Can We Swap Houses?

Boschfan

Hi all,

My query is can my partner and I swap houses? Background is we are not married, had lived in house 1 for 20+ years which is in partners sole name. 6 years ago I bought house 2 in my sole name which we’ve been living in for the past 2 years leaving house 1 empty. We live off partners pension which he pays tax on. What we are thinking is we swap houses and I will then be the sole owner of house 1 and will rent it out.
There are no mortgages on either property and are both of equal value.
Do we just need to fill out forms TR1, AP1 and ID1 to send to Land Registry?
Any help or advice will be greatly welcomed.

davidmcn

You also need to deal with SDLT / LTT - even if no cash is changing hands, your consideration for each acquisition is the value of the property you're giving in exchange.

Boschfan

Value of each house is approximately £95k. Would we not have to pay stamp duty?

davidmcn

Boschfan wrote: »

Value of each house is approximately £95k. Would we not have to pay stamp duty?

No, assuming none of you owns other properties - but you'll still need to submit returns.

Tom99

There may be some CGT calculation to do on both houses

G_M

Boschfan wrote: »

Do we[STRIKE] just[/STRIKE] need to fill out forms TR1, AP1 and ID1 to send to Land Registry?
.

That bit is correct. As pointed out

* SDLT may be due if either of you own another property
* a SDLT return will need sending to HMRC anyway
* CGT may be due

Not my business, but I do wonder why. Could your partner not just let his current property?

On letting, see

* New landlords: advice, information & links

* Letting agents: how should a landlord select or sack?

casper_g

G_M wrote: »

Not my business, but I do wonder why. Could your partner not just let his current property?

Presumably the point is to save income tax: OP and her OH live off OH's pension. He's a taxpayer, but presumably OP isn't so they want to make efficient use of her peraonal allowance.

Boschfan

Thanks for the replies. No neither of us owns any other properties and yes the idea was to use my tax allowance.
Not really understanding the CGT though, even after reading various threads and the answers given - it just seems to go straight over my head. So we should really work out how much CGT we may have to pay before swapping houses to see if it is actually worth doing?