The Association of Mortgage Intermediaries’ (AMI) chief executive said the trade body raised concerns with the government about an impending stamp duty “cliff edge” if transactions fail to meet the end of March deadline.
He said: “The volumes of transactions we’re seeing flowing through might mean there will be issues with the ability of solicitors and conveyancers to complete all of those transactions by the end of March.
“We’ve made them aware of the issue and told them there will be ongoing discussions regarding the capacity of the market to complete these transactions in an appropriate way so consumers can appropriately benefit from the allowance that’s been given by the chancellor.”
Sinclair also said brokers should tell clients to be responsive to solicitor enquiries and advise sellers to have everything in place to avoid slowing the process down.
“Clearly there are some chains that are more complex than others and therefore making sure all the people in the chain are similarly minded to get things done in a speedy manner is key to all of this,” he added.
Sinclair said he hoped any transactions which did miss the deadline would not result in legal challenges for the broker community but said having discussions and thinking about it now could reduce the chances of that happening.
He added: “We’re still five months away from this point, so as long as we have good open dialogue and appropriate planning and good dialogue with government as well, we won’t have any issues.
“The reason I’m flagging this early is to allow proper debate and planning.”
