Overnight, the cost of buying a second home or buy-to-let property shot up as the 3% Stamp Duty surcharge kicked in at midnight.

A number of deals failed to get under the wire, in some cases because of funds failing to arrive in time.

The real deadline for most was not in fact midnight but 4.30pm, when CHAPS closed.

One person posted on EYE yesterday afternoon: “Ten minutes to go before CHAPs closes & we will lose our purchase due to the raised stamp duty. Conveyancer has been brilliant, lender has been useless. Money still not in from them. Only writing this to stop me self-combusting.  Conveyancer, mortgage broker, us, vendor, estate agent all watching the clock go round in despair …”

Stephen Hayter, sales director of Britain’s biggest conveyancer My Home Move, last night said: “It has been a busy day – 15% busier than any other working day I have known.

“Everyone here has done everything that they possibly could have done, and I do not believe we have a single failed completion.

“Certainly, the number of completions on our hands was higher than we had forecast.”

He said that Chancellor George Osborne had not properly considered the timescale, with the deadline so soon after the Easter break, and many ‘ordinary’ home movers wanting to complete before last weekend.

Rob Hailstone, of Bold’s network of conveyancers, said late last night: “Many of my Bold Legal Group members had record numbers of completions and I know for a fact that the majority have been working from dusk till dawn over the last few weeks.

“If it could happen, it did happen.

“However, it disappoints me that so many estate agents think the majority of conveyancers don’t give a damn. It really is time we closed the gap between the two professions.

“By working together, transactions will proceed quicker and easier.”

At Countrywide, 141% more deals were completed yesterday than on March 31 last year, Henry Pryor tweeted this morning. He reported that the UK’s largest chain completed on £17bn worth of deals in the last two weeks, up 71% on the same period last year, with buyers saving up to £275m in SDLT.

Agents Douglas & Gordon meanwhile gave a graphic example of the overnight hike, citing a buy-to-let flat in outer London costing £650,000.

Yesterday, the purchaser would have paid £22,500 in Stamp Duty Land Tax, levied at 3.45%. The total cost of purchaser would have been £672,500.

Today that same flat will incur an extra £19,500 in SDLT, meaning the total cost to the purchaser is now £692,000 – £20,000 more than this time yesterday.

This is not the only financial pain that the purchaser will feel, as yields will also be affected.

Assuming annual rental income of £23,920, yesterday the landlord purchaser will have enjoyed a 3.56% yield on cost.

Today, that yield has slipped to 3.46%.

All over the country, buy-to-let purchasers who failed to make the deadline will be doing similar sums.

Meanwhile, there has been puzzlement over the latest official mortgage data for approvals, which does not seem to suggest a huge rush by buy-to-let borrowers since the 3% SDLT surcharge was announced.

The figures, however, do not include mortgage approvals to companies, and it is thought a number of buy-to-let investors have incorporated.

There were 73,871 mortgage approvals for house purchase in February, down from 74,085 in January.

The figure, reported by the Bank of England, compares with the average of 70,991 per month over the previous six months.