Taylor Scott International News
Stamp duty changes have resulted in UK home movers seeing average saving of £5,000 since 2010 but fewer people are moving home, new research has found. The number of people moving house in 2005 stood at 365,000, slightly behind the 366,400 who moved in 2014, according to the latest Lloyds Bank Home Mover Review report. Whilst the 2015 levels are 16% higher than the 2009 market low of 315,800, they are just half of the 2006 peak level of 712,000, the data also shows. Over the past five years the average price paid by home movers has grown by 30% from £210,252 in 2010, to £273,491 in 2015, an increase of £63,239, equivalent to a monthly increase of £1,054. This was a marginally faster rise than the increase in average house prices across the whole market which was 29%. The average deposit put down by a home mover has increased by 22% in the past five years, from £74,649 in 2010 to £91,020 in 2015, equivalent to 33% of the average price paid by home movers. London continues to see stronger growth than the rest of the UK, as average prices paid by home movers in the capital have increased by 51% to £515,004 in the past five years. London home movers have also put down the largest average deposits at £183,353, which is 36% of the average property value. At the other end of the scale, Northern Ireland saw the average price paid by a home mover drop 4% to £157,368, and also the smallest average deposit of £43,380. Stamp duty changes, introduced in December 2014, provided home movers across the UK with a boost by providing buyers with an average saving £4,530 on purchases. The largest savings last year were made by home movers in East Anglia, where someone buying at the average price of £255,028 paid £2,751 in stamp duty fees compared to £7,650 before the change, a difference of £4,899. Buyers in three other regions also made substantial savings of over £2,500. In London the saving was £4,850, in the South West it was £4,654 and in the South East it was £2,767. ‘The 2015 stamp duty changes, low mortgage rates and rising real pay growth, provided more favourable conditions for home movers in 2015, although that hasn’t translated to any increase in numbers,’ said Andrew Mason, Lloyds Bank mortgages director. ‘2015 brought good news to home movers. We might have expected the change to the stamp duty structure to have resulted in a greater numbers. The ongoing increase in house prices throughout the year will have been especially welcomed by those who bought at the peak of house prices, who have been looking to rebuild their equity in order to make their next move,’ he added. The Lloyds Bank Home Mover Review tracks conditions for those who already own a home and is based on data from the Lloyds Banking Group house price database, the Council of Mortgage Lenders,… Taylor Scott International
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