Customer age 60, wife 57. He has a 20% interest (inherited) in a property with 4 of his brothers/sisters. Property value is about £250,000 and has tenants in which brings each of them about £2,500 a year in rent. Income ignored for PC so looking for advice on capital valuation (I know this isn't clear cut from previous posts) as siblings do not want to sell:

1. Would the fact that there is a regular rental income mean that the valuation is likely to be higher than a property with someone in it but no income for the owner accruing (i.e. a more worthwhile investment)?

2.How would we get a valuation or should we leave this to the Pension Service?

mmm think ariadne will know more, but the property surely must be held on trust for all the beneficiaries and so the trust deed will be important.....things like, can he call for it to be sold might be relevant.

if you wanted a valuation, local commercia estate agents should be able to help ...

Thanks for your confidence Claire, hope it isn't misplaced...
let's think.

Any land which is jointly owned, or for the benefit of more than one person,, is necessarily held on trust and the terms of the trust may well not appear on the legal title. If there is no specific trust deed (for example, a will which seems relevant to this case) then they will all between them be absolutely entitled to it and if they are adult and of full mental caapcity can between them dispose of it as they wish (this is called the Rule in Saunders v Vautier); but not if they disagree.

Jointly owned land used to be held on a trust for sale with power to postpone sale, which meant that unless they all agreed to postpone it had to be sold and the proceeds divvied up. That was changed and now I think it's the other way round (I stopped being a trusts lawyer around the time the Trusts of Land Act came in).

If there is a trust you need to look at the trust instrument (will or deed) to see what the terms are. Those cannot be varied unles Saunders v Vautier applies.

On valuation: in the old Rent Act days of secure tenancies, it used to be considered that the value of a tenanted house was only around half the value with vacant possession, because it was so difficult (indeed, all but impossible legally) to get rid of a good tenant. In a world of shorthold tenancies, it is very easy to get rid of tenants at the expiry of the fixed term, so there would only be an additional small discount to the normal 10% discount on the total value, reflecting the ease of getting possession on a mandatory ground.

Asking an estate agent is a good idea but I don't think it will tell you much about any difference between value with and without a tenant. More important is the usual rule: if the others don't want to sell, what is the value of his interest in a property that cannot realistically be sold?

If they do want to sell but the tenancy has some time to run I suppose that giving notice to the tenant at the appropriate time would be the nearest they could get to taking steps to dispose of it, giving rise to disregards. Even negoitating with the co-owners could be too.

Thank you both for your replies. The query was on behalf of a colleague who can now do a bit more investigation.