I purchased a property in June 1992 for £53,000, which I lived in for 16 years. I moved abroad and have rented out the house since then. I would now like to sell the house and notice that the rules have changed and I am unable to claim principal private residence (PPR) relief. Is this correct? The house is currently worth £350,000. I think it needs to be revalued at April 2015.
Arthur Weller replies:
If you look at www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/capitalgains-manual/cg65070 (see Example 2) you can see that in your circumstance you can claim both PPR relief and lettings relief to reduce the chargeable capital gain. If you read Examples 1 and 2 there carefully, you can see that there is no necessity to get an April 2015 valuation.