A failure to take legal advice cost a property buyer his £35,000 deposit as he fell foul of the time limits for the purchase. Purchasing property at auction can be legally hazardous as the following case shows.
When buying holiday homes abroad, it is absolutely vital to employ solicitors who are entirely independent of the vendors.
Ever increasing demand for housing in urban areas means local authorities are reluctant to approve developments that entail the loss of even a small number of residential units.
The steady rise in property prices as well as the imposition of strict mortgage lending requirements has meant that getting on the property market is tougher than ever before.
The issue of Chancel Repair Liability is one that many people will not need to consider when purchasing a property, but it is still a very real and tangible law that, if not addressed, can lead to extremely high financial costs in the future.
Most people buy and sell the property they reside in without any thoughts about tax, apart from perhaps Stamp Duty Land Tax. However, there are some circumstances in which selling the property you reside in can cause some tax issues.
With the rising prices of everyday life more and more people are finding that their pension savings, together with the state pension are not providing sufficient income to meet all their needs in retirement. If you do not have sufficient savings or assets your home could be a good way to help boost your pension.
In April 2013, the Government launched the first phase of the Help To Buy scheme. This gave homebuyers in England equity loans of up to 20% of the price of a “NEW PROPERTY” worth up to £600,000. Homebuyers needed to find at least 5% of the property price as a deposit, with a 75% mortgage to cover the balance.
It is well known that house prices have increased dramatically over the past decade. The younger generation who aspire to purchase their own property are struggling to meet the financial demand needed to obtain a mortgage.
Stamp Duty Land Tax is a self-assessed tax. The onus is on the taxpayer to make the necessary land transaction return, calculate the tax and pay it. This is a fundamental change to how the procedure used to work. The old Stamp Duty Land Tax regime taxed documents, so it was possible to delay paying the duty in many cases simply by not executing the document.
In recent years, increased mobility and growing rates of home ownership have meant that the ever-larger number of people nowadays inherit properties from relatives who live distances away. Similarly, many buy-to-let properties have been purchased in areas with a large student population, miles away from where the original owners live.
Chancel repairs liability goes as far back as the medieval era. Even though large acres of land, which were previously owned by the church, have been divided and sold to different land owners, there is still the prospective for the owners of the land built on previously own land by the church, to have an obligation to pay for the maintenance of the church’s chancel.
Buying a property is one of the most important and expensive transactions you will ever enter into. You therefore need to be sure what you are letting yourself in for!
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