Selling your property

Selling your property

How will this affect my discount?

Once you have bought your property under the Right to Buy scheme, there are no restrictions on you if you sell your home to another buyer. But if the council received your right-to-buy application before 18 January 2005 and you sell within the first year, you have to pay back all the discount. If you sell within two years, you will have to pay back two-thirds of the discount and within the third year, one third. After three years you do not have to have to pay back any of the discount.

If we received your right-to-buy on or after 18 January 2005 and you sell your home within five years of buying it, you will have to pay back some or all of the discount. The amount of discount you have to pay back will be a percentage of your home’s market value when you sell it.

The legal process

If you want to sell your home, you must give us details of the solicitor who is acting on your behalf to sell the property. The solicitor will ask us for information about your service charge accounts. They may ask questions about the lease and will want to know if we are planning any major work. There is a charge for providing this information. You will have to pay this to your solicitor before we answer their questions about selling the property. Our current charge is £146.87 (including VAT).

We expect you to pay any bills for service charges, building insurance, ground rent and major works on or before the date you complete the sale of your property. If your solicitor fails to clear any of your debts, the buyer will be responsible for paying them.

After the date you sell the property, you will not be responsible for major work, ground rent, building insurance or service charges – your buyer will be. How you divide the charges and whether you keep a retention fee (usually £250) until you know the actual charges is a matter for you and your buyer to settle through your solicitors.

Once the sale is complete the buyer’s solicitor will send us a notice of transfer, which is a legal document that confirms the owner of the property has changed. We use this document to update our records.

Within four weeks of selling the property you or your solicitor must give us the name of the person you sold it to. If you do not do this, we will continue to charge you for services and any problems that may arise.