Can I Contact The Vendor's Freeholder?

arbrighton

Ulfar wrote: »

There is nothing wrong with you contacting the vendor as you are ultimately negotiating a deal with them.

Where you would come unstuck is contacting their solicitor or freeholder directly, both of whom do not have a business relationship with you and do have a duty of care for the vendor who they do have a relationship with.

In fact if they were to discuss any of the facts with you they would be in breach of data protection as the information is the vendors.

They did contact the freeholder. As per thread title.

Ulfar

A freeholder cannot discuss the current leaseholder or their lease with a third party. That is a data protection breach. Has it happened in the past, yes but it shouldn't. After all you need no qualifications to be a freeholder just as you don't to be an estate agent.

This is why these sorts of questions should go via solicitors as the vendor's solicitor would provide the details and verification once obtained from the freeholder.

The OP's topic title is can he contact the Vendor's freeholder, the answer he is he can but they would have to be extremely careful in what information they provide, it certainly can't contain any data that is specific to the vendor or their lease.

They certainly wouldn't be under any obligation to reply and the vendor certainly wouldn't be under any obligation to pay any charges they choose to levy for the information.

Richard_Webster

I don't think there is a problem in contacting the freeholder - if only to get him to deal with any questions the buyer's solicitors may have sent to the seller's solicitor for the freeholder to answer.

If he has been slow in answering them then there's no real data protection issues - simply "You had a questionnaire from [Name of Seller's solicitor], please answer it ASAP."

Sometimes the delay is caused because the freeholder wants a fee for answering and the seller is arguing about paying.