Regular monthly Blackmore Vale property commentary column in the Blackmore Vale from Susie and Brad the North Dorset Team at Meyers
Well it’s official, the stamp duty holiday has been extended by our Chancellor; the rumours from both the press and industry that have been circulating for the past weeks have finally been clarified but what does this mean for the property industry? Is this just a ‘push-back’ of the cliff-edge ending feared by most? Will it buoy the industry up again and keep properties being listed for sale, or will this merely help those for whom the original end of March deadline had become an extremely stressful race to the finish line?
We find ourselves planning for the end of lockdown 3, with the housing market open, yet still hampered by factors out of our control. The stamp duty holiday to date, had clearly disproportionately buoyed the market, with many people bringing forward their plans to move home in order to make this saving. In so doing, it created an enormous strain on the ancillary services, the council, solicitors, planners and surveyors with the average time now taking for a house purchase to go from ‘under offer’ to ‘completed’, a whopping 134 days.
These unprecedented and unpredictable times continue with the now extended stamp duty holiday; Rishi Sunak providing this almost inevitable compromise enabling the huge backlog of properties currently under offer, to have their transactions cleared in time to make this crucial saving. Rumours had been circulating the industry for weeks attempting to quantify what if any, compromise would be reached and finally we have the answer, an extension of the SDH till end of June 2021.
To that end, and to quote our friends at Zoopla;
‘’There’s one thing we can’t get away from; the pandemic has unlocked a lot of new demand for homes; it has led to a ‘once in a lifetime re-evaluation of the home’ and it won’t stop there. With big life changes still inevitable this year, the factors behind buyer’s decision-making will get more and more complex’’.
How this manifests itself within our Dorset property market, only the coming weeks and months will reveal, with an almost inevitable further ‘race to the finish line’ later this year.
Here at Meyers our flexible business model has been able to ride the storm so far and will continue to do so as we enter the next phase in this unprecedented period for house selling and buying. For further information on how we work, please contact a member of your North Dorset team:
