Council tax rebanding and inherited house

littlemoney

I am thinking of requesting a council tax rebanding as 2 years ago my neighbour got hers reduced from band E to band D, the same band as mine. Her house is the same age and size as mine except and she has a full width extension on the house plus a downstairs shower room where as mine is an unimproved house built in 1949. I don't even have a fitted kitchen.

The house was put in my name by my father (but can't remember when) so it was not part of his estate when he died in 1994 and it has never been sold. A similar property was sold near me in 2008 and using the nationwide site it values my house near the top end of band D.

As the property was never sold, only transferred, if I was successful and get a lower banding how far would any refund be backdated.

Unfortunately my house is now the only unimproved house of its type so I have nothing else to compared it against apart from my neighbour. Do I have a strong enough case to seek a rebanding or is my case not worth pursuing.

lincroft1710

littlemoney wrote: »

A similar property was sold near me in 2008 and using the nationwide site it values my house near the top end of band D.

Which suggests that Band D is correct,

roonaldo

the decor or internal state of your house is irrelevant in council tax banding. band D sounds correct if your neighbour's is that.

littlemoney

roonaldo wrote: »

the decor or internal state of your house is irrelevant in council tax banding. band D sounds correct if your neighbour's is that.

Is the size of the property relevant as my neughbours extension added approximatley one third to the original ground floor plan. The extension was in place at the time of the introction of council tax. My query is that the neighbours house was originally assessed as band F, one band higher than mine (band E) However two years ago her sons got the banding down graded to the same as mine. As her house has one third more area on the ground floor than mine would this be a basis to request a reassessment of mine?

Does anyone know what are the criteria for for the different bands?

lincroft1710

It is the area of the whole house which is used when making comparison. Band E values (in England) are between £88,000 and £120,000 as at 1 April 1991. So if you home was worth £89K in Apr 1991 and neighbour's £119k, then Band E is still correct.

When I worked for VOA, although we couldn't make allowances for poor repair, we did make allowances for lack of modernisation in relation to standards of 1991 and also poor layout, as these could both affect the sale price. So depending on actual 1991 sale prices, Band E may or may not be correct.

PasturesNew

As house prices have moved on, some areas really took off and you can see some quite bizarre bandings. e.g. two houses at £300k might have one as a Band B and one as a Band E, simply because of the way different areas rose/fell in desirability.