Despite a significant fall in landlord stamp duty bills, there is little sign that the scheme swayed the minds of property investors, as newly released data from Hamptons show that the share of homes bought by landlords across Great Britain rose from 11% in the run-up to the stamp duty holiday to just 12% during it.
At their peak this year, investors purchased 14% of homes sold across Great Britain in February, the month before the original end of the stamp duty holiday. However, over the entire course of the 15-month tax break investors purchased 12% of homes sold in Great Britain. This is marginally up from an average of 11% during the 12 months before the holiday, but far from the 17% recorded in Q4 2015 – the run-up to the introduction of the 3% stamp duty surcharge on 1 April 2016.
This means there were a total of 215,000 investor purchases across Great Britain between July 2020 and September 2021. While this figure is up from 164,300 during the equivalent period in 2018 and 2019, more transactions have taken place by other buyer types. Both these numbers remain below the 242,400 purchases which were made during the 15-month run-up to the introduction of the 3% stamp duty surcharge on 1 April 2016.
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