House Buying - issues with lease and underpinning

Cosmopolitan

Hello

I'm wondering if anyone here has any experiance or adivce they can offer with my current situation.

Basically myself and OH found a property we liked (first time buyers) and after 2 viewings put in an offer a bit below the asking price which was accepted - yay:j

Now we have a couple of issues which I can't quite get my head around.

1. The property was under pinned in the 90's (can't remeber exactly when off the top of my head) however the current owners knew nothing about this so our solicitors are struggling to get any paper work relating to the underpinning. The place we are buying is a ground floor maisonnette on the end of a row and apparently is the only one of the row to be underpinned. At the moment I believe our solicitors are trying to contact the solicitors the sellers used when they purchased the property to see if they can shed any light on this.
Would the fact the property has been underpinned stop you from buying? I am aware that getting buildings insurance could be difficult but as this property was advertised as leasehold with a share of freehold I believe the buildings insurance comes through a montly service charge we pay? I am inclined to say that if all the paperwork can be located saying it has all been done properly then it wouldnt really be too much of an issue.

2. We have had a problem with the lease on this property. This is where I am very confused. As fas as I can understand there is what is called a Head Lease between the landlord and the Management Company and an Underlease between the people living there and the landlord. Both these leases are currently 69yrs which is not enough for our mortgage company and there were problems in getting the head lease extended - basically their solicitors refused to discuss it. Yesterday afternoon I got an email from our solicitors who said if the current people would terminate their underlease and take out a new lease on the same terms (just extending the time left on it) then at completion when the property is transferred to our names all reference to the head lease and underlease will be taken off the land registry(?) records and it wouldn't cause any problems in future for us. Would this be ok do you think and would there be problems for us when we come to sell?

I apologise for the length of this post and if any of it doesn't make sense I will try and clarify the best I can. If anyone can provide any help or adivce it would be greatfully appreciated.

Thanks

richardw

I wouldn't buy it with any kind of lease of 69 years.
How long will it take to sort the lease issues out? If too long, perhaps just look at other properties.

Cosmopolitan

Thanks Richardw, unless the lease thing gets sorted we can't buy it, the mortgage company just won't accept it. But I think the lease extension is on the way to being sorted out.

We have been looking online at other properties and have just thisk morning come across one exactly the same and just a couple of doors down from the original one - just waiting for the estate agents to confirm the lease details on that one.