CGT on potential house sale

[njackson]

Hi All,
First post on here although I've been lurking for a while. I have a CGT query that I've not found the answer to having searched around the forum, so I thought I would ask here.

Background:
Have owned my main property since 1990, deeds have been in my name solely since this date.
Bought a smaller property in 2015 with a view to downsizing at some point in the future and potentially retiring with the proceeds from the main property. Married in 2008 and this property has the deeds in both our names.
I've not made a nomination for the properties and all the evidence suggests that my main property is my (our) residence, so if I sold tomorrow I'm confident there would be no CGT liability.
We are working towards selling the main property, however I'm not really ready to retire yet, but we would very much like to make the second property our main residence and potentially rent out our former residence for a period.
I understand the calculations for CGT and as I've owned the main property for so long, a year or two with it not being our residence will not cost us much I suspect in CGT.

My question really concerns the purchase price of the main property back in 1990. This was originally purchased by my parents back in the 70's, who then split up and I continued to stay there with my Dad. in 1990 Dad then lost his job and couldn't afford to pay the mortgage so this was transferred into my name and his name was removed from the deeds / mine added. Dad then passed away early 2000's. No other documentation was completed at the time, i.e. nothing was gifted, I just have the deeds stating I was the owner from 1990. The amount left on the mortgage at the time was circa £25k, so my question is what would I use as the purchase price when filling in the CGT form; would it be what it effectively 'cost' me i.e. £25k? Or would it be the market value of the property at the time (probably more like £65k). If the latter were correct, how would I go about getting the value defined and is that something I should be doing now or around the time of the sale?

Any suggestions from the experts would be greatly appreciated.

Regards
Neil

[pawncob]

Assuming the house is registered in your name, the base cost is the MV at the time it was gifted to you.
The amount on the mortgage is irrelevant.

[maths]

I suspect that HMRC would take the view that father made a gift to you in 1990 (assume mother's name wasn't on the deeds). If so then the base cost for you for CGT purposes would be its market value at the relevant date in 1990 (not the £25k you mention).

[njackson]

Thanks for the replies, much appreciated. I think it was just my Dad's name that was on the deeds, I can dig them out and check to be sure.