Buy-to-let brings record receipts for April

April saw the highest level of stamp duty land tax (SDLT) recorded for a single month according to statistics released by HMRC. Nearly £1.2bn was raised from 173 430 property transactions in March.

Nimesh Shah partner at Blick Rothenberg said: ‘It was inevitable that April would be a bumper month for SDLT revenue as buy-to-let investors scrambled to beat the new additional 3% SDLT surcharge.’

In fact in April there was a drop of more than 100 000 residential property transactions (70 690) from March. This is the lowest number of residential property transactions since February 2013 and the lowest for any April since 2012.

Paul Haywood-Schiefer assistant manager said: ‘Following this major upheaval in the tax it will be interesting to see how property transactions and SDLT receipts fare over the next few months as the housing market relaxes itself.’

Mr...