Buying the freehold of a leased house

RLH33

My parents bought a cottage on a 99 year lease about 23 years ago so it still has quite a long way to go until it expires. I was just interested to know how you go about purchasing the freehold and whether it would be worth doing it now or would it be cheaper if we waited until the lease was nearly up. My Brother and I will inherit the property eventually and we sort of agreed we would seriously look into buying the freehold then but it would be good to know whether we should actually be thinking about it sooner.

The lease is from the Duchy of Cornwall and they currently pay a peppercorn rent, which has never been collected!! I know that the laws/regulations regarding Crown Estates have changed meaning that they are now treated like everyone else but does the fact it is a Duchy property make any difference?

Any advice would be appreciated.

thegrimreaper

in my very limited knowledge of this as i have only just started to look into it , apparently the closer it gets to the end of the lease the more expensive it can get, the land registry website has some guidelines into it and i believe there is a link on the site about who regulates the prices to buy a freehold, ill try and find the links !

thegrimreaper

http://www.rpts.gov.uk/index.htm

charliee_3

we are just about to purchase a leasehold house, but we are buying the freehold as part of the purchase.. we had 960 odd years left and it cost us £1400 plus costs.
It gets waaaaay more expensive the less time there is left so it is def worth looking into sooner rather than later. contact the leaseholder, your parents have the right to buy the lease as they have been there more than 2 years, ask for a price, if it seems fair you need to pay this plus the legal costs of both sides (£195 for theirs and £150 extra to our solicitor in our case). if it doesnt seem fair you can ask for an official valuation i think.
if you dont buy it and decide to sell in the future it will be hard to sell with less than 70 years left on it and mortgage companies may not want to know..

RLH33

Thanks for all your advice.

I have looked at some websites about this now, especially with regard to extending the lease but a couple have said that Crown Property is exempt - does anyone know anymore about this?