lease shorter than told

continualdiamond

My boyfriend and i are right at the end of the house buying process. Where due to sign eveything on Monday. I get home from work to have a message saying the lease isn't for 75 years but for 69.

How on earth can people get this wrong to start with? The property was advertised with 75 years remaining and even on my print out of the property, with pictures and room dimensions etc, it says 75 years on the front.

The vendor is not in a position finacially to extend the lease and if we weren't happy with the 69 years then we'd have to pull out.

Well i refuse to do that, its the perfect place for us.

But will this affect anything?

I've rang my solictors and they have said it won't affect anything, just we'd have to consider extending at some point when we live in it to benefit us when we want to move.


But im also now wondering does it affect my mortgage offer?

Doozergirl

Have you already had the mortage offer? The solicitor will have to pass details over of the lease, so if it isn't okay, you'd probably have found out by now.

Some mortgage companies won't accept less than 70 years, some 65, some less but we had no problem at all obtaining a mortgage with 63 years left on the lease. Our is with The Mortgage Business, part of Halifax.

Better check with your solicitor. I should imagine you will definately need to extend the lease after you've been there 2 years - you'd probably need to do it if the lease were 75 years aswell, TBH.

continualdiamond

Already had the mortgage offer, yes, got that a week ago. Booked the appt yesterday to sign everything for next Mon and nothing was mentioned of this lease issue.

When i rang my solictors about it, they were also requesting to have it all amended in writing.

So due to me having a mortgage offer based on the 75 years, does it make it invalid or something stupid like that?

Doozergirl

If the mortgage company think it's 75 years, then yes, it would invalidate the offer because it will be in the conditions. Doesn't mean to say they won't still be happy, but your solicitor has a duty to get these things right.

Are you sure your solicitor didn't know as if you're ready to sign now, I'd assume they'd already checked over the lease.

linfield

We bought our house 8 years ago.
Bought the lease 2 years ago.
The landlords wanted at £6000 at first, so we offered £1,500. We had a reply saying they would accept £2,995. So we grabbed it.
Buy the lease as soon as you can because it increases in price as time goes by.
If we had bought the lease when we bought the house it was only £1000.

Tony

Doozergirl

linfield wrote:

We bought our house 8 years ago.
Bought the lease 2 years ago.
The landlords wanted at £6000 at first, so we offered £1,500. We had a reply saying they would accept £2,995. So we grabbed it.
Buy the lease as soon as you can because it increases in price as time goes by.
If we had bought the lease when we bought the house it was only £1000.

Tony

Thanks for this; we've just had a silly quote for the extension and it shows there's hope for us!

epoman

linfield wrote:

We bought our house 8 years ago.
Bought the lease 2 years ago.
The landlords wanted at £6000 at first, so we offered £1,500. We had a reply saying they would accept £2,995. So we grabbed it.
Buy the lease as soon as you can because it increases in price as time goes by.
If we had bought the lease when we bought the house it was only £1000.

Tony

Sorry, don't mean to be pedantic, but you mean the freehold surely?

EdInvestor

Plenty of info about extening leases and buying freeholds and how to value them here:

https://www.lease-advice.org.uk

One thing that's worth mentioning is that the first offer for a lease extension is usually for a very long period -eg up to 199 years.You can often get the price reduced by negotiating a cut in the term to say 125 years, which is perfectly acceptable.

Worried

I don't think you should be paying what you offered orginally if the lease is 6 years less than you were told! Alright on a 75 year lease you would probably need to extend the lease before selling anyway, but a 75 year lease is cheaper to extend than a 69 year one. I would knock a few grand off what you're paying for the property, but easy to say, not so easy to do when you love a place and don't want to risk losing it. Seems so unfair that you should pay the same for the property, as if it was marketed with a 69 year lease, I bet it would have been marketed at a slightly lower price to reflect the term of the lease.

hedgehogpenguin

is it more expensive to purchase the freehold than extend the lease to,say, 99 years ?

Doozergirl

hedgehogpenguin wrote:

is it more expensive to purchase the freehold than extend the lease to,say, 99 years ?

Probably. You will also have to club together with the other flats to purchase the freehold, so it depends on the politics within the block and the length of other people's leases.

I would ask for a quote on both, to compare.