Stamp Duty for residential property
The Law Society Conveyancing Committee has been requested to remind practitioners of the higher rate of stamp duty where a purchaser acquires ten or more residential properties in any 12-month period.
This 15% Stamp Duty rate is charged under Section 31E of the SDCA 1999 and applies to instruments executed on, or after, 2 October 2024.
It should be noted that there is a specific exclusion from the higher rate for the acquisition of residential units in an apartment block. Care should be taken in each case to review the statutory definition applied in determining whether a property is situated within an ‘apartment block’.
Practitioners are reminded that the 12-month ‘look back’ period is a rolling period so, as time elapses, residential units, depending on their date of acquisition, gradually cease to be aggregated with subsequent acquisitions.
It is therefore most important for a solicitor acting for a purchaser to remind a purchaser of this possible higher rate of stamp duty bearing in mind that a different solicitor may have acted in various purchases.
The Law Society Conveyancing Committee reminds solicitors that it is prudent to obtain a written record of their client’s instructions.
For convenience the revised precedent record sheet on stamp duty is available on the precedents page.