The wait is over. Today the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, finally announced his highly anticipated plans for stamp duty. It’s not going to be abolished as some people hoped.

Instead, stamp duty will be exempted on residential property purchases up to £175,000 where the transaction is completed between 3^rd September 2008 and 3^rd September 2009. After that it’s back to normal, unless the government decides to change the rules again.

Update: Temporary exemption on Stamp Duty Land Tax

How much will you have to pay the UK taxman?

When you purchase a house or a piece of land that you intend to build a house on you will have to pay stamp duty (Technically: stamp duty land tax or SDLT) on the purchase price. Only the purchaser of the house or land has to pay stamp duty, not the seller. However the seller may be liable for other taxes.

While stamp duty was originally a tax on the documents, SDLT is a tax on transactions and it is therefore more difficult to avoid paying.

Well, probably not

In a bid to restart the flagging UK housing market Alistair Darling, the chancellor, is considering abolishing stamp duty.

At least that's what a number of newspapers reported yesterday, The Sun broke the story.

Or as a cheaper alternative, for the government, he may allow people to defer paying stamp duty when they buy a house for a few years.

Building Plots, Without Planning Permission

Building plots come in different flavours, with the unconsented plot being the least popular and therefore cheapest. Essentially an unconsented plot is not strictly a building plot because it has no planning permission. Only if you can get permission does it actually become a building plot.

The benefit of an unconsented plot is...

Approved Documents

The Building Regulations: Approved Documents are a series of documents that lay down how a building can be constructed.

They cover everything from the bottom of the foundations to the top of roof, and for any given part of a building, one or more of the documents may apply.

Contrary to what some people believe, you do not actually have to follow the rules laid down in these documents. Their purpose is to provide a simplified set of “approved” methods of how to do things. If you stick to these approved methods, compliance with Building Regulations should be straight forward.