Victorian building...being a freeholder helps?

kmmr

london-dog wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies guys. Yes propertyman of course you're right re what freehold relates to, as separate from lease of flat.

Am thinking that becoming a joint freeholder may be an unnecessary burden...what I really need are guarantees from my potential landlord that he will do up the building facade and communal areas.

There is no way to guarantee that someone else will do what they are meant to. I would buy into the freehold without question, and would go further and say I wouldn't buy the leasehold without buying into the freehold. I am looking for flats now, and share of freehold is increasingly becoming something I won't compromise on.

Why?

1. Share of freehold properties are almost always better maintained, as the owners have an interest in the look of the building.
2. You run the risk (very high risk with a developer) that they will sell the freehold later to a company who specialise in buying freeholds. They tend to be very rigid, have high fees for everything and hard to deal with. I have recently stopped the purchase of a flat (after investing also £2k in the process) when I realised that the freeholder was looking for extra money at every turn.
3. Running the freehold betwen the owners isn't that much work, and probably less work than messing around with a private company who want to charge for every discussion.

It depends on the people, but with both flats I own the leaseholders work together to make things run smoothly. It's not a lot of work, the odd chat about sharing costs for some work outside etc, and arranging insurance. We also extended all our leases to 999 years just for the cost of some legal work.

So, I would say 100% buy into the freehold company. To me it's a massive advantage to have the option.