End of 5 year deal with Council what next?

LoopyPrune

We bought our council house 5 years ago and the time frame they give us before we could sell etc without having to repay the discount is coming up in May. The mortgage is in joint names but the deeds are only in my girlfriends name as I hadnt lived in the property with her for 2 years previous this was the only way our mortgage advisor could get around the red tape. (Total risk that luckily paid off for me but I don't think I would recommend anybody do this) Anyhow you can imagine soon as 5 years and 1 day rolls in I need to make the deed change. Im with Preferred mortages so do they handle all this or do I need to goto a solicitor? I don't want Preffered to pull my pants down about the price so alittle heads up would ne nice

GMS

If you are on the mortgage you should be registered at the Land Registry as an owner (as far as I am aware). Have you checked the Land Registry?

Once the 5 years is up you can do what you like with the property without paying any penalty to the council.

Preferred are no longer trading and will have no interest in changing any official documents so you would need to look at this yourself.

opinions4u

How clean is your credit history these days?

If it's good, then look to remortgage and make all the changes that you want to make at the same time.

LoopyPrune

Well I did think about changing my mortgage as Im on a non-portable variable mortgage with Preferred which with the current climate is rather reasonable at around 3-4% but has been as high as 9% in the past. So ideally I think the time has come to look at a fixed rate for 2/3 years maybe. We did talk about moving to A&L after our initial 3 year deal was up but because Im deffo not on the deeds most lenders wanted to change it so we were both on, but this would have triggered the repayment of the discount as it would have looked like she was transferring equity to me (a phone call to the council confirmed this) So we put all plans on hold. Now as GMS says we can do what we want, so I may aswell go down that route rather then changing the deeds incurring costs then incurring further costs with a mortgage change later.

One further question is I can't seem to find the correct date when the 5 years is up. Will the council send us anything to confirm they have removed their charge on the property or?