Need to sell - propery has tenant

SDLT_Geek

theoretica said:

Also, if you buy a new main residence and then sell your old one you need to pay the extra stamp duty but can reclaim it if you sell within 3 years.  In this situation, even though this property is not a main residence would the same apply?  All the webpages I see say you need to sell your previous main residence for this to happen, but it seems worth investigating, and maybe this counts as it was a main residence many years ago.

There are conditions to be met if a later sale of a property is to give an entitlement to a refund of the 3% extra SDLT paid on the new home.  One condition is that the person lived in the sold property as their only or main residence at some point in the three years leading up to the completion of the purchase of the new home.

That condition would not be met for a later sale of the let property as it is over 3 years since OP lived in it.
 
But it could still be relevant if OP owns another property OP has lived in within the last three years.

canaldumidi

theoretica said:

Also, if you buy a new main residence and then sell your old one you need to pay the extra stamp duty but can reclaim it if you sell within 3 years.  In this situation, even though this property is not a main residence would the same apply?  All the webpages I see say you need to sell your previous main residence for this to happen, but it seems worth investigating, and maybe this counts as it was a main residence many years ago.

I suspect we're going off at a tangent as (in all likelihood) OP was renting 'the other side of the country' so the intricacies of SDLT reclamation are not relevant (yes, I know - it was me that raised this!).

But to answer your quesion, the OP's main residence has clearly been wherever he lived 'the other side of the country' for 10 years, so no, selling the first property that he let out would not meet the requirement to 'replace a main residence'.