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

Zebedeee

I thought you might all like to know that it is now possible to get sales information/prices going back to 1995 online now. Previously, it has only been readily available back to 2000, but now www.ourproperty.co.uk has data going back to 1995.

Hopefully, these extra few years should make it easier for some people to find historic prices for their properties.

vivatifosi

Brilliant link Zebedeee, thanks!

It is interesting to hear from the VOA that they have not been able to give us such details on confidentiality grounds, yet now they are there on the internet for all to see. Its a great shame they don't go back to 1990 so we can get AVD comparisons. Hopefully that will be the next step. Then whether or not people had a valid right to tribunal, you'd be able to hand over pages of information and insist that your price is put right on the basis of "maintaining an accurate list".

Does anyone know who is behind this massive change in policy?

Edited to add: just read elsewhere that https://www.ourproperty.co.uk buys its data from the Land Registry. So I still don't see why when I was trying to get 1994 and 1995 house prices the VOA told me that they were confidential, and now they are there (well the 1995 ones anyway) for all to see.

Zebedeee

It was nigh on impossible to get pre-2000 data out of the Land Registry before. The reason they always gave (to me anyway) was that prior to 2000 the data wasn't collected. That reasoning seems to be falling apart rapidly. I wonder what else we have been fobbed-off with which will subsequently be shown to have been not 100% truthful?

lincroft1710

Before Land Registry became universal Stamps Office received details of all property sales and forwarded these to VOA. However property prices were private and disclosure was forbidden by law. Hence when CT came into being in 1993 VOA had to obtain permission from Parliament to divulge sales information which was not unconditional.

So if you make a valid appeal you should be given actual sales evidence to support the band whereas sales evidence will not be forthcoming in the case of an invalid appeal or an enquiy.

1995 house prices are still going to be of little use for CT purposes, as in general they're lower than those of 1991.

vivatifosi

Regarding prices being made available earlier, my issues are as follows:

My house was built mid-late 1994 and other houses on my estate were built in 1995. When I asked the VOA for comparisons they would not allow me comparisons to the whole estate because the data was confidential. Yet now I can get all of the prices for 1995 and this confidentiality issue has disappeared. Also bear in mind the VOA allowed me only six comparisons - even though I had a right to tribunal. If I look on the internet now, I can't get the house prices for 1994, but I can now get over 30 comparisons - which potentially may have helped my case further. Although Lincroft you are right that this doesn't give us AVD comparisons, there are a lot of us here who have made appeals because our houses were built after 1991 and before 2000.

However the key issue in my mind is that we were told that prior to 2000 house prices were not available due to confidentiality issues and a change in an act of Parliament. If it is no longer the case, then by default, the data from 1991 now belongs in the same category as that publicly available from 1995. Were I to be making an appeal now, I would be writing to the VOA asking for comparable prices on many more than 6 houses using FOI, and if I didn't get what I wanted I'd be reporting them to the Information Commissioner using the 1995 prices as a comparison and making the case that one government dept (the Land Registry) is already giving these prices and that confidentiality previously referred to all prices pre 2000.

Although I was lucky in that I had a right to tribunal, I think the people this could potentially impact most will be those with invalid claims. Until now, the VOA has held all of the cards in terms of information and has rarely given actual comparisons, but using the FOI as above plus the precedent set, how could the VOA turn down a request for information to 'ensure that the VOA is maintaining an accurate list'?

lincroft1710

vivatifosi - if VOA quotes 6 comparables, then you can ask for sales details of 6 other properties they have not quoted, if they quote 4, then you can ask for 4, if 14 you can ask for 14. However if they do not have details of any property you ask for, you are not allowed a substitute. This is part of law of CT appeals.

I don't know what legislation permitted the release of house prices back to 1995, if it specifically mentions 1995 then there is no right to information prior to this date. Certain government information is exempt from FOI, and although I can't remember why, no doubt the FOI website will explain more.

When I worked at VOA, one of my senior colleagues was of the opinion that provided the specific address was not quoted, one could say to a taxpayer "a house exactly like yours in neighbouring street sold for £100,000 in early 1991", which is what I often did. It did more good than harm as taxpayers would realise their band was correct. Unforunately the sheer volume of invalid appeals/enquiries during the past 2/3 years have meant VOA's resources stretched and they just send out stock "your band is correct" letters if the investigation so proves.

Zebedeee

lincroft1710 wrote: »

if VOA quotes 6 comparables, then you can ask for sales details of 6 other properties they have not quoted, if they quote 4, then you can ask for 4, if 14 you can ask for 14. However if they do not have details of any property you ask for, you are not allowed a substitute. This is part of law of CT appeals.

This means that the VOA always have the upper hand. You don't know which properties to request the details of when you are a novice (which all us council tax-payers are when we start to investigate our appeals) and you can end up requesting the details of properties which do nothing to support your case, simply because you are still groping in the dark! In no time at all I found that I had used up my options, whereas the VOA can, at their leisure, look through as many properties as they like to support them.

The whole system is weighted so heavily in favour of the VOA as to make it virtually impossible for your average Joe to stand a chance. That's without mentioning needing to be able to state your case before a tribunal like you had 20 years experience in an LA law court... Most people just don't have it in them to do that.

I'm not a bitter loser. I won my case, but I can see why so many don't, and its not due to the rightfulness of their case.

vivatifosi

Its interesting this, off the back of the 1995 list I've identified another street where I live where the bandings could be contested off the back off of our rebandings as the house types are virtually identical and prices lower than paid on the ones we won (the estate was built at roughly the same time and the houses are very similar). I'm a bit disappointed that the VOA hasn't already rebanded them in order to maintain an accurate list. Still, I suppose that there's nothing stopping me popping round for a coffee and a chat. I fancy another battle!

Zebedeee

Go for it vivatifosi! You know you want to!

vivatifosi

Oh I soooooo do!

And you know you can probably do the same where you live Zebedeee... fancy a bit of mutual trouble making??