Were you a stamp duty winner or loser?

The stamp duty holiday on properties sold for between £125,000 and £175,000 comes to an end today.

In response, the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) has taken a look at which regions have benefitted most and least from the temporary concession. It has found that London and the South East are the relative losers, and the total cost of the concession will be much less than the Treasury originally estimated.

Those areas with generally lower house prices saw the greatest benefit. Last year, just before the threshold was raised, the Northern and Yorkshire & Humberside regions both had the greatest proportion of exempt transactions (purchases under £125,000), but in each of these regions this was still under half. A year later, with the higher threshold in place, over three quarters of transactions in the North are exempt from stamp duty.

But London saw much less benefit. Before the measure was introduced, only 2% of transactions were exempt. A year later, with the higher rate threshold in place, still only 17% of London borrowers escape paying. London accounts for 13% of house purchase transactions, but only 6% of borrowers helped by the stamp duty concession.

CML Senior Statistician James Tatch, who undertook the analysis, commented:

“We may see some surge in activity at the end of the year as borrowers rush to beat the deadline on the stamp duty concession before it ends. This may bring the total benefit to consumers (and cost to the Treasury) nearer the government’s original estimate, but there is no realistic chance of the government “spending its budget” on this by the end of the year.”

The CML continues to believe that fundamental reform of stamp duty is necessary, arguing that:

“It is a tax that discourages labour mobility, and its “slab” structure has the effect of causing transactions to “bunch” just under each of the tax thresholds.”