Leasehold to Freehold??

CountryGirl7676

Does anyone know how I would go about changin my house from a leasehold to a freehold? And also finding out how many years are left, how much it would cost to purchse the freehold??

Rach39

Why do you want to do this? If it's just so you don't have to pay ground rent any more you can buy out the ground rent by paying 9x your annual rent plus discharging any arrears and filling in a GR2 form to Land Registry (google buy out ground rent N Ireland for links to forms). However this does not buy out the full freehold and any covenants contained in your Lease will still apply. To purchase the full freehold you will need to negotiate with the owner of the freehold (the Lessor named on your Lease) who may let you purchase this for a nominal sum (or may look substantial money from you depending on the reasons you wish to buy!)

A.L.D.A

Most leases in NI have another 900 years to run. For most people what tangible benefits are there in purchase?

Mistral001

I bought out my lease and became freehold about 10 years ago. It cost me £200. That included legal fees. It saved me £8 a year. I have 12 years to go before it will start saving me any money. I bought it out because the landlord wanted rid of all the leases and asked me and all the other through a solicitor if I wanted to buy the freehold. The £8 was paid through a solicitor every year, so judging by how much solicitors charge the landlord might have been paying more to collect the money than he was getting. ie. I was doing the landlord a favour really.

I cannot see any benifits in it other than not having to pay £8 a year.

Why do you want to buy it?

CountryGirl7676

Just wondering as I was told that after the lease is up, even if you own the house the person who owns the lease can ask you to leave as they still own the ground??? Not sure how true this is though??? Bit concerning if it's true, so wanted to find out how many years are left and if there's 900 or so then no worries

RikM

It's a bit different over here, where even the houses are leasehold.
But then leases I encountered in England on flats were generally 130 years or less. And when they get down below 80 years or so, it starts to affect the price people are willing to pay when you resell.

My first reaction on seeing it over here was "how do you buy it out?". But I haven't got around to it yet...

Mistral001

CountryGirl7676 wrote: »

Just wondering as I was told that after the lease is up, even if you own the house the person who owns the lease can ask you to leave as they still own the ground??? Not sure how true this is though??? Bit concerning if it's true, so wanted to find out how many years are left and if there's 900 or so then no worries

This is quite true, but in NI the leases are usually 999 year leases. In England they are as little as 99 years which means that if you held on to it for a long time it could affect the price as other above have said.

muckypupz123

8 years ago we had to buy our land as the landlord was being an idiot and was going to charge us £200 for building an extension on the land. If we had got a new garage built that would be another £200 it went on and on and on
We paid £800 for our land, Im now thinking we were over priced? There was no land rent paid before we made it lease hold