Freeholder holding up the sale of my flat

Nick75011

Hi there,

Here is the story:

I'm selling my flat 1st floor of an old building (leasehold) and the freeholder leave below on the ground floor.
I have accepted an offer, everything's going ok when the freeholder solicitors replied to buyer's question about our floor and some noise. First time we have been mentionned that.
The buyer wanted to meet the freeholder which I arranged and now the freeholder told them that because of that noise they want our flat to be totally recarpeted. Obviously it didnt go very well with the buyer.
To explain, I bought my flat a year ago with 2 rooms with wooden floor and I put wooden floor in two other rooms. THe lease states that the flat should be fully carpeted or deadsoundening.
I have made sure that when i installed wooden floor I used a very good insulation materials.
The wooden floor in the flat have been there before I bought it more than a year ago for 2 rooms and since Nov09 for the two others and I have never been told by the freeholder even verbally that there was a problem.

What should I do now? I'm losing the sale, and I feel that I depend totally on the good/bad will of the freeholder.

So far I have played it nice and try to understand and suggest solutions to move on such.

Thanks for any advice, help on that, I would really appreciate

Chinkle

Wooden floors in converted flats are generally noisy which is why many leases prohibit them. Coupled with this the freeholder is the one who lives downstairs experiencing this noise. He has every right to ask you to comply with the lease whether you're selling or not.

However, there's a simple solution talk to you're buyer about putting down carpets. You may need to negotiate on who pays and when the work is done, but this situation isn't a dead end.