Can DH gift his half of our house to me?

[Amber321]

Hi
We are in the fortunate position of being able to let out our current house in order to buy another to live in. (We are re-mortgaging it heavily in order to do so) As I don’t work but DH is a higher tax payer, I was wondering if there is a way he could gift me his share (or a larger share) of the house in order to pay less tax on the income? If so, would I need to pay stamp duty? I did meet with a financial advisor who was pretty useless and couldn’t give me much information!
Thanks in advance!

Yes he could. No stamp duty. Is current ownership as joint tenants or tenants-in-common? Either way it just requires a deed to formally document a change the percentage share each of you has.

Do you mean the mortgaged property?

If you own it, I dont think the mortgage can be in his name

The mortgage company need to give permission. They are unlikely to allow it if it means your husband’s share is worth less than the mortgage.

It usually only works in cases of high equity/low mortgage.

You can struggle to do this if there's a mortgage, I've been enquiring (for different reasons) and my mortgage company will only let the house be transferred into my sole name if the mortgage value is less than 30% of the house value

If you both already own a property. Then buy another, you need to pay stamp duty.
Secondly, if you are buying a buy to let, this type of mortgage usually requires a higher deposit and higher interest.

Thanks everyone. The house is in both of our names as tenants in common. I think if we weren’t remortgaging it might have been possible to transfer DH’s half to me as it would be under the stamp duty threshold but as we are remortgaging to take out 75% equity out of the house then we would be liable to pay a hefty stamp duty payment.