Refund of moving expenses

[Ken Scott]

A friend recently moved house on posting & was able to claim back £5000 against solicitor's fees, stamp duty etc. Their total costs were around £25000, so they got a refund of 20%. Should I have to move on posting from Scott Palace I would face a similar bill, largely due to the silly increase in house prices in this area, & to the Chancellor's impression of Dick Turpin as regards stamp duty.

It would seem that on my next posting I face some choices:

1. Subsidise the RAF by £20000 towards the cost of my move from one private house to another at my new duty location.

2. Rent out Scott Palace, & have some toe-rag of a tenant trash the place, not bother to clean the swimming pool, not keep the lawns perfect etc (like all previous tenants I've ever had). Meanwhile, the Scott family moves into some poxy Type V quarter (all a lowly PAS JO is entitled to), where the rent increases above the rate of the RPI to bring it into line with commercial rents, you can't get any fault fixed because the new contract under Modern Housing Solutions is so poor, & my teenage kids will fight because they're forced into a bedroom together.

3. Serve unaccompanied, so I don't see the family, Mrs Scott has an affair & eventually divorces me, & I also lose Continuity of Education Allowance (aka Boarding School Allowance).

4. Leave.

Anyone have any alternative, sensible, suggestions to this dilemma?

[bwfg3]

:ugh:

Oh yes I totally sympathise Ken, Im in a quarter in Lincs. Posted south for 3 years, with an OCU back here in 09. Cant keep house here according to DHE, as education is the same everywhere (national curriculum), that is of course if they have grammar schools where I'm posted to. They cant possibly be short of housing stock at my current unit, because DHE sold off dozens of quarters in the last 2 years. So my choices are:

1. Move family south for 2 and a bit years, then back north and completely knacker the education, and Mrs has to apply for jobs twice.

2. Buy house in this area and serve unaccompanied, but hope sale of a house we rent out, to fund this (in the north west) goes through before DHE kick us out of present quarter.

3. Leave.

and here was me thinking DHE were supposed to look after the troops with regards to housing. I'm going for option 2 and hope we can get into private before the posting notice arrives.

[teeteringhead]

It's been a while since I moved (thinks .... about four-and-a-half years) and hopefully won't have to again, but KS how on earth did your mate manage to spend £25k in moving???

If any of my God-knows-how-many moves had cost anywhere near half that (even adjusted for inflation), I just wouldn't have been able to afford it - and not just as a JO either!

[Ken Scott]

The house in question was around £500 000 I believe, seems like alot but for this part of the UK that dosen't buy you a country 'pile', just a decent detached home - I'm sure those from the farthest north could probably buy something a bit more grandiose for the money!

For interest, taking a modest 4 bed estate house in Wiltshire, costing £300k, to sell it would cost around £4500 with an estate agent, VAT on that would be an additional almost £1300, the solicitor's fee for selling & buying would be around £1000, stamp duty on the purchase assuming the same price of house, at 3%, would add £9000, total of £15300 - then add searches, surveys for buying, HIP for selling, & we're over 3 times the MOD limit for refund of expenses.

Some more 'bag of a fag packet' calculations would seem to indicate that to keep within the MOD's limit you would have to limit the cost of your home to under £150k which I think just squeaks in below the threshold for stamp duty, which is the real killer here because as soon as you 'qualify' for the tax 1% becomes payable on the FULL purchase price. Around here for £150k you're looking at maybe a 2 bed semi or terrace, even 1 bed flats in Calne cost over £100k, not exactly a family home. Where I live the average price for a terraced house is £230k.

So it seems to me that either the MOD limit has to be raised to cover the full cost, or at least a reasonable proportion of it, or service moves should be exempted from stamp duty! I doubt that would be politically acceptable!