Selling House-have been accused by buyers solr of undervaluing property for LPT

Caroleia

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Has anyone else encountered this?

We put our house for sale in April and were very lucky to have 3 very interested bidders and to now have an offer of way more than we asked for on the table, however is it correct that we should now assess our 2014 LPT off this new amount - we believed our original valuation as at May 2013 to be a fair and honest one given the prices of houses sold on the property price register at the time, and a valuation I had received from an estate agent.

The reason I ask is we have received an instruction from our buyers solicitor stating that "the LPT paid for 2014 is in the wrong bracket and should be that of ***[450 more than we valued the house at May 2013]".

I am confused-should we all be checking the value of prop prices every year ? I had thought the self assessed valuation as of 2013 stood for 3 years unchanged
 
If you have an independent valuation in writing, just give it to your solicitor with extracts from the property price register.

Brendan
 
thanks folks. I don't suppose anyone thought we'd get the type of price rises that we've had, we've been advised to pay up but I'm going to try to stick to my guns on this one..
 
Stick to your guns, if there is as much interest in the house as you say: next please.

As the valuation cant change they are saying 2013 is wrong as well I would tell them to... as even if u did think u undercooked in 2013, March 2014 was cutoff for recooking without penalties: see the second link above.
 
The easiest way to solve this is to do a new LPT valuation and pay the higher bracket. Not that I think you should, just pointing out that when in a sales situation it might be the prudent course of action.

It seems you have correctly valued your property, and you even have an estate agent's valuation. You've compared the property to the property sales on the registry. All good.

But the purchaser's solicitor has decided that you have incorrectly valued you it. What is he basing this on. He is correct to look out for his clients interests. Because if you or other vendors have undervalued property, and there will be many who have, there is then a potential future bill/liability for the new owner (and maybe penalties). Maybe this solicitor has come accross a case where revenue queried the valuation, or maybe he's found a case where the bracket choosen was well off the true bracket.

I expect that the large price rises in Dublin is also to blame. What solicitors and owners need is clarity from revenue that the values won't be checked by them in 10 years time and revised upwards etc. What I do not know is if there is a possibility to ask revenue to confirm now that they accept your valuation.
 
While I agree that, as a matter of principle, you could stick to your guns on the 2013 valuation, it might be more prudent to simply pay the extra €450 to close the deal. You have to weigh up relevant factors such as the fact that you have, by your own admission, received an offer for far more than you expected on your house. Is it worth jeopardising thousands of euro for the sake of 450? If you do insist on retaining the 2013 valuation and the buyers walk away, is there someone ready to take their place? Are you in a chain and need to sell your house to fund your new one?
 
You could just take €450 off the selling price to close the deal.

Does this mean every buyer tries this on with very seller to get €€€€ discount when pressure is on to complete the sale?

"Ah, sure its only .09% of the deal, better to pay and move on"

And is the LPT not between the Revenue and the owner???
 
Its all in here

http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/lpt/sale-transfer-property.html

As a conveyancer, my advice to clients is to either (a) pay up and get over it or (b) do all of the legwork to convince all of us that the valuation was correct, including, if necessary, an approach to Revenue for specific clearance.

It would cost far more than 450 euro in the amount of time I'd have to put into it.

mf
 
This query came up recently with my mother's house. Went to myhome.ie, got a list of sales from the first half of 2013 in the area and printed them off to show that the valuation was accurate. Took about 30 seconds, and the buyer's solicitor was happy with that.
 
Hi mf1 - I refiled my LPT for 2014 based on the sale-agreed price we achieved on our house (went up fro around 175K (which was original bracket) and sale-agreed at over 200k). It should also be noted that they hadn't credited to my account the filing my wife made for the same house in 2013 -
However the Revenue are now saying such valuation needs to go retrospectively - again I was happy to pay to make the issue go away (in fact review of PPR shows price bracket should have been 100-150k in May 2013).
Even though I have overpaid (because I haven't got credit for the payment my wife made on ROS) however, I still haven't got close out from Revenue and still need to go through all the additional hassle.
 
such valuation needs to go retrospectively

So if you have a house for 10 years, paying the appropriate (based on sales, property price register, etc) and then you sell for much higher price to someone who wants to live in your house for compelling reasons, wants to move into area and not many for sale, wants a side entrance, has come into a bucketload of money and will pay well over the odds (and I've seen this where they sell existing to a developer and want to remain in the locality at nearly any cost) then the sale value is retroactively applied (so you now owe LPT arrears) and very on in your road, estate is also in trouble?
 
