Selling my flat with only 75 year lease

jessicacox3

Hi,

I wonder if anyone can help - I am looking to sell my one bedroom flat and have a couple of questions:

I have just realised that there is only 75 years left on the lease. Will this cause problems? Am I better to be honest about it to potential buyers?

Also, I have had two estate agents round and they are charging a flat fee of £1,500 and £2,000 - is this normal and would I be able to get cheaper?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!!

sirmosh

At 75 years someone will be able to buy it but it depends whether anyone is willing to as they're almost certainly going to have to extend the lease before they sell. Of course some people may be unaware of this and just buy it although their conveyancer should warn them of this.

Gromitt

Unless your flat is something special, I'd expect a typical non-highstreet EA to charge about £400. Highstreet EAs I'd expect >£1K.

Slinky

Gromitt wrote: »

Unless your flat is something special, I'd expect a typical non-highstreet EA to charge about £400. Highstreet EAs I'd expect >£1K.

We sold our flat 18 months for £91K and we had two agents wanting to charge £1500+VAT and the one we settled on charged 1%+VAT because he'd sold it to us a few years earlier.

Can't see any agent bothering to get out of bed for £400.

cattie

Yes, you must be honest about it to potential buyers & really it would be for the best if you can get the EA to agree to mention the lease length in the blurb, as this way, potential buyers will know from the off what the situation is. The length might put some people off, but it's still got enough years remaining for a mortgage to be granted on the property. Sadly, it costs more to extend or renew the lease when less than 80yrs remain, so the length of lease will affect the price you will achieve for the property.

With regards to the EA fee, you need to work out if you want to go for a flat fee or for a percentage of the achieved price. If a percentage, then it should be easy to negotiate a 1% deal in this day & age, but you need to be aware that vat is added to that.

jessicacox3

Thanks for your help guys!

Richard_Webster

Problem is that even if you are honest and estate agents mention in their particulars that there are only 75 years left a lot of potential buyers will make an offer and have it accepted and then a month down the track their solicitors will explain the significance of it all to them and then they will back out.

If you go over the top and get the agents to explain in detail the downsides of a 75 year lease then they will frighten buyers off completely, unless it is so competitively priced that the buyer realises that it is good deal even after factoring in the cost of a lease extension in the near future. .