Ex Council house with council needing to approve sale

Moomintroll99

Not sure if this goes here or in the legal section - mods pls move it if you think it's wrong here.

Does anyone have experience purchasing a house from a vendor who bought the house from a council under a tenant purchase scheme?

We're currently in negotiations on a property which was bought from a council back in the early 70s. That buyer then passed away and his son inherited, who now owns the house. So this is the first time it has ever been sold.

In the teeny tiny print on the folio, there is a requirement for the council to approve any sale and I'm hearing different things about whether we would qualify to be approved to purchase. We are renting in the area and definitely would live in the house, we work locally, have kids at local school etc, and we don't own any other property, so I suppose we could just about count as a 'local family with a housing need'. But it's not our first property ever as we owned a house in Australia before this.

Just wondering if anyone else has been through this and what requirements the council had to approve you to buy, or on what grounds they turned you down?

Just to complicate matters, the original buyer only ever bought the leasehold not the freehold. There are only 53 years left on the lease. We thought this was good - we are cash buyers and have read that banks won't give mortgages on properties with less than 70 yrs left. We would buy the freehold as soon as we bought the property.

We do have a real live lawyer giving us proper legal advice, I'm just more after people's experiences of the different councils and their requirements with this process.

Askthe EA

As long as its not an investment property you are buying, you should be fine.