Purchasing house leasehold

dr_arsenic

I am interested in buying the leasehold of my house. The ground rent is £17 per annum and is on a 999 year lease granted in 1972. The lease is administered, but not owned, by a property management company called Estates and Management. This company charges exorbitant fees for planning consent for alterations, late payment, etc and I want nothing more to do with them. I only recently purchased the house and they keep sending me offers to sell the lease to me. The latest is £1060, which includes their legal and other costs, which I am legally required to pay, and a land registry fee of £50. I rang and asked them to break down the offer between the purchase price for the lease and their costs, but the person I spoke to, said she was unable to do this, but also suggested that I make a counter offer. I would like to do this, but feel that I am not in a position to do so. Can anyone answer these questions
1) Are they legally required to break down the offer into the cost of the lease and their legal and other costs?
2) Are they allowed to charge me any costs other than the legal costs (e.g. an admin fee)?
3) What sort of amount would a solicitor charge for the legal work involved? This company is based in London.
4) Is there any simple way of estimating what the lease is worth? I've seen the official way of valuing the lease, which seems to reguire specialist knowledge or a chartered surveyor to use.

I would appreciate any help with this.

[Deleted User]

Late payment charges? You should be paying on time. Who do you think has to pay the bills for you in the management of where you live? Are you another `something for nothing` type?

Welsh_Totster

So what do you own then exactly, the Freehold?

Richard_Webster

I am interested in buying the leasehold of my house.

So what do you own then exactly, the Freehold?

Isn't it pretty obvious that OP has (as is often the case) got it the wrong way round and is talking about buying the freehold when he owns the long leasehold. If he owned the freehold and was buying the lease then he would paying a five or six figure sum for it!

The problem here for OP is the cost of challenging it. Possibly the freehold is actually worth £200-£500 and with legal costs added the lowest figure might be around £500. OP also has his own legal costs which could be anything from £300-£500. Trouble is that a surveyor is going to charge around £500 to produce evidence to the LVT of value if OP wants to challenge the figure so he is scarcely likely to be much better off.

It will depend a bit where the property is. In many places if you advertise a long leasehold house for sale, a significant number of potential buyers won't look at it purely because it is leasehold and their Auntie Maud had a flat that was leasehold and had problems with it. If the agents are vague about the type of tenure, the buyer gets cross when he discovers later it is leasehold and thinks that the seller is trying to con him so wants something off the price.

So my own view is that by all means try to get the figure down a bit, but in the big picture you have to ask whether it is worth arguing about a few hundred pounds when having the freehold will get them off your back and make the property easier to sell in the future.

In answer to the specific questions OP raises:

1 & 2. They can do what they like unless you go through the statutory route of compelling a sale - but this will cost you in legal and surveyor's time.

3. If in London quite possibly around £400-£600.

4. No - the figures I gave above are rough guesses.

Welsh_Totster

Thats what I thought Richard, that the OP was talking about purchasing the freehold, but after reading it a few times I got more confused! Going back to my Land Registry days I was doubting myself regarding freeholds and Leaseholds lol