Council Tax Cost Cutting: reduce your band and grab any discounts Discussion Area
Comments
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Good Morning,
I am looking into council tax band for my parents. They bought their house in november 1988 for £44,000 which would suggest band C. However they are band D and whilst I know the house value would have increased in 2 and a a half years, I cant see how it would have increased to £68,000. The VOA wont accept this valuation as its just outside of the time frame of 2 years. I know they got the property valued around 1991 by the mortgage company to remortgage and was valued at £60,000 but I dont have any evidence of this. Do you think the mortgage company would still have information on this valuation after all this time? Would it show if I requested a SAR?
Thanks in advance0 -
Are there any of their neighbours in similar houses?0
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What if your house is a new build. Will we definitely have the correct band already? If not is it still possible to find out how much it would have been in 1991 even though all the houses in our street were only built last year?
Thanks !!!128591;!!!127996;0 -
You can provide actual sales data from 1991 to the VOA but if you have no appeal rights.....forget it. They are not interested in fulfilling their statutory duty.
They hide behind the 6 month rule.0 -
Having watched Martin talk about Council Tax, I looked into ours in a little more detail. Our house is in Band C which means it was supposedly valued over £52K in April 1991. Zoopla tells me that the house was sold for £38K in 1997 (although we paid £57K at the end of 1998 after a builder had renovated it), the adjoining semi was sold for £47K at around the same time.These figures strongly suggest to me that our property and next door should not have been placed in Band C. On our street there is a row of fairly comparable semi-detached houses that are mainly also in Band C although the adjacent semi-detached properyt, that is most similar to ours (style, size and garden), is in Band B. The other houses were (in 1991) slightly bigger or had substantially bigger gardens. It appears this is not enough to persuade the VOA to reband our property. They want me to come up with further evidence such as the sale price within two years of 1991 or comparable houses that are in a different band. Do I have a something that is worth fighting? We have lived at the address for 20 years so any rebanding would be quite valuable.The other thing I have struggled with is Zoopla is very useful for sale prices back to approx 1997 but is there anywhere where I can access them around 1991? The VOA directed me towards the Land Registry but you pay for every property you get details about and I do not know which houses were sold around 1991 so it is a bit of a needle in a haystack situation. Any advice wuld be welcome.0
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Having watched Martin talk about Council Tax, I looked into ours in a little more detail. Our house is in Band C which means it was supposedly valued over £52K in April 1991. Zoopla tells me that the house was sold for £38K in 1997 (although we paid £57K at the end of 1998 after a builder had renovated it), the adjoining semi was sold for £47K at around the same time.These figures strongly suggest to me that our property and next door should not have been placed in Band C. On our street there is a row of fairly comparable semi-detached houses that are mainly also in Band C although the adjacent semi-detached properyt, that is most similar to ours (style, size and garden), is in Band B. The other houses were (in 1991) slightly bigger or had substantially bigger gardens. It appears this is not enough to persuade the VOA to reband our property. They want me to come up with further evidence such as the sale price within two years of 1991 or comparable houses that are in a different band. Do I have a something that is worth fighting? We have lived at the address for 20 years so any rebanding would be quite valuable.The other thing I have struggled with is Zoopla is very useful for sale prices back to approx 1997 but is there anywhere where I can access them around 1991? The VOA directed me towards the Land Registry but you pay for every property you get details about and I do not know which houses were sold around 1991 so it is a bit of a needle in a haystack situation. Any advice wuld be welcome.
As you paid £57K in 1998 following renovations, this is a more reliable figure as it reflects your home's physical state at the date of last sale, which is what the band would be based on rather than its physical state at 1 April 1993, when CT was introduced.
There is nowhere to access prices from around 1991, they are not in the public domain.If you are querying your Council Tax band would you please state whether you are in England, Scotland or Wales0 -
I sent off a letter to VOA 3 weeks ago asking for a reassessment of my CT band and provided evidence as to why I thought it was wrong. I included a phone number and email address but have not had an acknowledgement of my letter. I wondered if that was normal and if I'll hear from them in due course once they've had a chance to look into my request. Does anyone know if they usually acknowledge receipt or just contact you when they've investigated? And do they usually write, phone or email? Thanks.0
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Hi I'm a little confused about this. I have checked the step one and all the houses in my block are band B. So i am not sure if this fails step 1. However when I have checked the valuation tool it indicates that the houses were in fact worth less than £32000 in 1991. This then passes step 2? Anybody able to clarify please0
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ELLEN_RALPH wrote: »Hi I'm a little confused about this. I have checked the step one and all the houses in my block are band B. So i am not sure if this fails step 1. However when I have checked the valuation tool it indicates that the houses were in fact worth less than £32000 in 1991. This then passes step 2? Anybody able to clarify please
You can still try but if the VOA look there's a good chance that their original banding decision is correct unless you believe all of the properties in the block are banded wrongly in the first place.I no longer work in Council Tax Recovery but instead work as a specialist Council Tax paralegal assisting landlords and Council Tax payers with council tax disputes and valuation tribunals. My views are my own reading of the law and you should always check with the local authority in question.0 -
ELLEN_RALPH wrote: »Hi I'm a little confused about this. I have checked the step one and all the houses in my block are band B. So i am not sure if this fails step 1. However when I have checked the valuation tool it indicates that the houses were in fact worth less than £32000 in 1991. This then passes step 2? Anybody able to clarify please
House price indices are inaccurate so possibility your band is correct.If you are querying your Council Tax band would you please state whether you are in England, Scotland or Wales0
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