Rebanding help please 23 May 2018 at 1:49PM in Reclaiming mortgage fees, council tax, etc 20 replies 3.6K views

princess23

Hi I am in the process of trying to challenge our C.T. band with our local authority. Moving into a new build in 2001 on a new estate that only included one other property identical to ours we were both given Band E by our local authority. After reading several feeds regarding new builds and challenging I was able to find out that the property like ours has been sold on two occasions dating back to 2006 and 2015. I used the Nationwide property sale indicator to give an idea of what the cost of the property would have reached in 1991 with both sale costs and set off to email the VOA with this information asking for my property to be reassessed with this information (which I believe should be a Band D). Today i received a quick response which I have copied and pasted I wonder if anyone could assist please.

Thank you for your email dated 21st May 2018 in respect of the above.



You have not provided enough evidence in your letter to me to undertake a review of your band. The information I need includes any of the following:



· Evidence of identical or very similar properties in your locality which are in a lower band – exact addresses and postcodes

· Sales evidence in your locality (within two years of the valuation date of 1st April 1991) which suggests your property might be incorrectly banded

· Evidence that an error was made when your property was banded





Reference to average house price indices is not sufficient evidence for me to raise a review.

House price indices cover wide geographic areas which have different property types. These indices only show general trends in house prices. A house price index is not an accurate indicator of value for a specific property and is of very little help in arriving at a Council Tax band.



I will investigate the band if you are able to provide more compelling evidence to suggest your property has been incorrectly banded.



For further information about Council Tax, please visit our website https://www.gov.uk or contact us on 03000 501501 where someone will be happy to assist you.

Please note I did provide the house number, street and post code of both properties to them.

CIS

You have hit the main hurdle where properties were built much later than 1991 - unless there are comparable properties which can go back closer to 1991 than when your house was built in 2011 then you're pretty stuck with finding a comparison that can be argued with.

Nationwide House Price indications are only that - they can support other evidence but by themselves they are not something the VOA will usually accept.

princess23

Thank you for your reply. I spoke to our local authority a few weeks ago and was told if I could find a property with the same square footage as my own within a two mile radius this would be looked into. I feel i have provided them with this information but they are moving the goal posts. Where can i find information regarding another property like ours that was sold in 1991 with similar size and square footage. I am confused as seem to have followed Martins advice on his video but am not getting anywhere can you help please?

CIS

princess23 wrote: »

Thank you for your reply. I spoke to our local authority a few weeks ago and was told if I could find a property with the same square footage as my own within a two mile radius this would be looked into. I feel i have provided them with this information but they are moving the goal posts. Where can i find information regarding another property like ours that was sold in 1991 with similar size and square footage. I am confused as seem to have followed Martins advice on his video but am not getting anywhere can you help please?

The local authority have no say in the matter, I presume you mean the VOA over floor size ?



A problem you have is that a similar sized property 2 miles down the road could be in different position when it comes value (think of London, for example, where 2 miles can take you from council house to million pound house in the same floor size). Floor size is great if you live in a street of the same types of house and you can show that 2 doors down is a different band but the same size, outside of that it becomes more of an issue.

princess23

So based on this how can i challenge our banding on a new property estate compared with older similar properties where would i look for this information to help ?

CIS

princess23 wrote: »

So based on this how can i challenge our banding on a new property estate compared with older similar properties

With difficulty would be my opinion.

where would i look for this information to help ?

Again, very difficult where there's no nearby property of a similar size and type. In some cases it's a case of doing the hard work and looking for other properties in the locale that are as close as possible in size/type and putting that data to the VOA but that is reliant on locating the data and the property existing. I've done work on gathering the data before for re-banding cases and it's not always as easy as some guides would suggest.

lincroft1710

Exactly what figures did the 2015 and 2006 sales suggest would be 1991 values?

princess23

Thank you for replying the figures based on the sold prices confirm the following £73,491-£74,908 which based on our local authority would be Band D

lincroft1710

princess23 wrote: »

Thank you for replying the figures based on the sold prices confirm the following £73,491-£74,908 which based on our local authority would be Band D

It would be Band D in any part of England if the figures are accurate. CIS has given the best advice in Post #6

princess23

Thankyou, but where would you suggest is the best place to obtain the information needed? sites etc to look on.

lincroft1710

You need to tour the area, select likely addresses and check the bands online