1.7 here has a link to a pdf which explains it pretty much.
http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/lpt/vendors-faqs.html#section7

It is quite detailed so wont try to summarise it:
however this bit caught my eye, however dont read in isolation
The allowable margins are:
 In the case of the first five valuation bands ( i.e. up to €300,000), where the sales
price falls into the valuation band immediately succeeding the band that was
declared,
 In the case of the remaining fourteen valuation bands, where the sales price is not
more than 15% higher than the upper limit of the band that was declared, and
 In the case of properties whose declared chargeable value exceeded €1,000,000,
where the sales price is not more than 15% higher than that chargeable value.
 
thanks to all and apologies for only replying now..
Apparently this is causing havoc at the moment and yes is almost definitely down to the rapid price rises.
To all who say its only 450, pay up and get on with it-yes its very tempting and we may very well end up doing this but the more I look at this option its fraught with difficulty as well - down the road if anyone looking at our record it will look like we undervalued our house by almost one third! Which I stress we definitely did not do.. - and as someone above said how would it pan out for the rest of the neighbours on our street.

There are ways around it which are explained pretty well in a pdf on ohanlontax.ie called 'local property tax conveyancing issues' - apols I'm not allowed to post a link on here as I haven't posted enough times yet

I am still of a mind to stick to my guns but if major delays being caused then may well just have to suck it up - I will update the thread on what we eventually do- if anyone selling please beware that this is happening and could cause delays to your closing
 
Re: "There are ways around it which are explained pretty well in a pdf..."
This not entirely correct as all this pdf does is rehash the Revenue material in the problem and are not ways around it.

C,
I understand where you are coming from but I wouldn't want anyone to think the issue can be avoided by both purchaser and vendor by reading that pdf: it can be addressed but not avoided.
Keep well and may the force be with you.
 
Apparently this is causing havoc at the moment and yes is almost definitely down to the rapid price rises.

Here's the relevant link.

http://www.ohanlontax.ie/downloads/LocalPropertyTaxConveyancingIssues.pdf

Cannot believe what revenue have dreamed up as a solution. As for them plucking 15% increases as ok, what civil servant sat down and decided that, I do wonder if that 'guidence' is legal.

Revenue should not have valued properties, particularly as it caused many people to put in the wrong valuation. This applies whether the value was too high or too low.

This is going to mean a right mess as everybody in Dublin selling will have to revise their LPT even though they may have declared the correct valuation.

Revenue should be obliged to provide 'clearance' for all vendors where this is an issue and it should be quick and flexible.

It might be an idea for potential vendors to get their 'clearances' from revenue before they start debating with solicitors for purchasers. And they therefor ought to fill out Form LPT5.

Cannot believe how complex this whole thing has become. At least with the household charge and the NPPR all one had to do was print out proof of payment and that satisfied solicitors in a process that takes a minute to complete.
 
At this stage I have made extra payments to revenue to try to make the LPT issue go away, despite providing them with all the evidence that (a) my wife had filed correctly for the property in 2013 and had valued correctly and (b) that I only re-filed 2014 as they were saying I hadn't filed (they credited my payment in November against my 2013 liability as they hadn't reconciled my wife's payment to property).
By refiling for 2014 on ROS I went with the sale price which is obviously incorrect, but as ROS/LPTonline is saying I still have arrears (as 2013 was repriced based on 2014 filing), I have paid again. The lady I was dealing with on Revenue has gone very quiet and I haven't been able to get through to her on the phone. I now have receipts for LPT payments coming out my ears!

Very unsatisfactory to be honest and I can absolutely see it causing lots of conveyancing delays across the board if my experience is anything to go by.
 
I have been advised by revenue to pay the difference for 2014 and 2013 and then use my supporting documentation to (hopefully) claim a refund using form LPT 5. I will do this for speed as we don't want to delay our sale any further. Annoyed to say the least.
 
To be honest, when I got through to Revenue, the person I dealt with ended up being extremely helpful.
I have received a refund for the payment by my wife as they have acknowledged that it was one and the same property.
In relation to the valuation difference, the effort to validate the value in 2013 versus just paying up was what swung it for me, as I would have had to get something from the auctioneer declaring value back in 2013. Cost of valuation and hassle of same would have been more than just sucking it up.
The revenue lady was very helpful though and if I had more time available to me she would have supported my case for the lower valuation as she thought I was being very straight with them.
However having got the refund for my wife's payment, happy to call it quits and hopefully close the sale. Rightly or wrongly I was ultimately happy with how I was dealt with.
 
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