Uncle's Council House

Hi, my husbands uncle died last year unexpectingly.

He was living in a council house in galway, his other uncle and aunt had also lived there but have also passed away.

We own land surrounding the area where the prefab/house is located, we tried to buy it but were told that the fact that we are not tenants we cannot.

The Council have the deeds to the the land but they never as far as we know actually bought the land its on, they only own the house/ prefab.

We just recently got planning permission to build beside it but it would be great if we could do it up and live in it for the time being thus saving on rent plus i am expecting a baby soon and it would be great for the extra room.

Its extremely annoying as if we weren't married I would be allowed to rent it.

Please can anybody help me?

Its usual in circumstances where the tenant no longer needs the property for it to revert to the ownership of the Council.

You can check with the Land Registry as to the legal owner of the land. There are many posts and threads on this site on how to do this. It sounds very unusual that the Council would build houses on a site without the right to do so.

Don't know if you could but what if you started to reside in the house? Maybe this would give you some rights particularly if you don't already own a house. The council might then let you become the tenant of the house and from there you could in the future go about buying the house. Can't see them trying to evict somebody with a baby who has a housing need.

Thanks for the reply's but the councel have the deeds, would be afraid to move in, in case they would force us out, plus we both work so i don't think we are eligable for renting it. I think it was back in the 70's an agreement was made, we have no contract saying what exactly the agreement was as it problely been destroyed at this stage. Very frustrating!

Have looked into citizen's information site, its states if a relative dies and you are living in it at the time you would be intitialled to rent it. might try this angle hopefully it will work. If anybody is looking at this, say a few Hail Mary's for me please!! Thanks