Buying a property without lease documents and missing landlord

eruner1

Hi, I am hoping that someone would please help me with my query.
There is a repossession flat that I am interested in buying. It is registered with the land registry and have approximately 123 years outstanding lease on it. The problem is that the freeholder is extremely incooperative and there are no lease documents available.

The estate agents have informed me that it is quite common with repossession properties and that solicitors would need to take some indemnity policies to cover the missing landlord and missing lease documents.

I intend to sell this property in few years time, so wondering if this issue would be a problem in selling the property to cash and/or mortgage buyers? and if there may be any other related issues that might disbenefit me??

I would be very grateful for your help. Many Thanks

socrates

eruner1 wrote: »

Hi, I am hoping that someone would please help me with my query.
There is a repossession flat that I am interested in buying. It is registered with the land registry and have approximately 123 years outstanding lease on it. The problem is that the freeholder is extremely incooperative and there are no lease documents available.

The estate agents have informed me that it is quite common with repossession properties and that solicitors would need to take some indemnity policies to cover the missing landlord and missing lease documents.

I intend to sell this property in few years time, so wondering if this issue would be a problem in selling the property to cash and/or mortgage buyers? and if there may be any other related issues that might disbenefit me??

I would be very grateful for your help. Many Thanks

Forget the whole thing.

The agents advised me .... of course they would say that.

Speak to a solicitor and see what they say.

When you have done all that the banks will not lend to you anyway.

A good way to test this is to ask the lender that is repossessing - if they will give you a mortgage on the property in question.....

m_13

When you say 'missing landlord' what do you mean? If you mean missing freeholder then you may find it very difficult to get the property transferred to you and maintenance to be done. Many headleases state that no transfers of leases can take place without the permission of the freeholder or Management Company and no indemnity policy can get around this!

The lease documents for a leasehold property should be held at the Land Registry. There will be one document covering the whole building plus individual leasehold titles for each of the flats. If the property was sold under the terms of the lease then a copy of the lease should be held.

We bought a repossession property earlier this year and the Land Registry indeed did have copies of the lease along with plans of the building marking out our flat, our bin space and our parking space.