Leasehold purchase - lease length different from that stated by estate agent

propertyman

If we assume a value of £250000 and a ground rent of £150 to extend the lease now would cost £1000 to £5000, depending on what ground rent is set at or the length of extension.

That range will gradually increase, so your argument that buying a flat with 121 years and 104 years does have difference, albeit small.

As G_M says, try and renegotiate.

All a vendor or EA has to do is check at HMLR on line. For £4 its not much more than a pint and less than some glasses of wine !

SleeplessinScandinavia

Good luck if you try and renegotiate.

I suspect the majority of EAs would take the view that they are ‘just passing on particulars supplied by vendors’ and its not necessarily ‘their job’ to check out the details. Many EAs particulars contain words like these:

IMPORTANT NOTE TO PURCHASERS: We endeavour to make our sales particulars accurate and reliable, however, they do not constitute or form part of an offer or any contract and none is to be relied upon as statements of representation or fact.

To sue the agent you’ve somehow got to ‘prove’ they didn’t ‘endeavour’ to ensure their details were accurate..???

The problems I’ve come across with leases in the past, is that they are often ‘defective’ and vendors don't think its their part to remedy things: for example, the plan of the property provided by the vendor/s shows a car park where there is actually a dustbin store (or dustbins where there should be a car park) etc etc

Simplistic solution perhaps - but personally I'd rather buy a freehold property

Richard_Webster

What often happens is that people look at the date of the lease - in this case it could have been 2008 - rather than the commencement date of the term. Its a 125 year lease so they assume that you add on 125 years from then and therefore come up with 121 left.

However what sometimes happens is that a lease is backdated in its commencement date so that all the leases in the same building expire at the same time - so it could actually be 125 years from 1991.

Of course if estate agents don't understand these points they should ask rather than making unwarranted assumptions.

propertyman

Richard_Webster wrote: »

Of course if estate agents don't understand these points they should ask rather than making unwarranted assumptions.

It's the blind leading the blind though, selling to the blind*.

This course http://www.cem.ac.uk/our-courses/lifelong-learning-modules/real-estate-agency.aspx £300 which is tax deductible would help.

* To be fair to the blind they understand their impairment and go to great efforts to overcome it, and are only to happy to accept and seek assistance. Too often EA's pile more nonsense on top of nonsense and buyers complain that there must be a right to something 'cos they are upset or it does not work the way they think it should. Cynical moi

alexanderalexander

Thank you all for all your interest! In case anyone would like to know, I've asked for a very modest £1k off the purchase price -- not much compared to the purchase price as a whole but a grand's a grand.

SleeplessinScandinavia wrote: »

I suspect the majority of EAs would take the view that they are ‘just passing on particulars supplied by vendors’ and its not necessarily ‘their job’ to check out the details. Many EAs particulars contain words like these:

IMPORTANT NOTE TO PURCHASERS: We endeavour to make our sales particulars accurate and reliable, however, they do not constitute or form part of an offer or any contract and none is to be relied upon as statements of representation or fact.

To sue the agent you’ve somehow got to ‘prove’ they didn’t ‘endeavour’ to ensure their details were accurate..???

I think the point of the Property Misdescriptions Act is to make estate agents legally liable for details which they put into their particulars, and I would suggest that most estate agents' disclaimers would not be a valid defence to charges under the Property Misdescriptions Act. That said it is debatable as to whether it is in reality very effective at making estate agents more reliable.

Richard_Webster wrote: »

What often happens is that people look at the date of the lease - in this case it could have been 2008 - rather than the commencement date of the term. Its a 125 year lease so they assume that you add on 125 years from then and therefore come up with 121 left.

However what sometimes happens is that a lease is backdated in its commencement date so that all the leases in the same building expire at the same time - so it could actually be 125 years from 1991.

Of course if estate agents don't understand these points they should ask rather than making unwarranted assumptions.

Thank you for the informative reply. This was not actually the case here, so there really does seem to be no excuse for it to have been got wrong!

Fire_Fox

A grand is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

alexanderalexander

Hello,

I’m not sure whether anyone’s still interested in this situation, but my suggestion of this very modest reduction has been brusquely rejected by the seller, without even a hint of apology on her part for originally mis-stating lease length to the estate agent (the seller’s solicitors sent my solicitors the email chain, and they forwarded it to me).

Clearly pulling out of the purchase at this late stage over such a small issue/amount of money would be cutting off my nose to spite my face, as I have already spent over £1k on fees which are non-refundable, so I suppose I’ll just have to go ahead and pay the full £250k – unless anyone has any other ideas?

propertyman

Do what many aggrieved purchasers do;

• play nice and get chatting and find out subtly how much pressure they are under to move
• have a survey done and find problems and seek a last minute reduction in price

it's a trick as old as the hills. If the vendor is unrepentant then pay hardball in return.

££sc££

I'm not really sure what you're trying to get. Your offer was £250k, i doubt you took the EXACT length of lease into account when calculating what you were going to offer. Yes I'd be a bit miffed that it's shorter. but it's still a fairly long lease, some leases are sold new with 99 Years on them. your offer would not have been £249k if you had known the actual lease length at the start. it seems to me you're trying it on a bit and if i was the seller I'd stick to £250k too.

you say you're close to completion, surely one of the first things your solicitor would do when they started your conveyancing weeks ago would be to look at the lease (& see it was shorter).

I'd forget it and let the sale go ahead

alexanderalexander

££sc££ wrote: »

I'm not really sure what you're trying to get. Your offer was £250k, i doubt you took the EXACT length of lease into account when calculating what you were going to offer. Yes I'd be a bit miffed that it's shorter. but it's still a fairly long lease, some leases are sold new with 99 Years on them. your offer would not have been £249k if you had known the actual lease length at the start. it seems to me you're trying it on a bit and if i was the seller I'd stick to £250k too.

you say you're close to completion, surely one of the first things your solicitor would do when they started your conveyancing weeks ago would be to look at the lease (& see it was shorter).

I'd forget it and let the sale go ahead

As I said in an earlier post, I did view a couple of other very similar flats which were stated as having as having approximately 100 years left on the lease so the purported extra 20 years was an attraction of this flat (albeit a fairly small factor amongst others). I hardly think it can be described as "trying it on" to ask for a very modest reduction in price based on the fact that my solicitor has uncovered a significant error in the description upon which my original offer was based.

To be honest, if the seller had replied to my request for a reduction by sending her apologies for and an explanation of the mistake, but had asked to keep the price at £250k due to the reasoning that Ivana Tinkle proffered above (i.e. that it's right on the stamp duty threshold so even with the reduced length of lease it's probably still worth £250k), I'd probably not have been too bothered. As it is, however, she was just rude and seems to have no cognizance of the fact that she made a mistake.

But to put it bluntly I suspect that the seller (correctly) believes that I'm not going to pull out over this issue having spent money on the survey etc. and invested a lot of time in the purchase, so she just doesn't care. So I'm going to follow the advice at the end of your post i.e. complete at £250k and not let this bother me any more.