Has anyone heard of 2 Freeholds on 1 property?

Jax13_2

I live in the upstairs flat of a maisonette. The yrs remaining on the lease is down to less than 60, so wanted to renew lease or purchase freehold. I have just found freeholder (he was absentee) but have just realised that there are 2 Freeholds the one building! I thought that the freehold related to the land that the property was on, therefore how could there be 2 seperate freeholds for each flat, if one flat is on top of the other?

Please help! Any assistance would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

Richard_Webster

It is a common misunderstanding that "freehold" refers to land whereas "leasehold" is for buildings. Leasehold is about a length of time that you have rights of possession of the property in question. This can vary from a monthly tenancy to 1000 years or more.

It is technically possible for there to be freeholds of different levels of the same building.

Where is the flat?

It could be a flat that uses the "Tyneside" or "Criss-Cross" scheme.

What happens with this scheme is that you get a lease of the flat that you occupy and your freeholder has the lease of the other flat above or below yours and you own the freehold of their flat. So if this is the case and you have found the freeholder of your flat you can ask him to extend your lease and offer in exchange to extend his lease.

If you also own the freehold of your flat and the other freehold is of the other flat is owned by the other flat owner then you do have a problem and both flats should be unmortgageable. This could have happened because the flats were originally sold separately freehold (unmortgageable - except with some lenders if the flats are in the Scarborough area) and some clever person thought they could disguise the freehold nature of the flat by creating a lease. In my view this doesn't solve the problem inherent in having "pure" freehold flats. (Just in case anyone gets confused, "shared freehold" is not the same thing.)

The previously mentioned Tyneside scheme does not have this defect because you are not your own freeholder. This means if e.g you own the lease of the upper flat and the roof needs repairs and the lower flat owner is concerned about it he can enforce covenants in your lease against you and you can do the same if e.g. the lower part of the structure needs attention. This isn't so easy when there are separate freeholds.

Jax13_2

Thanks for your reply Richard!

Answers to your question: The property is in the borough of Lewisham and it's definitely a Criss Cross scheme....but here comes the 'BUT'!

There are 4 different names on the LH and FH.

I own LH for upper flat
New owner for the LH for lower flat.
Original occupier of lower flat is the FH for the U/F (I have located them)
Original occupier of U/F is the FH for the L/F. (Absentee)

The F/H for my (upper) flat as agreed in principal to sell me the FH but I don't know the 'real' value of it. I'm not sure what it's worth or whether it's a truly valid without the F/H for the bottom flat.

I do hope this makes sense, because it as surely baffled me!

Once again, Thanks for any assistance you can give.

Richard_Webster

You need to check it is Criss Cross.

There is an interesting variation that is a disaster - where some bright spark created two separate freehold flats at some point in the past and either because mortgages weren't needed or lenders were less fussy yaers ago, it didn't matter. When the flat owners woke up to the problem they tried to solve it by creating leases of the flats that could then be sold - on the principle that having a lease is a good thing!

Buyers' solicitors should have checked that the freehold was either on a Criss-Cross basis or was of the whole building, but frequently they didn't.

These days unless it is Criss Cross or the freehold of the whole building is in the same ownership it is unmortgageable.

When you bought your solicitor should not have allowed you to buy this flat without the freehold of the other flat if was clearly intended to be Criss-Cross. If the freeholder of your flat was absent that could have been cured by an indemnity policy (although not all lenders will accept them) but your solicitor should have spotted the fatal flaw that there were two separate freeholds so I would say he was negligent.

I am not sure that you want to buy the freehold of your flat - that just gives you an unmortgageable flat - you need the freehold of the other flat. OK I suppose you and a friend could buy the freehold so as to extend the lease (mustn't have same names on freehold and leasehold of the same property) - but that doesn't really solve the problem.

Either if it is set up as Criss Cross the other flat lessee must acquire your freehold and you his, or both freeholds have to be acquired and merged into one title in shared ownership. It is not going to be straightforward and not something I would want to get into, I'm afraid. If you PM me with your location I might be able to give you some names of people who may be able to help.

Or auction your flat - hope some twerp doesn't check things properly and buys it and then sue your old solicitors for the losses incurred.

puddy

its not a criss cross in new cross is it!!!

but seriously, reading all these threads on here at the moment about leaseholds and freeholds etc, why on earth are we still doing things this way. is it like this abroad where they have lots of apartment buildings? it seems to make things so complicated