Private Landlords and Property Developers

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Grinderman
Posts: 94
Joined: Sun Mar 08, 2015 2:44 pm

Any private landlords/property developers out there?

Have you been stung by George Osbourne's dreaded stamp duty (SDLT) surcharge on second properties?

Are you aware that you may be able to claim it back?

I don't mean by selling your main home, but by loopholes. Apologies if this is common knowledge and everyone is doing it, but I knew nothing about it.

I have a buy to let property portfolio. This is my exit strategy for when I can't/don't want to play on Betfair anymore. Probably a topic for another post. Anyway, I have paid the SDLT surcharge on 4 properties. Someone told me there was a way to get it back, so I investigated further. The 2 criteria that interested me (there are more) were if you can prove that the property wasn't fit for human habitation on completion and/or if you had purchased from the executors of a deceased's estate.

I had 2 properties that fell into both categories. One that I let out, the other I had renovated and flipped. I got a refund of 9 grand paid straight into my bank by HMRC. No email or letter from them, just the cash with interest. Apparently, they only write to you if your application fails, so I'm not entirely sure how it was successful.

I used a no win, no fee company who charged 20% plus VAT. I don't want this post to turn into an advert for them, so if anyone is interested, message me and I'll pass on the details.
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Euler
Posts: 24701
Joined: Wed Nov 10, 2010 1:39 pm
Location: Bet Angel HQ

When I bought my last house I got several letters quite quickly telling me that I was entitled to a refund. So I appointed one of them to claim it and got a tidy sum back.

There are some curious bits of legislation out there that can be quite useful, if you know the right people or they right people have the data!
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