relief in today’s Budget.
He said:
“Rachel Reeves has increased the SDLT surcharge on second-home buyers to five per cent, starting tomorrow, but failed to mention or deal with extending the current first-time buyer SDLT relief, which will revert to a lower threshold from April 2025, at which point duty is payable. This is a mistake. Today’s budget was a missed opportunity to help those struggling to get onto the property ladder.
“I would, at the very least, have liked to have seen some recognition by the chancellor of the importance that home ownership has on the wellbeing and life chances of most people in this country. Reverting in April 2025 to the pre-September 2022 threshold is simply going to make it more difficult for people to buy, add expense to the buying process and, for those of us in the older generation, it will result in the need to downsize becoming more expensive to do so.
“It is no surprise that there are calls for SDLT to be scrapped altogether. For conveyancers, the pressure from first-time buyers and others to complete transactions before the threshold reverts to the lower level in April 2025 will replay the nightmare that was the Covid SDLT holiday.”