Legal way of getting around 3% stamp duty please

In the hunt for a new house but most of the ones we want are over the 3% stamp duty mark ie £250,000 we are scrapping the barrel for funds and around 8/9k in stamp duty its going to be painfull!Is it ok to ask the sellers to sell for £249,950 and give them the rest in cash!!!

Tell the seller that you will buy the house but only if they pay the stamp duty.

OR put in an offer 8/9k less than asking price to cover the stamp duty.

No one prices houses at £250k for precisely this reason (well no one with any sense anyway). There’s usually a big gap between £249,999 and say £265,000.

Similarly no one in their right mind would offer £251k as an asking price so if the house you see is priced at £255k, just offer £249,999.

What you can do is ask your mortgage provider to add it to the mortgage, IIRC.

As said above, offer under 250, if they want more then under 250 for the house and anything above 250 for fixtures and fittings – carpets, curtains etc

keep it above board and legal, the taxman will SCREW you if he thinks you’re doing cash in hand

mate of mine recently bought a house on the market at 275, he offered 250, the buyer said ok 250 for the tax plus the rest cash in hand. Mate declined, chap eventually sold it to him at 250

If you offered £249,950 for a house for sale at £250k, I very much doubt that the seller would say “no thanks me old china, I couldn’t take a quarter of a million pounds from you, you’re fifty quid short.”

If you offered £249,950 for a house for sale at £250k, I very much doubt that the seller would say “no thanks me old china, I couldn’t take a quarter of a million pounds from you, you’re fifty quid short.”

I think you missed the point slighty. The OP is talking a tax bill of 8/9k so that’s a price range of £266,666.66 to £300,000 considerably more than 250k.

You can buy the house and garage separately if they are seperate – but it’ll cost you a few k in legal fees. You can also buy the carpets/lights/fittings separately too, which is much easier.

If it was that easy to get round it I’m sure they would put a stop to it.

IIRC if it is only a couple of thou out you can offer that separately for fittings (fridge, washing machine etc) but as somebody has already pointed out nobody sells a house for £252,000.

I think you are going to have to bend over and take it like everybody else, including me.

how much over 250k?

My folks once paid ‘extra’ for the ‘contents’ of a house when they bought of a bloke who’d gone bankrupt. He’d built it for himself and all, I think they felt quite sorry for him and what it meant was that he lost a little bit less in terms of the bankrupcy process iirc. (he also fecked off to NZ after the sale 😆 ) The contents were kitchen units, washing machine and tumble drier, loads of well lush curtains etc. Stamp duty was neither here nor there for the purchase price in 1994 but i wonder if that is legal/do-able nowadays?

erm, house is on the market for £285k could afford 270k but not the extra 9k in SD not wanting to max everything we have a good deposit but not wanting to go over the 200k for a mortgage.
So will I end up in trouble if I offer £249,950 and 20K in cash.

Rich

3% – count yourself lucky, the Dutch equivalent is 6%.

All houses are sold here as €xxx,xxx K.K. where the 2 Ks stand for Kosten Koper – costs for the buyer – transfer tax, estate agents fees and the legal costs of the transfer. In all you need to add 10% to the cost of any place that you are buying.

Ask me how I know 🙁

So will I end up in trouble if I offer £249,950 and 20K in cash.

If caught, yes. As a solicitor, I would probably decline to act if I had to submit the SDLT form for that one.

The only legal way to dodge the 3% barrier is as above:-

i) Apportion a few thousand for fittings and fixtures (but it must be reasonable)
ii) Get the seller to pay the SDLT for you (although you will need to notify your lender of this, as it is an incentive to purchase, so they will take it into account in the loan to value calculations).

Buying the garage separately won’t work, as it would be a series of linked transactions.

So will I end up in trouble if I offer £249,950 and 20K in cash.

YES!!!
As HtS says, if it was that eay to get round it it would be stopped.

I still go with my first suggestion. Happenned to us on last house we sold. Buyer put a condition of purchase that we pay the stamp duty, so we countered it with a condition that they complete in 21 days so it can work both ways.

Just be straight and make a one-and-only offer for the amount you can afford with SD taken into consideration.

I get the impression the housing market is a bit slow up there (if you are still looking at Kendal), so you never know…

Let us know how it goes – would be handy to know when I come to buy there.

Legal way of getting around 3% stamp duty please

Pay less than £250k. That’s it I’m afraid. As for paying some in cash, well you are relying on your solicitor, the vendor, and their solicitor to commit fraud on your behalf. Why would anyone do that for stranger? Would you do that in their position? If you can’t afford to the price plus stamp duty then you can’t afford the house. Sorry to be blunt but that’s about it I’m afraid.

