Selling your ex-council property

Right of first refusal

If you want to sell your home and it was bought under the Right to Buy scheme less than 10 years ago, you are legally required to give the Council the opportunity to buy it back.

Although the Council has no obligation to buy back your property, you must make us an offer and should not agree to a sale on the open market until you have had our response. If you sell your property without doing this, the new owner will not be able to register their ownership with the Land Registry.

You need to contact the Leasehold Team in writing, giving us the following details about your property:

• whether the property is a house, flat or maisonette
• number of bedrooms
• type of heating system
• any improvements or structural changes made since the purchase
• a market valuation of your property, if you have one

Please include a correspondence address so we can respond to you. We aim to let you know our decision as soon as possible, but we have eight weeks to respond once we've received your offer. If we decide not to take up the offer or if we do not reply within this period, you are then free to sell on the open market.

Paying back your discount

If you bought your property under the Right to Buy scheme and you sell it within five years, you will have to repay all or part of the discount, as follows:

• First year: 100%
• Second year: 80%
• Third year: 60%
• Fourth year: 40%
• Fifth year: 20%

The amount you need to repay also depends on the value of your property at the time you sell it. For example:

• If your property was valued at £180,000 at the time you bought it and you received a discount of £82,800, that was a discount of 46%
• You then sold it after four years for £200,000
• A 46% discount of £200,000 is £92,000
• As it is four years since you bought it, you will have to repay 40% of £92,000, which is £36,800

You or your solicitor can contact the Leasehold Team to find out if you would need to repay any discount on selling your property, and an estimate of how much that would be.

See also:

• Right to Buy (RTB)

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