Council Tax Cost Cutting: reduce your band and grab any discounts Discussion Area

vivatifosi

Hi Yaffle

Such adverts can and do help at tribunal as I've used them first hand. They ought to help as well with the VOA as they are first-hand evidence.

A bit of a long shot but worth looking out for: look out for houses that were marketed in your area as in 1991 and 1993 there is a chance that houses were put on the market but didn't sell and were withdrawn. I would still use these as evidence as they do give a market price, even if a sale didn't go through for some reason. I wouldn't go out of my way to look for them, but they are the sort of thing you may find by accident.

I find the whole desirability 10% thing funny and have the same thing where I live. We have an estate of identical houses in three roads, and for some bizarre reason the houses in one road either sell for less or take longer to sell than the other two. Yet there's no logic. We live in a funny old country... Don't worry about the 10% thing, if it is constant between 1991 and 1993 that the 10% higher applied, then you can still use this to show the house price change in the area.

stardelight

Hi,
As the title says, my local library does not archive property sales for the year of 1991!!!:rolleyes: I was really surprised, as i thought they would have them on microfilm somewhere.
So, can anyone direct me as to where else i can look in order to obtain this information.
I've even rang a couple of estate agents in the local area, and even they only go back 6 years.
Thankyou.

vivatifosi

Hi stardelight,

Give the British Library a call and find out what they have in their archives. Rather than traipsing up to London or to wherever their store is, they may be willing to deliver to your local library. I know that they keep extensive newspaper archives but I'm not sure where they cover. Worth a shot? Another alternative would be to ask your local newspaper if they have an archive and whether they would let you have a look.

Good luck!

ally67_2

hi the house were living in as tempery accomation is in band c council tax
but its got subsidence cracks in walls special tiles on roof , hubby thinks were in wrong banding ???

beingjdc

ally67 wrote: »

hi the house were living in as tempery accomation is in band c council tax
but its got subsidence cracks in walls special tiles on roof , hubby thinks were in wrong banding ???

By law the Valuation Office have to disregard this, the rule is that they value the house "on the assumption that it is in good repair", otherwise people would just run their houses down, get rebanded, then decorate.

Yaffle_II

stardelight wrote: »

Hi,
As the title says, my local library does not archive property sales for the year of 1991!!!:rolleyes: I was really surprised, as i thought they would have them on microfilm somewhere.
So, can anyone direct me as to where else i can look in order to obtain this information.
I've even rang a couple of estate agents in the local area, and even they only go back 6 years.
Thankyou.

Hi Stardelight,

Are you saying your local library doesn't have property sales archived or that they don't have any newspapers archived that contained property listings? I have just returned from my local archive (it used to be part of the main library but got too big and moved out - check to see if you have a seperate archive in your town) and have trawled through the local newspaper archives in 1991 and 1993. I knew that the newspaper had a weekly pull-out with adverts for properties (still does today) and I've found mine listed in 1993 at £36,500. We actually paid £35,500 as we didnt want some of the fixtures and fittings they were leaving and included in the price, so they knocked the price down and still left them! We also found a neighbours mid terrace listed a few weeks before at £35,000 too, although I'm disappointed I couldn't find any sales nearer April 1991. See if you can find out if any of your local papers had a pull-out or classifieds for houses on a certain day, I'm sure your library should have the newspapers archived for you to look at. If not try ringing the newspaper publishers themselves to see if they have an archive as Vivatifosi says. I did try a local estate agents as you have but their files only went back as far as 1996, I imagine this varies though. One word of warning - the listings were every Wednesday in my local paper and I had to keep fast forwarding the microfilm and now I have a headache and feel dizzy!

Good luck.

exvoperson

Yaffle_II wrote: »

Hi Stardelight,

Are you saying your local library doesn't have property sales archived or that they don't have any newspapers archived that contained property listings? I have just returned from my local archive (it used to be part of the main library but got too big and moved out - check to see if you have a seperate archive in your town) and have trawled through the local newspaper archives in 1991 and 1993. I knew that the newspaper had a weekly pull-out with adverts for properties (still does today) and I've found mine listed in 1993 at £36,500. We actually paid £35,500 as we didnt want some of the fixtures and fittings they were leaving and included in the price, so they knocked the price down and still left them! We also found a neighbours mid terrace listed a few weeks before at £35,000 too, although I'm disappointed I couldn't find any sales nearer April 1991. See if you can find out if any of your local papers had a pull-out or classifieds for houses on a certain day, I'm sure your library should have the newspapers archived for you to look at. If not try ringing the newspaper publishers themselves to see if they have an archive as Vivatifosi says. I did try a local estate agents as you have but their files only went back as far as 1996, I imagine this varies though. One word of warning - the listings were every Wednesday in my local paper and I had to keep fast forwarding the microfilm and now I have a headache and feel dizzy!

Good luck.

Dear Yaffle II

If you want some sales information from the VOA ask them to provide any sales and dates for the 30 properties you refer to between 1990 and 1992. Do not ask for the addresses as they will then not disclose any information. If the properties are all fairly identical, as you say, then not having the addresses will not be a problem. You can then adjust all the sales evidence to April 1991.

Also when making that request under the freedom of Information Act you could ask for the 'dwelling house codes' for the 30 properties. This is a code individual to every property and contains about 17 items of information such as Group (this is a class of property defined by the VOA but should be the same for all your houses) Age, Floor area, heating, no of rooms, no bedrooms, no bathrooms, parking, modernisation, conservatory, outbuildings and i think garden size. This information will then help you see why some are in band A and some B. Please let me know how you get on.
Regards ExVOperson

vivatifosi

Yaffle_II wrote: »

One word of warning - the listings were every Wednesday in my local paper and I had to keep fast forwarding the microfilm and now I have a headache and feel dizzy!

That's a very good point Yaffle II. I should deduct the price of my new prescription from the opticians from my council tax refund:rotfl:

Yaffle_II

exvoperson wrote: »

If you want some sales information from the VOA ask them to provide any sales and dates for the 30 properties you refer to between 1990 and 1992.

So they will provide me with this information by postcode?

exvoperson wrote: »

Also when making that request under the freedom of Information Act you could ask for the 'dwelling house codes' for the 30 properties.

Is this house code based in 1991 or is it regularly updated when people modernise/change their dwelling? I mention this only because we converted our loft in 2002 and maybe it will reflect that?

I was quite pleased that one of the houses similar to ours in 1993 (when we moved in) was originally banded a B but was then re-banded to an A (effective date 1/4/93) and would have thought it would carry some weight to our argument?

Anyway, thanks for the valuable info and we will try to put it all into action!

Regards, Yaffle

Zebedeee

exvoperson wrote: »

If you want some sales information from the VOA ask them to provide any sales and dates for the 30 properties you refer to...

I'd be interested to see how you get on with that. My VOA refused to hand over any information beyond 10 properties, and as they have information on ALL properties, we can see who that favours!