Money Matters: Craig Poulter: Positive change for first time buyers

Brighton is known country wide as being one of the most attractive cities to live but that luxury comes with a price. It’s also known as being one of the most costly cities when getting on to the property ladder. So, many aspiring, soon to be first time buyers will have welcomed Philip Hammond’s budget last week with open arms.

In case you have been living under a rock since the budget was announced here’s the changes in a nutshell.

Stamp duty for first time buyers looking to buy up to £300,000 is scrapped. Saving up to £5,000.

For properties up to £500,000 no tax will be charged on the first £300,000 for first time buyers only.

As with many positive steps this benefit has been met with some cynicism. The OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility) has warned this could push house prices up as buyers could be seen as now having surplus funds available. Although this may cause a slight adjustment on prices it’s unlikely to cause a significant shift in prices.

“How long?”

It’s unlikely to cause a significant shift in prices

It’s no secret that the process for buying property in England in convoluted and particularly arduous but at the moment….. Wow! We are finding at Venture that even cases without extended chains are taking a particularly long time to complete. Getting a mortgage at the moment seems to be the easy bit, when was the last time we could day that? For a little while now Local Authority Searches are taking in the region of 6 weeks to come back. So, if you are in the process of moving here are a few tips:

• Return your paperwork to you solicitor asap, then check to make sure it has been received.
• Get your solicitor to apply for searches sooner rather than later.
• If your mortgage adviser needs extra payslips, bank statements etc get them over straight away.
• Be pleasantly persistent, follow up with a phone call and ask if there is anything you can do.

As always we’re here to help at Venture, if you have any mortgage related enquiries get in touch, we’d love to help.

Craig Poulter Certs CII (MP &ER)
www.venturemm.co.uk
01323 894532