Flat purchase with share of freehold BUT previous owner untraceable...

blueberry28

Hi all,

I am in the process of buying a flat which was repossessed from the previous owner. The previous owner had share of the freehold with the owners of the flat upstairs. My solicitor has told me that the seller's (ie the mortgage company who repossessed the flat) solicitor doesn't have a forwarding address for the previous owner, which creates a problem for getting the freehold share transferred to my name. My solicitor has said there are a couple of options for trying to arrange transfer of the freehold share to my name in the absence of contact/permission from the previous owner, all of which sounded fairly lengthy and/or expensive. I am very keen to get the sale completed as soon as possible, and this is the only thing holding it up. Therefore my questions are:

1. Has anyone been in a similar position and if so how was it resolved?

2. Would it be viable for me to try to complete the sale anyway, and then seek to sort out the freehold issue afterwards?

Any advice gratefully received!

Thanks

Richard_Webster

Will your lender accept an indemnity policy in respect of a missing landlord? If not, then I am not sure you can proceed at all.

This is a standard problem with "shared freeholds" where the freehold is literally owned by the individual flat owners rather than through a company. I always warn buyers of such flats that this could happen to them. Ideally they should try to get the freehold transferred to a jointly owned company but usually nobody thinks this will happen to them, and they don't want to spend the money.

First thing is to talk to the remaining freeholder and see how keen he is to sort things out and how much money he is prepared to spend on it. He may not yet have realised that he will have a problem selling because of this issue in due course. Unless the penny seriously drops for him he is probably going to ignore it all or not understand, and you seriously need his co-operation if you are going to even start sorting it out. If he won't co-operate then walk away.

I think you would start by trying to get the Land Registry (and if they won't accept it) the Courts (much more cost - think thousands) to accept that there was an implied trust of the freehold for it to be held for the benefit of the lessees for the time being of the two flats and for them to allow you to be appointed as a co-trustee with the remaining freeholder (the other person having deemed to have resigned as he can't be contacted) and therefore for your name to be registered at the Land Registry with the remaining freeholder as proprietors of the freehold title. I don't know how easy it is to do this and whether the Land Registry/courts automatically accept this or require more evidence of this implied trust.

I have never actually been down the route of trying to sort out this kind of mess - I generally tell people to avoid like the plague. Try http://www.landlordzone.co.uk/forums/ Long leasehold Board where there are some who may have actually sorted out one of these - Jeffrey Shaw in particular.

PasturesNew

Have you tried googling them? Facebook, etc. Pay a private investigator to find them?

blueberry28

Thanks Richard for the long and helpful response - I will check out the other forum you mention for advice, and that's also a useful suggestion about pointing out to the other freehold owner that it affects them too. My solicitor has been trying to find out from Land Registry how to resolve this situation and they seem a little vague - I can't believe this can be that much of an unusual situation that there is no standard procedure for dealing with it!

I did try Google for the previous owner, unfortunately she has a fairly common first name and surname so that didn't prove very helpful. Facebook is a good idea though, I think I need to broaden my avenues of enquiry!