Buy Your Freehold - guide discussion

Martiangirl

eddddy wrote: »

You would probably purchase the freehold of the entire property - including gardens and parking.

As freeholders, you could choose your gardeners and choose how parking is enforced (unless the lease says otherwise).

But you cannot change the terms of anyone's lease - unless they agree.

As freeholders, you would have to honour all terms in the lease - unless the leaseholders agree otherwise.


i.e If all 4 leaseholders agree not to survey / repaint every 4 years - that's fine.

But if a new leaseholder buys a flat and wants survey / repaint every 4 years (and that's what it says in the lease), you'd have to do it.

You could avoid that by varying all the leases now (if the leaseholders all agree), then any new leaseholders would be bound by the new terms - but there would be legal costs.

I ve just looked at my lease terms.. the ground rent is really high!..£200 pa first 33 years, £400 pa next 33 years and £800 last 33 years...does this mean that for 87 left years I will need to pay £66000 plus interest for freehold?..If that is so I cant afford it is there some kind of legislation in the making to stop these steep ground rents going forward?

cheesemason

I am in the process of buying my freehold, and the person who currently owns it is asking for a copy of my passport, two utility bills and my national insurance number

Does he really need all this? Especially my national insurance number. Cant see why he'd need it?

Thanks for your help

embrams69

I have a first floor flat in a converted victorian terrace house in London. The owner of the ground floor flat is the Freeholder. The lease remaining on my property is less than 70 years so extending will cost 10s of thousands. :mad:

Would I be better off trying to purchase a 50% share in the freehold? What if the freeholder doesn't want to sell?

Grateful for any advice on what I should do to try and resolve this.

phedders

Hello,

First time poster here...

We've just completed on a leasehold flat, the top one of two in a Victorian house conversion. The current freeholder owns (and rents out) the bottom flat and is unwilling to consider selling part of the freehold to us.

I know that to force a sale of the freehold you need over 50% of the flats to agree. Obviously there are only two flats in the building, but our purchase of the property includes an extra lease for the loft space, which means we own 2/3 of the leases on the property. Our thoughts are that this may be (or may have previously been) considered a separate property, legally giving us 66.6% of the total property?

My question is - is this enough to force through a sale of the freehold? Or does it come down to the registered addresses (of which we have only one)?

I'm sure it wouldn't make us popular with the current freeholder, but just exploring some future possibilities. Looking forward to hearing some thoughts...

Many thanks.

Joanthebone

Found this on the Leasehold Advisory Service website:

Exceptions to the right to buy the freehold :

No right for leaseholders to buy the freehold if the building is:
a conversion into four or fewer flats and
it is not a purpose-built block and
the same person has owned the freehold since before the conversion took place and
they, or an adult member of their family, has lived there for the past 12 months,

Its worth having a look at their website, lots more information on there.

Dave_52

Our RA have been doing a lot of research around the possibility of buying the freehold of the 9 apartments in our block or simply acquiring the RTM. Apart from the financial aspects we'd like to understand the additional (i.e. over and above the RTM) benefits, risks,responsibilities of going for the Enfranchisement option. ideally to be able to discuss with someone who has actually been through this process. Can anyone help here

mmbar

Hi everyone,

First time poster here. I did purchase my flat in November 2017, it is part of a large complex with many buildings and flats. At the time of purchase, the agent told me that shares of freehold were on offer and that I could buy it after completing the transaction. When I did finally complete the purchase, I logged into the online portal of the management company and found the form used to request the purchase of the share of freehold. I did fill-in the form and posted it to the management company as requested, they responded that those shares of freehold were no longer on offer, that they forgot the form on their online portal and that they would take it out.

My question now is, do I have the right to force them to sell the share of freehold? If not, can I blame the estate agent for telling me the shares of freehold were on offer before completing the purchase? For reference, the leasehold has 93 years left. This is in London.

Thank you.

sylvb33

Hi Everyone

I applied to buy the freehold of my house in April 2017 a price was agreed and I paid them £3750 I didn’t hear from them for a number of months, I made a number of phone calls wanting a date for completion. They then said the land registry wanted proof of my identity so I went to my solicitor and he provided an affidavit for them. Eventually  they sent me the transfer document last year I think it was a T1 form but I am still waiting for the Land Registry to finalise the sale. It is now over 3 years what can I do to expedite matters I feel even with the Coronavirus this has gone on for far too long? Please can anyone help?

Thank

Sylvia 

Joanthebone

Did you do this through a solicitor, or just use a solicitor for the affidavit?

Wranglehart

Hi all, quick question with hopefully a simple answer:

We are considering selling our flat and it has become apparent that our lease length of 85 years may become a problem for would be buyers. We are the only flat in the block who do not own a share of the freehold, the management company having bought in in 2011 and shared out among the 9 flats for 999 years.

What we are interested in is starting the process off (the management company seem happy for us to buy in) and adding the buyer of our flat in name on the share of the freehold. This way we’re hoping the cost of buying in won’t put off potential buyers as they’ll have the share of the freehold at the time of completion on the sale.

Does anyone know or have any experience of whether this would be possible, easy, difficult etc?

Thanks!
C