Why now is the perfect time to sell your home

If you’re thinking of selling your home but worried you missed the (Stamp Duty) boat, then there’s good news. The housing market seems to be capable of standing on its own two feet. In fact, the withdrawal of government support may actually turn out to be a benefit. Here’s what you need to know.

Ending the Stamp Duty holiday benefits first-time buyers

First-time buyers already benefited from a substantial discount on Stamp Duty. This saving allowed them to increase their offers. Effectively, it helped to counterbalance the fact that onward movers typically benefitted from the equity in their home. When the Stamp Duty holiday was introduced, first-time buyers had to compete with onward movers on equal terms.

To make matters worse for them, investment buyers also benefited from the Stamp Duty holiday. They still had to pay the “second-home surcharge” but they still had the opportunity to make significant savings. What’s more, investment buyers were very likely to be interested in the same sorts of properties as first-time buyers.

If first-time buyers had a strong need or want to get on the housing ladder, they would just have had to put up with this. If they didn’t, however, then it made better sense to stay put and wait for the Stamp Duty holiday to end.

In July, the discount will be tapered off and in October it will end completely (barring a surprise extension). This means there’s a strong likelihood that first-time buyers will start returning to the market from about now. The summer period should therefore be fairly active. Autumn looks on track to be its usual strong moving season.

COVID19-related issues are easing

It’s really impossible to overstate the impact COVID19 has had on the housing market. The pandemic dragged on basically every aspect of home sales. It shut the offices of property professionals and made it difficult for people to gain access to houses either to view them or to assess them professionally (e.g. to value them).

Lockdowns made it hard to impossible for sellers to undertake any serious preparatory work before putting their homes on the market. They were limited to what they could do themselves often with what they had since home-goods retailers were overwhelmed with demand.

Buyers had to balance their desire to move with the knowledge that mortgages are long-term commitments. What’s more, even if buyers were prepared to commit, mortgage-lenders were not necessarily as confident. Buyers who could get financing often faced lengthy delays as lenders struggled to figure out a way to process applications with staff working remotely.

Thankfully, all this should be coming to an end soon. In fact, the COVID19 cloud may end up having a silver lining. In other words, businesses may take the lessons from the pandemic into the future to make themselves more efficient.

Brexit is becoming part of the new normal

It says a lot about COVID19 that it largely pushed Brexit out of the news, or at least off the front pages. Nobody will ever know if the scenes of chaos at the ports would have happened without COVID19. Nobody does know, exactly, what is going on with trade between the mainland UK and other parts of the world, including NI.

What is known, however, is that the UK has largely managed to keep going. In fact, the economy is recovering. On the one hand, you could say that, after the past year, the only way is up. On the other hand, you would still have to acknowledge that improvement is improvement.

You would also have to acknowledge that the UK does still have a lot of benefits as a place to do business. It not only has excellent infrastructure, but it also has a legal and financial system that allows for flexibility. This means that it can accommodate modern, disruptive companies like fintech’s. These could well be the engine of growth in a post-Brexit economy.