Help needed re council tax rebanding

typical_blonde

Hi

As usual with me, nothing is simple!! Our property was previously offices and had stood empty for sever years when we purchased it in July 1996 at a cost of £68,000.

When we moved in, we had no kitchen, bathroom etc and "camped out" in it - renovating as we went. It is Grade 2 listed and so it has taken us a lot of time.

The house is unique in the area being detached, where most of the rest are either flats or terraced.

Our Band is E and we have paid that since 1996 - we now have 4 bedrooms (2 are ensuite), a family bathroom, kitchen etc.

I cannot work out if we are entitled to a refund as the property was not a house in 1991, and we only got the bathroom/bedroom situation fully sorted this year, so should we have been paying Band E for all these years.

Any help/comments would be appreciated.

adi_clarke85

Contact the valuation office as they should be able to work out what it would have been worth at 1 april 1991 and band it accordingly. My parents purchased a property in 1998 for about the same amount and it was a band c

lincroft1710

In your case the 1996 sale price is of little use as it reflects unwanted, disused offices which needed converting to residential and no doubt a great deal of money spending on them.

In my area property prices increased by about 25% between 1996 and 1998. Band E does not seem unreasonable for a 4 bed 3 bath det. Your home will have been compared with similar sized period houses in the area for CT purposes.

John_Pierpoint

As it is grade 2; did you manage to get the VAT back on the repairs/improvements.
It is almost certainly a band "E" now; so you have the difficulty of proving when it stopped being worth considerably less.

typical_blonde

Thanks to everyone for their help - I figured I wouldn't qualify, but it never hurts to check does it? Re the VAT, no we started collecting the receipts when we started to work, but as it was so long ago the ink has faded on the receipts - we were told you could only apply once and to collect everything together - so missed out on that one as well. Actually think I am a hopeless case as a money saver!