Certificate to sell RTB house

[Jayne35]

Can anyone help, our sale is being held up at the last minute because we haven't got a certificate from local council giving permission to sell? I have never heard of this (nor has my solicitor) and no one is in that dept at the council this week. Basically we have been there 8 years so nothing to pay back and we offered it back to the council in writing first (as per there terms), they declined and emailed to say that we could sell on the open market. No mention was ever made of a certificate!

Does anyone know what this is? Then maybe I can try to contact the correct person at the council.

Presumably you have engaged the services of a solicitor and an estate agent. What have they said, given they're charging you to guide you through the process?

We have yes, as we were at the point of exchange. Our solicitor has never heard of it (but spent all day trying to contact council), EA was out of office yesterday. I'm just panicking as it's been a long time with a chain of 5. The thing is, Buyers solicitor stated that if we had followed instructions on the emails we would have asked for the certificate that was mentioned, but it wasn't! Our solicitor obviously replied stating that she could see no reference to any certificate but Buyers one is online and takes ages to respond to anything.

I think it's to do with land registry, I know I should leave it to legals but I like to try and at least understand what it is we need to get.

I had assumed that, unless their are children of the relationship involved who need to be housed.

I mean, how could an ex-partner

Your buyer’s conveyancer is correct - if you sell a property within ten years of being granted RTB you have to offer it back to the council first and then they will issue a certificate confirming that you did so and they declined. There will be a restriction on your deeds and the Land Registry record stating this, so you can’t sell without the certificate.

There should be a designated council officer who deals with RTB. If they’re away, ask if you can speak to someone in the council’s legal team. Unfortunately, you won’t be exchanging until they produce this, so try and emphasise the urgency and explain that you offered first refusal but we’re not issued with a certificate and so the error is the council’s

Sorry, ignore the first two sentences, was responding to the wrong thread 🙂

Thank you for your comments, we had no idea about it and the council sent a big list of things I needed to include in my offer letter but they didn't mention a certificate unfortunately, or we would have requested one.

However, I managed to get hold of some one helpful this afternoon and she has now emailed the certificate to my solicitor. Amazing really as our council are slow on most things.

Anyway, hopefully we should be exchange soon.