Freehold purchase

Lotus_fan

I have just receievd a 'winter sale' offer to buy the freehold on my house from Estates & Management. The original offer to sell it to me was for £760 reduced to £560 which includes land registry and legal fees. There is over 900 years to run on the lease and I pay £5 per annum ground rent.

I would like to buy just for peace of mind but is the price too high and if it is, what would be a fair counter offer ?

Are there any pitfalls I should be aware of by buying using their legal people ?

Thanks in advance

Richard_Webster

The overall cost is not that unreasonable but you have to consider whether you should have independent legal advice.

tim123456789

I suspect that they only mean their legal fees. You're still going to need to pay your own.

I doubt that you can go much lower.

Nominal value of the GR is 100 pound

A lawyer won't take the top off his pen for less than 200.

Dunno what the LR fees are?

propertyman

Bite their hand off.

Unless you have to pay a service charge for any areas say parking or roads communal grounds etc, then do two things.

Have your lawyer act for you @ £500 plus disbursements and at the same time surrender the lease to your self and ensure that only the freehold title exists in your name. If you have a mortgage then they will be involved as it affects their security and there will be fees in involved.

Contact Richard Webster for a fee quote?

Better_Days

Are you sure this is genuinely from your freeholder and not a scam of some sort?

Lotus_fan

Thanks to all that replied.Yep, I'm sure it's genuine as I have paid them ground rent for the last 5/6 years. I just thought that at £5 pa with post, banking fees, paper, ink and admin it wasn't worth it to them as the aforementioned costs will only increase with time and that's why they were offering to sell.

Still might try and chip them for a bit more though I'll let you know how I get on.

Dual

I just purchased the freehold on my 3 bed end terrace as I was selling it and had no choice. cost me just shy of £8,000 with all the legal costs etc (same price as conveyancing) and of course I had to pay the freeholders legal fees, surveyors fees etc etc.

However my lease was 99 years (from 1965) so only had just over 50 years left - had no choice but to purchase it as no bank would mortgage a leasehold property with only 50 years left. Im horrified to learn that quite a few of my neighbours havent purchased their freeholds....Im sure they realise the worse case scenarios of being turfed out of the house youve paid a mortgage on for 25 years or more! Just the thought horrifies me.

I too would purchase at that price - if you sell in the future - even though there are hundreds of years left - just the fact its a freehold makes it a preferred buyers choice.

thelem

You can't compare a lease with 50 years left on it to one with hundreds of years left and a peppercorn ground rent. At 50 years to cost of not buying the freehold (or extending the lease) go up every year, but that doesn't really apply to the OP.

The advantages for the OP are simplification of any future transactions (including no need to pay a fee to the freeholder to amend the lease for the new owner and another fee to the conveyancers) and freedom to do whatever he wants with the property without checking with the freeholder first.

cramg

We purchased our freehold through Estates & Management end of 2012. We too had an 'offer' letter come through but ours was an offer that waived the initial £90 admin charge for them to provide us a quote. We applied, the quote came through at £11,000. Our house is a 3-bed detached. I did not appoint any solicitor and haggled with Estates & Management direct, after 3 weeks of negotiating we agreed a purchase price including registration fees etc of £5,000. They sent through the acceptance form, we signed, sent the cheque off and it is currently being processed with Land Registry. Estates & Management have been rather good at keeping me informed with the progress of the transfer so i'm glad i didn't pay for solicitors. However, that's your choice and comes down to how comfortable you are handling it yourself.

propertyman

Well yes anyone can do their own conveyancing however if they have a mortgage, and wish to surrender the lease into one title, which I doubt you and E and M are doing, the mortgagee will insist on a solicitor or their legal department to transfer the loan from the existing lease to the freehold title.

Unless of course you want to keep both the lease and the freehold title. Buying the FH does not extinguish the lease.....

ValHaller

propertyman wrote: »

Well yes anyone can do their own conveyancing however if they have a mortgage, and wish to surrender the lease into one title, which I doubt you and E and M are doing, the mortgagee will insist on a solicitor or their legal department to transfer the loan from the existing lease to the freehold title.

Unless of course you want to keep both the lease and the freehold title. Buying the FH does not extinguish the lease.....

I can't see a lot of point in surrendering the lease to yourself if you have to have the mortgage lender transfer the mortgage from the lease to the freehold. Although obviously, it makes sense to take the freehold if it is offered at the right price.

It seems to make more sense to wait until selling the property on and let the conveyancers do fancy footwork - like sell the freehold with vacant possession on which the buyer's mortgage lender will take security and surrender the lease to the new freeholder. This only requires a small addition to the sale contract, a surrender deed and registering at the Land Registry, which will not add much to the cost of legals for a sale.