The Chancellor is reportedly preparing to extend the stamp duty holiday by three months.
According to The Times, Rishi Sunak is preparing to extend the deadline for the tax relief until the end of June in the upcoming Budget.
Since July 8 the residential stamp duty threshold has been raised from £125,000 to £500,000.
The reported postponement of the stamp duty holiday deadline, which currently stands at March 31, comes after calls for the tax relief to be extended.
This month MPs discussed a petition to extend the tax break that had garnered more than 130,000 signatures.
But David Westgate, group chief executive of Andrews Property Group, warned a three-month extension would create another “cliff edge scenario” further down the line.
He said: "We will have the same cliff edge scenario in three months with buyers desperately rushing to complete sales, but facing delays due to conveyancing issues.
"Conveyancers are already struggling to work their way through the growing pile of cases accumulating on their desks. Extending the deadline to the end of June will simply add a whole lot more cases to the bottom of the pile, and clog up the system.”
Westgate said a tapered end to the stamp duty holiday would be a “much better solution” to allow conveyancers the time to work their way through cases.
He continued: "By allowing transactions, where a mortgage offer has been granted before the end of March, to complete at their own pace, the cliff edge scenario could be avoided."
Yesterday (February 23) the Building Societies Association similarly called on the chancellor to taper the end of stamp duty holiday to allow those who are already in the process of buying a new home to benefit.
chloe.cheung@ft.com
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