Using your sale price as Council Tax evidence (and the 1991 valuation-date trap)

Looking for your home's 1991 value (2003 in Wales)? Start with where to find your home's 1991 value, which lists every free source. This guide is about what to do with a sale price once you have one.

A sale helps a band challenge when it's close to the valuation date (1 April 1991 in England, 1 April 2003 in Wales) and the home was much the same then as it is now. GOV.UK asks for sales between April 1989 and March 1993, or April 2001 and March 2005 in Wales, and compares the price with the band values. A later sale can be adjusted back with a house-price index, but that only gives you an estimate, and the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) says it doesn't use indexes itself.

A sale from the window: the strongest kind

If your home, or a similar home nearby, sold inside the window, that sale is evidence in its own right. Compare its price with the band values for the valuation date (England's bands, Wales's bands). If the price falls below your band's range, give the address, the date and the price.

Bands were set by valuers looking at sales like these, so a sale from the window usually agrees with the band. When it doesn't, it's some of the strongest evidence you can send. It counts if it was an ordinary sale on the open market, not a discounted right-to-buy sale or a sale within a family, and if the home hasn't been extended or altered since.

Where to find one:

• Your own papers. If you bought in the window, the price is on your completion statement or your solicitor's letters. Send a copy with your challenge.
• HM Land Registry, for Wales. Its free Price Paid Data has every sale since January 1995, which covers the whole of Wales's window. England's window is earlier, so for England it's newspapers, agents and old papers.

For a home in Wales, the free check looks up your home's own 2001–05 Land Registry sale for you, and if its price is in a lower band, counts it as evidence.

We look for recorded sales of your home and estimate its 1 April 1991 value (2003 in Wales), and the band it falls in.

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A later sale of your home

If your home sold after the window, you can estimate its valuation-date value:

valuation-date value ≈ sale price × (house-price index on the valuation date ÷ index on the sale date)

If the result falls in a lower band than yours, your band may be out of line, and the neighbours' bands are what to build the case on. If you mention the figure, label it as an estimate. A regional index follows the average home in your area, not your street.

A neighbour's sale

Comparing bands has a blind spot. If a whole street was banded too high together, every neighbour matches your band and nothing looks wrong. Sale prices can show it.

If a like-for-like neighbour (same type, similar size and age) sold for as much as your home once both sales are adjusted to the same date, but sits a band lower, that's worth including. It shows two homes of similar value in different bands. Match house with house and flat with flat; a much smaller home isn't a fair comparison either (how to choose comparables).

Compare at the same date: a worked example

Your home sold for £600,000 in 2015. A near-identical neighbour, a band lower, sold for £620,000 in 2018.

On raw prices the neighbour's home looks more valuable. But prices rose between 2015 and 2018, so adjusted back to 1991, the neighbour's sale is probably worth less than yours. That explains its lower band, and citing it would support your current band.

If the same neighbour had sold for £620,000 in 2012, before your sale, the adjustment would go the other way. Adjusted back, it would be worth more than your home while sitting a band lower, and that belongs in your evidence.

The closer together the two sales, the less the adjustment matters, and the more reliable the comparison.

What makes a sale more useful

• It's within, or close to, the valuation window.
• The home is a close match for yours.
• It comes from an official or contemporary record, such as the Land Registry.
• The home hasn't changed much since.
• It agrees with the pattern of bands on your street.

What makes it less useful

• It's many years from the valuation date.
• The only link to 1991 is an index calculation.
• The homes differ in type or size.
• It's an asking price presented as a sale.
• It wasn't an open-market sale: a right-to-buy discount, or a sale within a family.
• An extension or conversion since the sale is ignored.

The limits

An adjusted figure is a modelled estimate, not a formal valuation. The recorded sale prices are the hard evidence. Sale prices are most useful backing up a case built on similar homes in a lower band. And a review can move a band up as well as down (what happens if your band goes up).