Jane43
I had bowed out of this discussion but I see from X that the Telegraph is reporting that Angela Rayner has ‘taken her name off’ the deeds of the Ashton Under Lyne house to allegedly save £40,000 in stamp duty by declaring the Hove property her main residence. I take this with a handful of salt as it is The Telegraph. I don’t think it is possible to just ‘take your name off deeds’, I believe you have to legally sign over your interest in the property to another party or parties named on the deeds. Apparently the home is owned jointly by her and her former partner so he may have bought her out which is the usual practice when relationships end, nothing wrong with that, it happens all the time. However if it is a measure to avoid part of the required stamp duty payment then she has lost my support.
Agreed on all counts, Jane43.
Houses are an integral part of our lives and relationships, and when relationships fail, people die or new relationships start those circumstances have an impact on people's home owning status. You can't sell a house overnight, and you can't time life events to coincide with peaks and troughs in the property market.
I know people who temporarily have two houses as they are part of a new couple who owned one each but are trying out living together. Even I (as a hardline believer in nobody having more than one home when others have none) can see anything wrong with that. The usual pattern seems to be that in those circumstances people rent out the 'spare' house for a year or so to see if the new relationship is working, then sell it if they are staying together, and again, that makes sense to me. If things don't work out there is a house to go back to, and nobody has lost out to the tune of the significant expense of selling their house and buying another. There will be all sorts of other circumstances that lead to different home owning scenarios for a lot of people.
If AR is in one of those circumstances (which would be her private life and none of our business) then I wish people would just leave her alone and stop jumping on every opportunity to discredit her. If there are proven shenanigans, however, she would lose my support too. As she is innocent until proven guilty under the law, I will wait until I see the evidence before leaping to conclusions.