Leasehold flat with 75 year lease.Too short?

Doozergirl

Marriage value below 80 years, yes.

2 year rule, just own the property.

There is a formula for working out the price (on the website above), but part of it is based on variables so what you have in reality, is an upper and a lower limit for the value of the lease/freehold. Normally the solicitors can flog it out on your behalf, Tribunal is a last resort. Your solicitor will be able to give you their idea of value if you tell them the exact term of the lease and how much ground rent is payable.

Website? It's all here http://www.lease-advice.org/newintro.htm

balsingh

I have spoken to the estate agent who is marketing the property. It will be auctioned, not sold directly.

The agent wasnt able to give me any information about the lease. Is this normal? He said that all he know is that the lease is 97 years from 1984. Is he trying to hide something or is it likely that he woudlnt have any info regarding the lease or the freeholder?

What shoudl I be trying to find out about the lease ... or will it be case of finding out after after you have purchased the flat?

Doozergirl

There will be a copy of the lease banging around somewhere. There should be one in the information pack for the auction.

In a normal purchase, your solicitor/mortgage company would insist on examining the lease before letting you exchange contracts, but with an auction property you exchange contracts on the day so you must ask your solicitor to do as much conveyancing as they can before the auction, otherwise you're left to fate.

You need to get the vendor's solicitors details, call them and ask them to send the auction pack to your solicitor as soon as it's ready. You want to ask your solicitor to look for potential problems and give you the okay from their side to purchase the property. You also need to get a price for the lease extension. There's no point looking into the purchase of the freehold until you own the flat.

cattie

balsingh wrote:

I have spoken to the estate agent who is marketing the property. It will be auctioned, not sold directly.

The agent wasnt able to give me any information about the lease. Is this normal? He said that all he know is that the lease is 97 years from 1984. Is he trying to hide something or is it likely that he woudlnt have any info regarding the lease or the freeholder?

What shoudl I be trying to find out about the lease ... or will it be case of finding out after after you have purchased the flat?

Estate agents don't usually get sight of the lease so can only go on the info that the vendor supplies them with. Often a lease is marketed as 99 years from whatever date as it can give the intial impression that the remaining lease is longer than it really is. :rolleyes:

If the property is going to auction, this possibly indicates that they don't anticipate an easy sale because of the length of the lease. This is all the more reason for you to do your homework before you give any real thought to purchasing this flat.

westernpromise

Doozergirl wrote:

Don't forget that in order to purchase the freehold, you have to do it collectively with the other flat owners.

That's correct, but the freeholder isn't going to offer a lease extension for any less than the cost of the freehold, for obvious reasons. So it pays to know what the freehold would actually be worth; it's the maximum price you can expect to pay for a lease extension.