My Home Move say they completed a record 1,210 property transactions on the last day of March, thanks to the government’s decision to increase stamp duty on second homes by 3% from April. The total for 31st March represents a 40% jump on their previous record day from December. My Home Move say they managed to complete more transactions in one day than 93% of firms managed in the whole of 2015.The firm also managed 6,178 completions throughout March, 22% higher than their previous highest month, with the company managing 5,060 completions in October last year. Doug Crawford, CEO of My Home Move, said: “There was a great amount of dedication last Thursday and in the preceding days and weeks to help customers purchasing an additional property and win the race to save on a substantial additional stamp duty bill.
It was a frenetically busy day as chains across the country included second home and buy-to-let buyers who needed to compete before Friday 1st April. It was a great moment as the market came together and pulled out all the stops on what was one of the busiest days for the industry in history and a record-breaking day for My Home Move.”In the short term, we are likely to see re-negotiations for those who were not able to complete in time due to hiccups in the property chain and many will be going through this process now. We expect that the extra costs for those looking to buy additional properties will dampen some demand. A lot of purchases have been brought forward because of the tax change so this could lead to a quieter period over the next month or so.”
Many parts of the housing and house moving industry struggled to cope with people bringing forward investments or planned purchases in order to avoid paying more on stamp duty, coupled with he usual pre easter bank holiday peak. David Brown, CEO of estate agents Marsh & Parsons, said: “In only three days, we’ve exchanged more than two and a half times the number of properties we would during a typical full working week. That means from Tuesday through to Thursday, we’ve handled more than quadruple the number of daily exchanges wed usually expect.” The April 1st deadline has definitely driven this spike, and exchanges were happening right up to the wire last night. We had solicitors working until midnight yesterday to push paperwork through in time. But its also worth bearing in mind that we’ve just had two bank holidays so some buyers are simply making up for lost business time due to Good Friday and Easter Monday.”
Go Back