To renew or not?

EEP103

I got some very helpful advise from this forum reagrding renewing my lease. I live in the south of England in a one bed masionette. We have 81 years remaining on our lease and are planning on staying there another few years due to the current house prices we cannot afford to move as orginally planned.

To extend the lease our landlord has put forward a price of £7,000 which is way more than we can afford so were thinking about offering less. Is there anyway we can buy 5 or 10 years on the lease instead as a cheaper option.

The other option is to leave it and hope foe the best in 2/3 years when we sell it. After speaking to estate agents they suggest that extending the lease woulndn't make too much difference to the value of the property but would make it much easier to sell.

Any advise would be mcuh appreciated as the right decision has me worried and if we should be thinking about the lease we should start the ball rolling soon.

cattie

Usually the landlord has a fixed term on offer to extend the lease, generally along the lines of back to 99yr or 125yr term.

I've never heard of anybody wishing to extend for such a short period as you suggest & in fact the legal charges would cost just the same no matter the length of the extension.

A lease of less than 80yrs will always be more difficult to sell than one with a longer term as it costs more to extend a lease of this duration. Any prospective buyers will worry about the cost of extending the lease & because you have to have owned a property for 2 yrs before qualifying for a legal right to extension, this can put buyer's off of a property, unless you have already begun the lease extension process prior to marketing the flat.

It you can't afford to extend the lease right now, then leave it untill you can & in the meantime save as much as you can before trying again.

For comprehensive info regarding lease extensions & everything to do with owning residential leasehold property see here www.lease-advice.org
It's a government funded agency.

CranfordLass

Hi there - I have 82 years on my lease and had my flat up for sale for a couple of months. I had a a handful of lowish offers, but all asked about a lease extension so I would recommend you look into this sooner rather than later. In the end, I accepted an offer and have started the extension request as this was requested before completion. It has delayed the process and added extra worry, so I would recommend anyone to renew before selling as I think in some cases it does make the property more saleable. Also, beware of the 80 year limit when you start to pay marriage value and the premium can rocket. Good luck!