Prop­er­ty Law spe­cial­ists Jack­son Bar­rett & Gass have report­ed a sig­nif­i­cant uplift in files opened in the last 3 months, par­tial­ly attrib­ut­able to first time buyers.

Files opened in Feb­ru­ary 2012 was 44% high­er for files opened than Feb­ru­ary 2011.

Sean Bar­row, a local solic­i­tor for 33 years said ​“We have seen a con­tin­ued surge of first time buy­er instruc­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the last few weeks. There is def­i­nite­ly an aware­ness of meet­ing the impend­ing stamp duty hol­i­day deadline.”

A Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) hol­i­day for first time buy­ers will come to an end on 24th March 2012. The hol­i­day relates to the 1% brack­et, for prop­er­ties priced between £125,001 and £250,000. House pur­chas­es that take place after 24th March will be sub­ject to duty of 1% of the pur­chase price, on prop­er­ties priced with­in that brack­et, mean­ing a delay could set first time buy­ers up to £2,500 out of pocket.

How­ev­er, the uplift in files opened has also been appar­ent in the pri­or two months also. Jan­u­ary 2012 saw a 39% uplift in files opened than a year ago, and Decem­ber, tra­di­tion­al­ly a qui­eter month, was up 24% on 2010.

Sean said ​“The Decem­ber and Jan­u­ary fig­ures are per­haps more sig­nif­i­cant than Feb­ru­ary. Decem­ber and Jan­u­ary are nor­mal­ly at a com­plete oppo­site to each oth­er, but have instead remained steadi­ly busy.

There is cer­tain­ly evi­dence of pent up demand for prop­er­ty, cre­at­ed by a short­age of prop­er­ty avail­able on the open mar­ket, and I don’t think it is all attrib­uted to first time buyers.

Peo­ple from all age brack­ets seem to be tak­ing advan­tage of record low inter­est rates, despite the eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ty in Europe.”

So what now for the local prop­er­ty market?

“It is impor­tant to remem­ber that the under­ly­ing fac­tors that sup­port the prop­er­ty mar­ket remain: his­tor­i­cal­ly low inter­est rates and a pent-up demand for hous­es, unless incomes fall dra­mat­i­cal­ly, and/​or inter­est rates rise significantly.

The fact that peo­ple are still choos­ing to move despite the cur­rent finan­cial uncer­tain­ty, prob­a­bly points towards improv­ing con­sumer con­fi­dence, and there­fore an upwards move­ment in trans­ac­tion num­bers and prices.”

-ends-

For more infor­ma­tion about Res­i­den­tial Con­veyanc­ing please get in touch with Solic­i­tor, Eleanor Finni­gan, & Legal Exec­u­tive, Quentin Dodd, on 01625 523988 or mail@​JBGass.​com.