Frank O'Donnell

The stamp duty threshold was increased on 3 September 2008 to £175,000. This means that if you buy a property and the purchase price is £175,000 or less then you will not pay any stamp duty.

However, there are now only 42 working days until the threshold returns to £125,000. As it is estimated that the average Nationwide purchase application takes around 39 days* to complete you’ll need to get these applications in soon if you wish to take advantage of this discount.

With most purchase cases, the completion date is mostly out of your control but to have a mortgage offer in place as early as possible will give you the best possible opportunity of avoiding stamp duty.

The current £175,000 threshold will remain in place up to and including 31 December 2009. The threshold should then return to £125,000 unless the government extends the concession.

*Nationwide cannot guarantee to have cases completed within the 39 days as this figure is just an average. We will endeavour to do our best to help cases that are urgent