Just bought freehold of leasehold house .....

grnglide

Paid for freehold of the leasehold house we recently purchased (Chancery St James were the agents, Freehold Properties were the freeholder) and we have got a signed TR1 transfer document for the freehold and an AP1 to complete - seems quite simple!

However, does this mean that we own both the freehold AND the leasehold (we now have the original copy of the lease from Freehold Properties), does the Land Registry remove the link between the two entries when we send them the TR1 or do we have to do something more?

Having looked at the Land Registry site the properties on either side of us both show both a freehold and a leasehold entry but when we considered one of the properties we were told that it was freehold. Some of the properties in the area just show the one freehold entry but most show the leasehold as well when we would expect leaseholders to buy the lease to get rid of the dreaded Chancery St James!

Having said that the lease is for 999 years with the vast majority left (of course!).

Any advice please?

princeofpounds

Your description of your situation is not clear. If you buy the freehold, the house remains leasehold, you just happen to own both. They don't 'merge'. If that's what you are asking.

Lazy EA's might describe a property as 'freehold' when it is in fact a package of a leasehold and a freehold. This is almost the same as being freehold, except for some legal technicalities.

sonastin

I bought a leasehold house then bought the freehold about 4 years later. When I sold 4 years after that, I sold it as "freehold" - but made it clear to the solicitor that there were 2 titles. Just did a quick LR search and there are still 2 entries for my old property so I guess it continued as a bundle of freehold+leasehold.

Provided both entries are in your name, I'd forget about it until it is time to sell. When you're selling, make sure that the solicitors know about both elements before they quote or they could use the excuse that there is more work involved to put up their price.

Richard_Webster

You can apply to "merge" the leasehold into the freehold and get rid of the leasehold title altogether but I would generally be wary of doing this as sometimes there are minor rights etc that only exist in the leasehold and get "lost" if the two titles are merged.

For instance, in my area the right to use a back access way generally isn't transferred when the freehold when this is purchased even though it exists for the remainder of 999 yaers in the lease, so best to keep the lease in a theoretical kind of existence to deal with this sort of point when the property is sold.

If you own both, it doesn't really make any difference in practice and certainly isn't anything to worry about - you are your own landlord.

propertyman

I wouldn't disagree with that. In the long term it might confuse a buyer and most certainly the estate agent, so before the solicitor closes the file ask them to look at the lease for the issues Richard refer to and if there are none, then all you need do is surrender the lease and file the paperwork at HMLR.

Bear in mind your mortgagee ( or any other security) will have lent on the lease and therefore they will need to be involved and to re-mortgage the freehold house. It might ruin your current deal or it might be chance to a get a new one.


Bit I would have hoped your solicitor had explained all that....

grnglide

The purchase of the leasehold has been completed and the purchase of the freehold was arranged by the vendors solicitors (and checked by ours!) and we sent the forms off as soon as the leasehold purchase was complete.

Since no solicitors are now involved we will leave the "bundle" as it currently is but it is useful to know what the situation is and why properties we thought were freehold has a leasehold title.

Should we ever sell the property (no plans for that ever but we thought the same about the previous house which is currently being demolished due to coal mining subsidence!!!) we can consider merging them.

Thanks for the help.