Selling leasehold flat - freehold changed hands

shar46y

Hi, my first post here so I hope I can explain my situation properly! We are in the process of selling our ground floor flat and think we may have hit a problem.

There are only 2 flats in our building (ground floor and first floor purpose-built maisonettes). About 2 years ago, we got a letter from the then freeholders informing us that they were going to sell the freehold at auction and giving us right of first refusal. We decided not to buy the share of freehold because we were going through a complicated time in our lives. Our upstairs neighbour went to the auction and ended up buying the freehold! We get on very well with her so we were not concerned. On the advice of her solicitor, at the time she set up a company which is the "owner" of the freehold and through this she arranges the buildings insurance etc and we each pay half.

Now we are selling and we've been doing a bit of research and can't find a lot of information about this specific situation - the lease on our flat dates from many years ago and so obviously has the previous freeholder's name on it. Is this going to be a problem for our sale? It seems we should have been officially notified of the change of landlord but we never had this from our neighbour, so we have no documentation to give to our buyer's solicitor on this point.

I have asked the upstairs neighbour for copies of the paperwork relating to her purchase of the freehold and formation of the company, but she says our solicitor should contact her solicitor for this??

Is our flat sale doomed?:eek:

shar46y

Any thoughts? Anybody? Pretty please???:(

G_M

Check the Land Registry. £4.00. Search for the address and select the freehold, not leasehold Title. (for an extra £4 each you can check the two leasehold Titles too if you are interested).

Who is named? That is the current Freeholder.

shar46y

G_M wrote: »

Check the Land Registry[/URL].

Thanks, but I don't see how that will help? I know who the freeholder is, she's my neighbour. I just don't have my hands on the relevant paperwork to show this. So my lease (dating from 1979 or something) does not have her name on it. Surely the buyer's solicitor will find this problematic?

G_M

The buyer's solicitor will rely on the Land Registry to verify who owns the Freehold. That's what the LR is for! To keep a record of who owns what property!

As long as the neighbour registered his name with the LR when he bought the Freehold, you have no problem. And if he didn't, well, then he doesn't own it!

shar46y

Ahhh... Got it now, thank you! Feel relieved:)

Richard_Webster

The lease was the lease that was granted whenever it was granted. The same lease stays in existence and the name of the original landlord/lessor doesn't change because he was a party to that lease then.

The freehold title may well have changed hands and if you get a copy of the freehold Land Registry entries for your property it should show the name of the neighbour's company as the freeholder.

The leasehold title entries for your flat should show your names as the registered proprietors even though it will give details of the names of the original lessor and the original lessee in the Property Register.

Doesn't look as if you have anything to worry about, provided the lease is not too short, in which case you will have to ask the nice lady in the other flat for lease extension and then she may charge you!

shar46y

Thanks for the excellent info! No worries about the length of the lease, the previous owner had it extended already, so we have 164 years :j

Fingers crossed our sale is safely on track!