A new petition calling for the stamp duty holiday to be triggered upon exchange of contracts has been launched today. 
The petition, which was started by an individual looking to take advantage of the current stamp duty holiday, is likely to prove popular with buyers and sellers, as well as agents, conveyancing solicitors, mortgage lenders and surveyors.
Delays are once again holding up homebuyers as a post-lockdown surge in demand places further pressure on conveyancing solicitors, mortgage lenders and surveyors to push through purchases.
Chris Holland, who contacted EYE this morning, said: “People are finding themselves becoming trapped in a scenario whereby house prices are much higher, and at the same time they will now miss out on the stamp duty holiday. People are being financially punished from both sides, this from a policy that was designed to do the exact opposite.
“Exchanging contracts is exactly what it says. A contract, a legally binding agreement, to purchase a house often with an immediate 10% deposit being paid. So why shouldn’t you benefit from the stamp duty holiday being triggered at that moment of exchanging contracts, rather than at the point of completion? This will allow in particularly new build buyers, with continuous building delays due to COVID-19, to benefit from this policy.
“If you can help in any way it will be greatly appreciated.”
Petitions posted on Westminster’s official petition.parliament.uk site are guaranteed a government response if they accrue more than 10,000 signatures.
If a petition gets more than 100,000 signatures on that site it will be considered for a debate in parliament.
You can add your signature to the petition here.
Comments (4)
Bottom line is many people have had a bonus.
Move on get it over and done with and get back to normal
Utter nonsense, Rob will tell you that a standard contract allows for 28 days between ex and comp but most buyers and sellers are unaware of this and agree what has become the norm of 14 days as this sits better with all concerned outside of seller/buyer after all we don’t want to wait 4/5 weeks for our fee but that is an aside, the utter nonsense is to do with asking for stamp duty holiday to go live on exchange, talking about grasping at straws and losing any last bit of credibility, I shall await some wag asking for the sdlt to kick in on acceptance of offer or even signing a sole agency agreement to actually market! Heavens when will it end! ****** jokers.
Not for those that have competent empathetic conveyancers.
I’ve seen plenty of clients with up to four weeks in-between. In fact we’ve clients in for 30th April who exchanged @2 weeks ago.
And unfortunately if course, like last week we had an older lady crying after her conveyancer told her on Tuesday she wanted to complete on Wednesday.
Given that there is no minimum or maximum period in-between the two then why not have the desire to exchange rapidly for a date say 1 month later?
Would be a wonderful way of spreading out the activity, reducing pressures and one important step to more sensible practices.
Isn’t the time between exchange and completion very short at the moment, if not often simultaneous?