Band F Revaluation Mansion Tax

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My property is Band F. I only bought it two years ago for £260,000 and I did challenge the council tax band after I moved in. I sent comparables to the valuation office but they fobbed me off. Essentially it seemed they would only uphold a challenge if the exact same style house on the exact same road had a higher band. There is nothing exactly the same as my house in the immediate vicinity.

I understand that the Mansion Tax will require a revaluation of properties in Band F upwards. My house will therefore be revalued as part of this process and would obviously not have increased in value to £2M in two years. Current value would be in the region of £275,000 - £300,000 tops I would guess. The house has not been extended and there's no improvement indicator recorded.

If the government revaluation agrees with this low valuation, would this not be enough evidence to re-band the property to a lower band? To go further, wouldn't this official revaluation result in an automatic rebanding? Essentially replacing/updating the 1991 value.

I think the whole lot needs revaluing, I'm in a 2bed flat that's in band F (value also £275-300k) while 4 bed family houses worth twice as much locally are in lower bands! Mine was built after the last valuation and I'm convinced they were banded based on the sale value at the time rather than back-dating it. All newer builds in this area are in disproportionately high bands compared to older properties.

I thought the revaluation was being done by the local councils and funded by the government ?

If it isn't then there is the potential to have disconnect between what the government thinks and the local council thinks. It will also be the case that the government probably has no body of people responsible for this sort of stuff. So they would have to recruit one, in addition to all the bodies that councils currently have for revaluation and assigning new houses. Which would make no sense in terms of efficiency and having to accommodate local variation.

When you say "fobbed me off" what do you actually mean ? That this was the formal conclusion to your challenge or you decided not to go forward with a challenge based on this advisory ?

We are all E's and F's on my road and the difference between the houses is now marginal. Many of the E's were bungalows, which have been massively extended up and sideways. If they did a rebanding I have no doubt they would all go up a band.

However, this is then unfair that all the F's get revalued, but the E's don't, when they are the same value. What happens then??

You can't possibly compare like with like, when every house is different though. In our village we have multi million Edwardian mansions, alongside Tudor cottages, and Victorian farm workers cottages. Lots of bungalows, many now extended. Most aren't sold until someone dies off. It's going to be a mess.

I was wondering the same thing but I suspect they will just check all the properties in those bands and put some sort of tag to show the price of those over 2 million rather that actually change the bands of houses.

HMRC incentive is to re evaluate the bands upwards, not downwards. Good luck.

Mansion tax is for property over £2 million.

I doubt you will get your banding lowered as a result of this process. It will only be in favour of HMRC not the other way round.
I am band G having bought our house in london 25 years ago, so I’m pretty nervous.

I challenged my Band F with the valuation agency, but they said that, in their opinion, the banding was correct.

They said:
The band shown in my ‘Decision Notice’ (Band F) indicates that, in my opinion, the value of your property in April 1991, the date of valuation for all council tax bandings, would reasonably have been between £120,001 and £160,000. To help you understand my decision, I have provided some further information, which in my opinion supports my decision.

I sent them similar properties in a lower band. To which they said:

In your proposal you mentioned a number of properties that you feel are similar to your own but in lower bands. OTHER HOUSE is a detached house that is smaller than your own property. It would not be considered comparable to your property as it is in another village. Values can vary from village to village so properties within MY VILLAG£ are the best comparables.

They justified their answer with 1990-ish sale and banding comparables, which where also outside of my village. There were no sales in my village in the 1991 period so they looked further, even though they said location mattered so much. This was just one example and they seemed to validate every decision based on size, location, or detached when it suited their argument and ignored it when it supported my argument.

I do, unfortunately agree but i think this is a very cynical example of the government going after those with the broadest shoulders, whilst ignoring any clear irregularities that go against that narrative.

To my mind, an official government revaluation of your property should cut both ways. They can't just override the 1991 value and increase council tax if you're found to be living in a house that is now too valuable for its original Band F, whilst at the same time pushing back on any rebranding challenges for properties that are now lower in value than would be expected for Band F.

Whilst i'm not going to be hit with the Mansion Tax, by their own decision I am now a candidate for revaluation.

They can't just review up but ignore down. In my opinion, anyway :).

Oddly, they are not going to use the new valuations for council tax at all, only for this new tax, which seems like total madness to me.

It's difficult to know whether it is justified without seeing a lot of the information.

I suppose the key issue most people would home in on is that if your house was sold at a band F compatible price in the 1990s why has it not risen higher in price now ? Is that because the people that bought it in 1990 considerably overpaid, or is it because it needed a lot of work when you bought it, or there is something else affecting it like flood zones ?

In the absence of supporting pricing information (which seems to be poor in your area from what you say) I think a lot of people might find it reasonable to argue that the best estimate of what your house was worth in 1991 is what it sold for in 1990-ish and not on some extrapolated value based on the relatively sparse data available from (what might be quite different) houses surrounding it now.

Is the fact that it hasn't gone up significantly in price since then (for whatever reason) something that should be factored in from a council tax perspective ?

Do you think it should be valued down one band or two ?

Before i bought it, my house was last sold in the early 1950's for £2,500 (according to the old paper deeds and mortgage). The previous family lived here from very young until they died. That's not all that uncommon around here and there's very few actual sales.

The valuation office were adamant that I couldn't reference today's house value in my challenge so i passed on - to my mind - similar houses in a lower band. However the valuation agency did keep saying that my house is different because size/location/style/etc is different. It's an old house standing alone so there's not going to be an exact parallel, however lower band houses in this area are selling for more.

I requested that it should be a D, but they stuck to their position that it's an F.

It is odd, and seems unfair to me. They are essentially putting you through a revaluation but only considering the outcome if it leads to higher taxation.

There was talk many years ago of revaluing every house, but i do suspect they're quite happy with the status quo of people being kept in higher bands.

If you think it is two bands it seems unusual.

Quick google suggests about a 1/3 of applications are successful.

Another google suggests there are professionals out there that will help you request a revaluation on a no win no fee basis. Maybe that is something to consider.

What was needed yesterday was a wholesale change in the house tax system, with a full revaluation under the new system. At the very least the system needed way more bands and some way of accounting for regional variations.

Instead we got frittering around the edges and a voter popular 'mansion tax'.

I agree but surely the ultimate test of the value is the sale price achieved?
Wouldn't there need to be some adjustment if the next sale shows that the property had been incorrectly evaluated?.