Buying the house we're renting

Faloola_Chong

Plus that £10k decrease in the mortgage decreases the repayment to well below what we're paying in rent, which is a nice bonus :j

Wobblydeb

Faloola_Chong wrote: »

Plus that £10k decrease in the mortgage decreases the repayment to well below what we're paying in rent, which is a nice bonus :j

It's nice to hear of a happy outcome!

Kastanie

Congrats on the house, Faloola, and thanks for your updates - very interesting.
We're in a similar position, LL is amenable to selling but neither side really knows where to start. I "accidentally" saw LL's remortgage quote and was horrified it was at least 30K more than what similar houses sell for in our street (and therefore 30K more than we'd pay). But if it were to be a private sale and doesn't get put on the market, I don't see we have any bargaining power? i.e. it won't sit on the market for months for him to realise the price is too high. I'm a bit confused as to how we'd come to a price on this one. Will take your lead and get our own mortgage quote.
Any hints from anyone with experience of buying from their LL would be greatly appreciated, especially if there's anything I should remember to factor in to price negotiations (such as no EA fees, no loss of rent for LL if we bought his house instead of another, etc)

Ulfar

Have you remembered to factor in service charges ?

AnnaV

It's a detached house, so unlikely to be any service charges

pmlindyloo

We bought our house from the landlord. He wasn't intending to put it on the market so it was rather a difficult negotiation!

Having looked at similar houses in the area we offered what we considered to be a fair price. He wouldn't accept it and said what he wanted. Eventually we met him half way. We did pay over the odds but were happy to do so knowing that we had been looking for some time and had found nothing which we liked as much as the one we were renting.

One thing the LL said was that he would have to pay the letting agent a percentage of the sold price (1% I think) so in effect he would be paying as if it were sold through an estate agant. I don't know if your house is managed by a letting agent but there may be something similar written into your LL's contract.

I also wondered (but didn't say anything) if the LL would have to pay Capital Gains Tax. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable might know about this.

Faloola_Chong

pmlindyloo wrote: »

One thing the LL said was that he would have to pay the letting agent a percentage of the sold price (1% I think) so in effect he would be paying as if it were sold through an estate agant. I don't know if your house is managed by a letting agent but there may be something similar written into your LL's contract.

Yes, I'm sure I've seen that mentioned in our tenancy agreement, but that's for the LL and the agent to argue about

I also wondered (but didn't say anything) if the LL would have to pay Capital Gains Tax. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable might know about this.

I think this may be part of the reason they are happy to sell, as I believe you don't have to pay CGT if you have been resident in the property within some recent period. Although I think they had let the property prior to me living here, from the amount of mail they get and the fact they set up a redirection I think it must have at least nominally been their official residence fairly recently...

Yorkie1

There will be no CGT if the property has been their principal private residence at any time in the 3 years preceding the sale.