Buy a smaller house for you and another smaller one for the rest of your family 🙂

Is it no longer legal to just say you will do it but not actually do it and then become deputy chairman of the Conservative party to avoid tax anymore?
What is the world coming to

If it was that easy to get round it I’m sure they would put a stop to it.

It is that easy. I did it, entirely legally, on a house I bought last year. Google and you’ll find a lot of solicitors who’ll do it (but they’ll charge you 50% of the saving as a fee). Still worth doing though.

What gonefishin said.

Rent for 6 months. If you sell your current one have cash it puts you in a better position. You’ll probably save the amount you spend on rent and get a better idea of where you want to be (assuming the move to Lanc/Kendal is the reason)

Buy a cheaper house, sorry, no other legal way.

I think you missed the point slighty

I think you’re right.

How about this, then. If you can afford nearly three hundred grand for a house, perhaps you shouldn’t be complaining too loudly about eight grand? (-:

Less flippantly, if you can afford £270k, but can’t afford £278k, I’d respectfully suggest that you can’t -really- afford £270k and should perhaps set your sights a little lower?

(I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just a different world. I live in an East Lancs terrace, £300k is probably what this entire block is worth.)

Can you buy it as two £135k lots?

(I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just a different world. I live in an East Lancs terrace
Selling a 3 bed end terrace to buy a 3 bed end terrace with large plot and detached garage/workshop so I,m not willy waving just that other half has got her dream job(£$£$£$£$)in a really nice part of the country 😀 .and I want to do something else besides sticking really important mail through peoples door
Just begrudge paying an extra tax, 1% I can stomach just

I have a mate at work who gets hung up over the stamp duty threshold. Hence he has been struggling to move for years, every time it falls through he consoles himself by splashing some money on new double glazing/new car etc. He could have covered the stamp duty by now.

Just forget its a tax, its a cost of moving. If you are max’d out at £270k, offer £261, and just state your situation to the sellers.

We are in a mid-terrace, desperate to move somewhere with a bit more space and not be able to hear everything that the neighbours get up to, but as the house prices have been static over the last four years we haven’t built up any equity for the next deposit, so we are scratching about trying to save up.

I,m not willy waving

Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you were. Just, man, I wish I had the same problem.

You could just pay your fair share of tax.

Odd that it seems not to have occurred to you. Yet I presume your happy to spend my tax on sending your kids to school, driving to work on roads I pay to maintain, and rushing to the docs//hospital when you feel ill.

Pay your fair share, and if you can’t, dont move, rather than stiffing the rest of us.

if only the block it can’t be Burnley as that gets the whole Street 😆

Jujuuk68 – Member
You could just pay your fair share of tax.

Agreed.

Tax dodging union member, eh? (IIRC) Still going to bash a banker for their “legal way of getting around” their tax obligations?

Juu98 obviously not been around here long I will do anything to avoid paying full asking price 😉

Will I get the other 2% back when house prices crash in 6 months time!!
from the government?

Have you actually made a formal offer yet? As the house is on at 285k my first offer would be less than 250k anyway. It’s only just more than 10% under the asking price, which as an opening offer wouldnt be too far off the mark given the current market.

You could avoid Stamp Duty by marrying the current owner (man or woman either is possible nowadays) wait six months, divorce and take the property as your part of the divorce settlement.

those saying it just another 7000 or what ever are missing yet another point.

for a start its only an extra 5000 as rich will have to pay 2500 no matter what, but more to the point it will be 5000 off the deposit. So it will 5000 and 25 years of interest ayments. There is also the ossibility rich will not get such a low rate of interest for the mortgage.

Me and my wife were in the same position as mentioned there no choise but to offer less than 250000, in a falling market this might not be such a bad thing if you have time.

become an MP and add it onto your expenses. dont label it as ‘duck moat’ though.

I have a guaranteed method for avoiding stamp duty. I will need transfer £4000 for administrative purposes. Western Union only.

The only way I know to avoid stamp duty is to exploit the loophole regarding islamic mortgages.
There are UK firms offering this service.

The other would be to try and get the seller to throw in bits and pieces into the sale and list them as chattels.
ie carpets, curtains, light fittings, kitchen and bathroom fittings and contents of the garden.
But this way will only stretch so far.

Another way is if you swap property. The stamp duty is only on the higher priced property and both parties can adjust their prices accordingly but this looks like an unlikely scenario.

I agree with Cougar. If you are that close to your limit then you might need to think again. Interest rates will be going up, jobs aren’t that secure. IMHO the best deals are getting a house that should be 260k (or even more) for 250k because lots of people wont cross the threshold.

Pretty sure the Islamic mortgage loophole was closed a year or so ago, and HMRC are cracking down on the buy as a company, dissolve and transfer house as a distribution in specie one as well.

As said above, if the house is on at £285k then offer £249,999 or save up a bit more 😉

Another way is if you swap property.

NOpe, SDLT still due by both parties.