Why stamp duty cut makes me furious

Stamp duty at 1 per cent? It might be good news for prospective buyers but it’s the unkindest cut for those who recently bought a house and paid the higher rate

IT WAS the only good news story to come out of the Budget, but it made me – and, I’m guessing, everyone else who bought property in the last few months – feel ill. It was the dramatic and unforeseen change to stamp duty, which means that properties valued at under €1 million will now carry a 1 per cent stamp duty fee instead of the long-standing previous 7 per cent.

There was a further change in the fee to properties over €1 millon, which now carry 2 per cent stamp duty instead of 9 per cent.

However, since I don’t have a single friend who has ever paid that much for a property, or who lives in a house valued over €1 million, all I can think is, if you deliberately choose to pay that much for a house, you can also afford to pay the fees on it.

For everyone else, there was no choice with stamp duty: you had to pay it.

I bought my first home in 2001, a one-bedroomed cottage with a yard that measured less than two square metres. At the time, it was what I could afford. It was a charming house, but at 35 square meters it was undeniably miniature, and was never going to be my home for life. It took me almost nine years to “trade up”. During these years, apart from my mortgage, I never occurred any debts or loans. I was prudent, frugal, and careful with my money.

Last year, my salary went down, in common with everyone I know. I continued to save, resenting enormously that a large chunk of what I was saving was going to be going towards paying a crazy amount of stamp duty.

Although house prices went down, as did people’s incomes, stamp duty did not. Budgets came and went and nothing changed. I started house-hunting in the spring, and for every house I saw, I did the maths and winced at the additional money I needed to pay the stamp duty.

In June of this year, I finally took my savings out of the bank and traded up. I paid €22,500 stamp duty on the house I bought, which was far from being in “walk-in” condition. I have yet to spent a single night there, as the process of what I initially thought was a fairly simple renovation is still going on.

Yesterday, I discovered that were I to buy that same house this month, my stamp duty fee would have dropped to €4,450. How did I feel? Frankly, I felt sick. Then I felt furious. Wouldn’t you?

In the greater scheme of things, I know this is positive news for many people, and criminally long overdue. I am certainly not mean enough to be wishing stamp duty had not dropped so drastically. As it happens, on Budget night I had dinner with friends who are currently in the process of buying a house, and who will thus benefit significantly from the drop.

But the fact is, right now I still feel stunned and ill at the fact I so recently paid out so much of my hard-earned money on stamp duty for a house I saved towards for nine years.

Right now, I don’t feel like being mollified or comforted by the many well-meaning comments I’ve been receiving in the last 24 hours along the lines of: forget about it, it’s in the past now; you have your health; you’re not living in a ghost estate; you’re not in negative equity; you have a job. All in, you’re very, very lucky.

I know I’m lucky. I’ve never taken these many privileges I have for granted.

And right now this is my reality, coming to terms with the unpalatable fact that six months ago, I paid out an additional €18,050 from my savings that I wouldn’t have to do today. Money that now seems to me to be absolutely wasted, dead, and irrecoverable.

So let me rant. Even if just for the remainder of this week, I want to be listened to, and acknowledged, not dismissed by people telling me that at least I have a job, and that everything could be so much worse.