Tweet
Hello, I am currently having my house transferred from joint names to my name, as part of my divorce. The property was bought by the previous owners under the right to buy scheme. They sold it to us last year once the five years in which they would have had to pay back the discount were up.
In order to transfer it to us they had to provide a certificate from the council to prove they had offered the house back to the council before selling it.
I'm using the bank's solicitor for the remortgage into my name and they are insistent I have to go through this process of getting the certificate from the council again. The council are basically not responding. However looking into this, it does seem as if transfer to one party already named on the deeds, and transfer between spouses are classed as exempted anyway.
The Housing Act however appears to list this as an exempted disposal, because (section 160). "it is a disposal of the whole of the dwelling-house and a further conveyance of the freehold or an assignment of the lease and the person or each of the persons to whom it is made is a qualifying person (as defined in subsection (2));"
Subsection 2 includes: "(a)he is the person, or one of the persons, by whom the disposal is made, (b)he is the spouse or a former spouse [F40, or the civil partner or a former civil partner,] of that person, or one of those persons," Under section 156a, "The covenant shall be to the effect that, until the end of the period of ten years beginning with the conveyance or grant, there will be no relevant disposal which is not an exempted disposal, unless the prescribed conditions have been satisfied in relation to that or a previous such disposal."
So my question is, do we need to be chasing the council at all, or can we just tell the land registry this is an exempted disposal?
In order to transfer it to us they had to provide a certificate from the council to prove they had offered the house back to the council before selling it.
I'm using the bank's solicitor for the remortgage into my name and they are insistent I have to go through this process of getting the certificate from the council again. The council are basically not responding. However looking into this, it does seem as if transfer to one party already named on the deeds, and transfer between spouses are classed as exempted anyway.
The Housing Act however appears to list this as an exempted disposal, because (section 160). "it is a disposal of the whole of the dwelling-house and a further conveyance of the freehold or an assignment of the lease and the person or each of the persons to whom it is made is a qualifying person (as defined in subsection (2));"
Subsection 2 includes: "(a)he is the person, or one of the persons, by whom the disposal is made, (b)he is the spouse or a former spouse [F40, or the civil partner or a former civil partner,] of that person, or one of those persons," Under section 156a, "The covenant shall be to the effect that, until the end of the period of ten years beginning with the conveyance or grant, there will be no relevant disposal which is not an exempted disposal, unless the prescribed conditions have been satisfied in relation to that or a previous such disposal."
So my question is, do we need to be chasing the council at all, or can we just tell the land registry this is an exempted disposal?
