More than 100,000 homebuyers are currently in limbo when it comes to completing their property purchase having had an offer accepted but not yet exchanged contracts.
And they only have until the 17th March to reach exchange of contracts or else miss the stamp duty deadline on 31st March when new stamp duty rules are introduced.
Those rules will see the nil-rate threshold for non-first-time homebuyers fall from its current level of £250,000 down to £125,000.
Analysis from Moverly shows that it takes an average of 14.5 days for a property purchase to move from exchange of contracts through to completion, which means that homebuyers must exchange contracts by 17th March at the very latest if they are to beat the 31st March deadline.
RACE TO EXHANGE
An analysis of current listings shows that there are almost 250,000 homes for sale whose value sits within the existing nil-rate threshold of £250,000.
Of these, 116,000 are Sold Subject to Contract (SSTC) and these buyers are, therefore, in the race to exchange contracts by the 17th March.
But it’s not only current buyers who risk being impacted by the upcoming SDLT deadline, future homebuyers are going to be severely affected as well.
In England, buyers currently have a pool of 131,000 available homes whose value falls within the current nil-threshold of £250,000. But when the threshold is reduced to £125,000 on 1st April, the number of duty-free homes will tumble by -76.1% to just 31,300.
Gemma Young, Chief Executive of Moverly, says: “Time is running out to beat the stamp duty deadline and buyers should now be pushing to exchange contracts by 17th March in order to give themselves a good chance of completing by the 31st.”
