Early indications of the pressures faced by conveyancers to complete property transactions before higher stamp duty land tax rates came into force are beginning to emerge.
Conveyancing service My Home Move announced today that it completed a record 1,210 property transactions on 31 March, the day before higher rates - a three percentage point rise - for additional properties came into effect.
My Home Move said it completed more cases on 31 March than 93% of conveyancing firms completed for the whole of 2015.
It also completed 6,178 mover transactions in March, a 22% increase from its previous monthly record of 5,060 transactions in October last year.
The residential property specialist said the result was a ‘record’ day and month for the business. It predicted that there was 'likely to have been a similar story across the industry’.
Chief executive Doug Crawford said: ‘It was a frenetically busy day as chains across the country included second home and buy-to-let buyers who needed to complete before Friday 1 April.
‘In the short term, we are likely to see renegotiations for those who were not able to complete in time due to hiccups in the property chain and many will be going through this process now. A lot of purchases have been brought forward because of the tax change so this could lead to a quieter period over the next month or so.’
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