Extend Your Lease guide discussion

jan2372

Can anyone give me advice. I have just bought a flat with 81 years on lease. Flat cost £115k and I pay £20 pa ground rent. I cant renew lease officially for 2 years by which time we will have crossed the 80 year barrier so price will go up.
I contacted freeholder who offered informal deal of increase in ground rent to £250 pa in exchange I get increase in lease to 125 years.
The ground rent would be reviewed every 10 years and increased in line with inflation ? (RPI) so minimum of 3%
The other option is to wait two years and then negotiate (their quote is £7000)
I like the idea of spreading the cost but is this he best option really?

SKPatel

Hello Jan2372,

Initially i would suggest you seek advice from a specialist surveyor about the terms you have been offered. In particular the revised ground rent.

Will you also be responsible for the freeholder's costs for the lease extension? If so, it might be an idea to ask how much their costs will be so you can include these in your budget.

Good luck!

ledwards26

Hi, i'm am a prospective buyer of a property which has a 57 year lease remaining.
The current ground rent is £50 a year, what would the expected cost be to purchase the lease to convert the property into freehold?
The property value is £176,000 and the property is a house

SKPatel

Hello ledwards26,

You will need acquire the freehold of the house first and then 'merge' the leasehold title so you are left with a freehold house.

Unforunately, the legislation for leasehold houses is quite dated and vague! You will need to obtain a valuation from a surveyor experienced in this area to give you an idea of what the cost could be.

You can then either approach the freeholder and ask if they will sell you the freehold or, if not, you can serve a notice on them requesting they sell you the freehold.

Good luck!

spindriftrecords

I paid £30,000 fo extend my lease from 76 year's to 99.it is a one bed maisonet in harrow £50. Pa ground rent.property valued at 125 grand with 76 year lease.plus survey and legal costs.was I ripped off.I have sold the property.is it too late to appeal

AndyGuil

Use the calculator on here. http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/mortgages/extend-your-lease
This will give you the cost to add 90 years to your existing lease and have peppercorn ground rent.

liam1989

had some good news the other day. my solicitor advised me that the freeholder has accepted my offer of £5,700 (the figure my surveyor supplied me with).

cant tell you how happy i am. this has been on my mind for over two years now and when i saw that he wanted initally 16k, i felt this was going to be a long drawn out process.

just want to thank all those on here who have supplied me with some useful information over the last couple of years.

never again in my life will i buy a leasehold property

buglawton

The magic threshold of 80 years gets mentioned a lot, once a lease has less than 80 years left you have to pay a 'marriage value' to the freeholder.

Strange thing is, when I played with the calculator, there's no difference shown between the 2 calculations 79 or 81 years left on a lease and extend by 90.

jackwatson_2

Hello,

I am looking at buying a flat at auction for me and my girlfriend to move into. We have enough between us to buy the flat outright, but the property only has 43 years remaining on the lease - which we are expecting to cost around £40-50,000 to extend (plus solicitors fees).

This is money we don't have, and due to the short lease we are not eligible for a mortgage which we would use solely to extend the lease. Also applying for a personal loan for that much doesn't look promising.

So, I was wondering if there are any other options that might be available to us? Would it be possible, for example, to release equity from the property if we were to own it, and pay the extension off using that?

Thanks very much for any help!

Jack

turtleneck

Hi Jack
I think you have answered your own question, if you aren't eligible for a mortgage on the property, then I don't think you will be able to release any equity from it. It sounds like it would be better for you to buy a property with a long lease already and just take out a mortgage on that?