Martin Lewis shares how your neighbours can save you hundreds of pounds a year

The Independent

Martin Lewis shares how your neighbours can save you hundreds of pounds a yearSource: Good Morning Britain

Transcript

00:00The first cheque is called the Neighbours Cheque.

00:03So what you're simply asking is,

00:04is your band higher than neighbours in preferably identical,

00:08but if not similar, properties?

00:10Now, don't worry, you don't have to ask them.

00:11You can check council tax bands for yours and their properties

00:14at gov.uk for England and saa.gov.uk for Scotland.

00:19So you'll know if the properties are similar,

00:21but preferably identical.

00:22Now, that will hopefully, for some people, not hopefully,

00:25but it will show, I am in a higher band

00:27than my neighbours in identical properties.

00:29That's cheque number one.

00:30If that's happening, we move on to cheque number two.

00:33Now, cheque number two is not one you can use in evidence

00:36when you come to challenge.

00:37It's one I invented, because the problem is,

00:40if you are in a higher band than neighbours in identical properties,

00:43it could be your band is too high,

00:46it could be their band is too low,

00:48and if you ask for it to be assessed,

00:50they put your neighbour's band up.

00:52You do not want that to happen.

00:54That is not a good thing.

00:55So this is the cheque I came up with

00:57to try and prevent that happening.

00:58Now, what you're going to do,

01:00you're going to try and value your house.

01:01If you bought it after 1991,

01:03well, you know the price and you know the sale data.

01:05Unless it's been substantially altered,

01:07you've done a big extension.

01:08If you bought it before 1991,

01:10then you need to look at identical properties

01:12and find out the price they sold for on Zoopla or Rightmove.

01:15And then, crucially, what you have to do bizarrely

01:18is to back-calculate what your house would have been worth in 1991.

01:23I know that sounds difficult,

01:25but there are free tools online

01:26that will do that back-calculation for you,

01:28because this is what dictates the bands.

01:31Here you go.

01:32The band you are in in England depends on its 1991 house price,

01:37which is why the top is there over £320,000.

01:40That wouldn't be that expensive a house these days.

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