Open a roof light with share of freehold

ddeblasio

Hi everyone,

I'm in the process of buying a top floor flat in a 2 flat Victorian House. It's got a share of freehold, but I'm not sure whether it's the other flat that has the rest of it or some management companies.

I noticed that the flat is rather dark and with my wife we thought that it would be good to have rooflights on the roof (there are none at the moment, but other houses next to it have). Now my question is: does the roof belong to the top floor flat so the owner can carry out some works? Does the fact that the flat in question has a share of freehold change anything? Or despite the share of fh, is the roof still a common part of the house that requires permission from the other parties to open roof windows?

Many thanks in advance

Daniele

puddy

if something happened to the roof, say tiles flew off and needed fixing, it would be all the residents that have to contribute equally to fixing it, so therefore the roof is owned by all of you. however, your loft or attic is yours. i cant imagine anyone objecting but you might need to agree that if repaiars or leaks occur because of the windows that have been put in, you will foot the bill for these as it was your request to have the windows put in

Robert_Sterling_3

Why would people in other flats agree to have the roof changed in this way?

puddy

it doesnt benefit them but i suppose it doesnt disadvantage them either. its just that it might make the roof more prone to leaks and repairs in which case the OP would have to ensure that they are responsible for those.

Zelie

What would happen if the owner altered the roof with everyone's permission but then sold the flat? Who would then be responsible for repairs to the roof should there be a leak due to the alterations?

Richard_Webster

LOOK AT THE LEASE!!!! This is always fundamental. Leases are not all the same about these things.

The lease will tell you if the roof structure is included in the top floor flat's lease. It might not be so the freeholder's consent would be required to later something not included in the lease.

Even if the roof structure is included there will prbably be a covenant requiring the freeholder's consent for alterations.

Who is the freeholder? It will either be a company that the flat owners in turn own or the individual flat owners themselves collectively. Consent from the company would be required if the freehold is owned by a company and consent from all flat owners, if owned collectively by them as individuals.

Owning a shared freehold doesn't give any more legal rights, but from a practical point of view it normally means that others will co-operate, if it does them no harm and they may have the reasonable expectation that if they have a request that affects them, but doesn't harm you, you will agree to it. Unfortunately in a few cases one or more individual can be awkward, and there is often not much that can easily be done about this. Moral when buying is to go and talk to the other flat owners to see what their likely reaction would be to this kind of request.