First time buyer - unexpected costs help please

Aphasia

Hi all,

This is my first post, but I've been lurking and reading for a while and soaking up the good advice.

My wife and I are buying our first flat south of London.

We found a flat in May, offered mid-May with this accepted. The vendors had started the process of a lease extension. The cost of this was confirmed not too long afterwards. Our mortgage was approved at the beginning of October, and we're still waiting for a first glance of the contract / lease.

I'm wondering if someone can help with this:
The freeholder wants to charge us a fee in order to answer some questions we sent through 2 months ago. Although it's only £150, i'm worried that this might be a sign of things to come further down the line - is this normal at this stage?

On top of this, the vendors are trying to pass on a cost of £2.5k for some works to the property which were recently completed without our knowledge or agreement.

It's taking a very long time, and we're starting to get a little disheartened.

Can anyone offer any advice or reference examples for our situation?

Thanks
Rich

Fire_Fox

Welcome! It's normal for the freeholder to charge for answering queries. It is not normal for the outgoing leaseholder to charge the incoming leaseholder for recent major works, this should be accounted for the in the overall value/ price you pay!

Why is it taking so long, have you been contacting the estate agent and your solicitor each week? Why did your mortgage offer take five months? Why haven't you seen the long lease?

Aphasia

Thanks! We applied for the mortgage mid-July. This took a while because my partner is self-employed, and I some issues with my credit card habits. So that took a while to sort out.

We've been in contact regularly. The other solicitors seem to be very slow and like snail mail. And general blame seems to be on the lease extension.

I'm wondering whether the freeholder is just super slow. He's had the questions for a while, and only now decides that there is a charge to answer them.

Is it normal that we see a first draft of a lease, even if our solicitor has made some amendments and sent it back?

Fire_Fox

IMO snail mail is not unreasonable for legal work and doesn't explain the delays. There are timescales to lease extension, either the leaseholder was telling porkies about when the process started or the freeholder is indeed super slow. Try chasing the outgoing leaseholder via the estate agent, have them chase the freeholder and their solicitor.
Have you read this site? http://www.lease-advice.org/publications/

First draft of lease or contract of sale? Generally no I wouldn't think you'd need to see the first draft of anything. To be fair given you were super slow applying for your mortgage and your offer took five months you are not in a position to start throwing your weight around! Maybe the other side are not seeing you as a buyer that is keen to proceed and so not forcing the pace? Sometimes vendors won't shell out on legal fees until their buyer has a valuation or survey.