Property sales soar as stamp duty holiday closes

Ten times more homes sold than usual on the final day of the stamp duty holiday. Almost 36,000 property sales were sealed on June 30 as lawyers rushed to push through deals before the maximum stamp duty saving fell from £15,000 to £2,500 in England and Northern Ireland, according to data from TwentyCi. Helen Hutchison, a partner at the law company Irwin Mitchell, said: "It has been the busiest I have ever known it. We had people exchanging and completing on the same day to make it." Across the UK, 1.1m properties were sold during the tax holidays. There were 78,022 home sales completed in the last week of the stamp duty holiday in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This compared with an average of 19,000 sales a week in a typical year. Just over 124,000 people who had agreed a sale before April 1 and so had a realistic chance of making the deadline missed it. 

The Times (06/07/2021)