UK Landlord Forum / Life

Hi everyone,

I currently rent out and own a house.

I have just submitted an application to land registry to change ownership of the house into my sons name.

 The existing tenants will remain, I have a few questions:

1. My son will be receiving the income and paying tax. Can I continue to be the landlord as far as the tenants are concerned, being named on all regulatory documents?

2. I suspect I actually need to put all the regulatory documents into my sons name, if that is the case and thinking about the RRB should I:

a. Issue a new AST in his name or can the existing one continue or should my son inform the tenant of ownership change in writing? leaving the existing AST in place.

b. Do we need to transfer the deposit into my son's name and reissue prescribed information? or does it need to be returned to the tenant and then reprotected?

c. what about the epc, gas certificate, electrical certificate. Do they need to be reissued to the tenant (I guess this all depends on if we have to issue a new AST)

d. have I missed anything?

Thanks in advance
Bob

Ignoring all the tax implications and assuming this is in England, your son becomes the landlord when the property changes ownership to them. So, no, you can't just "continue" to be the landlord.

You or your son have to serve notice to the tenants giving the new landlords name and address (in England or Wales). There's a deadline for that.

Your son receives the deposit when they become the landlord, so they need to protect it and serve the PI. That doesn't require the money to physically transfer.

The documents you list are all property specific not owner specific, so they should be ok. Any local authority licence will probably need to be renewed.

This is really helpful! Knowing what needs to change when ownership transfers makes things much easier for both landlords and tenants.

Thanks JPKeates, very helpful.

Don't forget that the "transfer" is a sale for tax purposes, so there's the disposal tax paperwork to process, even if there's no CGT to pay.
The land registry have been running with a long backlog; remember that the transfer happens when it happens, not when the land registry uodate their records.

I believe that your Son can grant you consent to act as landlord which he could do immediately after completion. I think that in this scenario, the rent still belongs to your Son, so you would have all the liability without any of the income to deal with it. The prescribed documents follow yhe landlord rather than the owner.