Main residence nomination

[Taxationwebdunne]

I jointly owned house A with my partner, unmarried, from 1999 until 2019. I bought a second house B and moved in 2015 which is where I still live and my partner continued to live in our original house A, which he still does. However in 2019 we (foolishly) moved my partner's 50% share of our original house A, into my name so I owned both houses A and B. We then got married in 2021, but again, we foolishly did not nominate our main residence to be the more expensive house A, within the 2 years. On advice, we recently (2025) transferred the whole title for original house A by way of gift ( from spouse to spouse no money no mortgage so no CGT) into my husbands name, so I now own house A and he owns house B. As married, we can only have one main residence. Question - I am led to believe because our housing ownerships have now changed, the 2 years rule re-starts and we can now nominate house A as our main residence. Is that correct?

[someone]

You probably want to get (paid for) advice on this.

1999-2019 (assume) A is only residence, jointly owned and unmarried. You both get PRR.
2015 You buy B and move in. Partner stays in A. Most likely you get PRR on B, partner continues to get PRR on their share of A.
2019 moved into your name. Unmarried so done at market value. No CGT as fully covered by PRR. No SDLT as gift (no consideration - assuming unmortgaged). Your base cost for A becomes 1/2 MV at date of transfer plus 1/2 original cost. Most likely PRR continues on B.
2021 You marry. This might now affect the PPR property as (I assume) one spouse lives at A and the other lives at B. It's possible that the PPR changed to cover A from this point, this would be particularly likely if B is used for one spouse for work and A is used for both spouses for weekends.
2025 You transfer A to spouse. As you are married this is a no-loss, no-gain transfer so your partner acquires your base cost (from above). PPR is unlikely to change from the 2021 determination.

But on this question: I am led to believe because our housing ownerships have now changed, the 2 years rule re-starts and we can now nominate house A as our main residence. Is that correct?

I don't believe this is correct, your residences need to change, not the ownerships.
There are probably better ways to do it, but one way to force a change of residences would be to rent another property (and actually move in so it becomes a residence). So long as it's a residence, quality of occupation isn't important for the election purposes. You probably should take formal advice on this before wasting money on renting somewhere as it would be easy for it not to become a residence if you don't dot all the 'i's and cross all the 't's.

Another way to force the issue would be to move out of B and make it unavailable as a residence (for a period). Just emptying the property might be enough, but letting it (at a commercial rent or otherwise) would be enough to change your residences.

[someone]

One quick additional point that I missed:

You must make a new election every time your residences change even if you don't want to change the election.

So if you go the route of renting somewhere else so as to have 3 residences for a time, you must make a new election when you stop renting it and your residences go back to 2.