Angela Rayner has had to resign after admitting she underpaid about £40,000 in Stamp Duty on an £800,000 apartment she bought in Hove, East Sussex.
She is said to have told tax authorities that her flat in Hove was her main place of residence. She took her name off the deeds of a property in her Greater Manchester constituency only weeks before purchasing the flat. The deed changes supposedly allowed her to pay £30,000 in Stamp Duty instead of £70,000, which would have been applied if the Hove property was her second home.
Ultimately, she had to resign after it became clear she had breached the ministerial code.
I am not going to excuse her because she was facing various personal complexities (although divorce is clearly a tricky time for anyone). But I am tempted to take a slightly more lenient view because I think this episode raises broader questions about tax complexity and the intricacies of the wider property market.
For most people, purchasing a property is the single biggest transaction of their lives. Yet in the UK, the system for doing so remains painfully archaic, riddled with delays, uncertainty and needless expense. Compared with other developed western countries, our conveyancing process, for example, feels like a relic of a slower, more bureaucratic age.
The first problem is speed – or rather, the lack of it. In the UK, it takes around five months, on average, from making an offer to completion, although the entire process, from working out what you can afford, finding a place to getting the keys, can typically take six to 12 months.
Chains of buyers and sellers often collapse because one weak link pulls out after months of waiting. Compare that to countries such as Denmark, where digital land registries and standardised contracts allow transactions to be completed in as little as two to four weeks. Germany, meanwhile, benefits from the involvement of notaries who act as neutral arbiters, ensuring contracts are watertight and binding from the moment of signing.
The process itself is also strikingly analogue. Much of UK conveyancing still involves posting documents, waiting for searches to come back from local councils, and manually checking title deeds. In Canada or the Netherlands, digitised systems allow title searches and land registry checks to be completed online within hours, not weeks.
No wonder the Open Property Data Association (OPDA) is trying to change the way people buy and sell houses by implementing open data standards and encouraging transparent data sharing across the property industry.
Then there is the issue of uncertainty. In Britain, until “exchange of contracts” happens – often weeks after an offer is accepted – either party can walk away without penalty. Gazumping and gazundering remain common frustrations. In France or Spain, once a buyer signs a preliminary contract, they usually pay a deposit of 5-10%. Pulling out without good reason means losing that money, so both parties are incentivised to see the deal through.
Costs are another sore point. British buyers pay solicitors for conveyancing, surveyors for inspections and often multiple rounds of fees if chains collapse (of course, one of the benefits of buyers paying for a survey is that the sunk cost helps lock them into the deal). In the US, while costs can also be high, competition among title companies and widespread use of title insurance streamline the process and provide certainty for lenders and buyers alike.
Calls for reform in Britain are not new. The Land Registry has made strides towards digitisation. But the pace of change is pretty glacial. For a nation that prides itself on being a global financial hub, the fact that buying a modest semi-detached house still involves navigating a Victorian paper trail is a bit embarrassing.
We are doing our part; the average time it takes HouzeCheck to get a report completed and delivered is between two and three days – not bad considering a building survey takes a day to complete. Recently, we completed a valuation on the same day it was ordered.
And that’s before we get to the tax code! Rayner’s downfall may have hinged on stamp duty, but the real lesson is how tangled and opaque the entire property system has become. If even a senior politician struggles to navigate the rules, what chance does the average buyer have? The overlap of outdated conveyancing, byzantine tax codes and endless paperwork makes missteps almost inevitable.
Richard Sexton is commercial director of HouzeCheck
