SDLT Bonanza! Mortgage enquiries and property portal visits soar

Evidence is pouring in that the stamp duty holiday introduced 48 hours ago has already produced huge levels of interest from prospective buyers.

It’s now been revealed that OnTheMarket on Wednesday delivered a record number of leads to agents and developers. 

Sales leads were up 12 per cent on the previous Wednesday, and valuation leads increased by 19 per cent.

Rightmove has already said that even the anticipation of the stamp duty holiday triggered a surge in visits to its portal, while on Wednesday itself the first 30 minutes after Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s announcement saw a 22 per cent leap in visits.

Now it’s added to that with new figures saying that on Wednesday it enjoyed 8.5m visits - its biggest ever audience in one day. 

A spokeswoman for Rightmove says: “The number of people phoning and emailing estate agents about property for sale hit a new record on Wednesday, up one per cent on the previous record set on June 11 and up 93 per cent on the same day in 2019.

“Request from potential sellers to have their home valued hit a record high, up 35 per cent on the previous record set back on June 22 and up 89 per cent on the same day in 2019.”

Meanwhile Nationwide Building Society, the UK’s second largest mortgage provider, saw a rush to its online mortgage affordability tools.

One of them recorded a 49 per cent spike and another a 61 per cent surge in usage after Sunak’s announcement. And at 1pm on Wednesday - literally a few minutes after the SDLT holiday was confirmed as starting immediately - traffic to Nationwide’s mortgage site was 70 per cent higher than the previous week. 

Nationwide saw a further 70 per cent spike in traffic at around 7pm, as people finished work and had discussed the potential of a house move with family.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak confirmed in his summer statement that buyers will pay no tax on home purchases under £500,000 in England and Northern Ireland until March 31 next year.

This means almost nine in 10 buyers will pay no stamp duty at all on transactions and HM Treasury analysis suggests buyers will save £4,500 on the average property purchase.