RAISING the stamp duty exemption threshold to £175,000 is beginning to gee up the bottom end of the market, agreed Wycombe agents this week.

Sales manager Emma Smale at Hurst’s Crendon Street branch said on Wednesday her office had taken on two properties in the previous 24 hours – an immaculate two bedroomed flat with its own entrance above a SkyTV shop and a security alarm company in Widmer End, and a four bedroomed period semi in Green Street, High Wycombe within walking distance of the town’s new £300m Eden shopping complex.

The flat is brilliant. The house needs updating. Each is priced at £174,950 to avoid stamp duty.

Caroline Castle, branch manager of Connells, says taking more properties out of the tax band coupled with the agency’s autumn sale has brought more enquiries. “We’ve seen many more first-time buyers in the last fortnight. We have some really good buys at the moment,” Caroline reports.

Autumn bargains include a two bedroomed freehold house in Hennerton Way off Hicks Farm Rise which has just been reduced from £164,950 to £149,950, also a one bedroomed flat in Garratts Way, Downley Heights down from £134,995 to £119,995 and a fab one bed flat with a balcony in the Alexandra Park development opposite Wycombe Hospital which has been reduced for the sale from £159,950 to £139,950.

The lure of avoiding stamp duty attracts buyers at every price level.

Out in the country on the borders of Lane End and Bolter End, the owner of a 19th century country house on the books of Strutt & Parker at Princes Risborough is ready to pay the four per cent stamp duty for the purchaser.

His home, once owned by Benjamin Disraeli’s daughter, Sarah, seemingly has it all with six bedrooms, three bathrooms, three reception rooms, swimming pool, tennis court, three stables, paddocks and three and a quarter acres. The guide price is £1.45m. Even the scourge of stamp duty has been removed.

Stamp duty has always been resented by buyers as a sales tax that gives them nothing in return.

Nick Ingle, associate partner at Strutt & Parker’s Risborough office, says his client is hoping for a quick sale. “If you’ve seen a property you don’t want to lose or you need to move for whatever reason, it’s important for sellers in the present market to think outside the box,” advises the agent.