Lifetime Leasehold

Spammette

Hello,

I discovered today that the house that I put an offer on and which was accepted was leasehold via the land registry website.

I was told by the estate agent that the house was freehold.

A solicitor is acting on behalf of the vendor and they advised that the house is Freehold, however the deceased owner had a life time lease and that this would be resolved by the time the property is sold to me?

Before I proceed any further into the depths of solicitors and mortgage fees will I end up waiting 6 months for the sale to go through?

Thank you for taking your time to read this thread

tim123456789

A "lifetime" lease is (normally) what in legal terms is called a short lease. AST are the most basic form of short leases

The FH/LH status of the property is (legally) a long lease.

So there being a resident in situ with a lifetime lease does not change the Freehold nature of the property

And if the occupier with the lease has died then so has their rights within the lease.

This shouldn't cause you any problems apart from a small amount of extra work by your solicitor in checking unencumbered vacant possession correctly

Land_Registry

If the property is in England & Wales and registered then the title(s) should reveal the actual circumstances.

Most 'leases of life' are registered as whilst they are in essence for just a short period (depending on how long the tenant lives) in law no one knows when that will be.

There are variations on this as some can refer to a period of time OR death.

The procedure to be followed in such circumstances can be reasonably straightforward but much will depend on the actual terms of the lease and how the freeholder's solicitor deals with the closure of the leasehold title.

6 months would probably be an extreme case but when dealing with matters involving death you can never be entirely sure but if it is a lease for life with one of the companies who specialise in such matters one could perhaps expect the process to be quite routine - they after all are experienced in dealing with such matters and of course are keen to realise the benefit of the lease for life and the sale now taking place.

And as tim123456789 suggests it may not pose too many problems and if the freeholder resolves the lease issue first then you may find that there is only a freehold title to be dealt with anyway