How do I lease/add a section of garden to my lease?

1975

Probably a silly question, and the answer is obvious but any good advice warmly welcome.

I own the leasehold to a first floor flat in a recently converted house. The ground floor flat below me has not yet been sold as a new flat, so the lease on it has not yet been raised and the freeholder still owns it. There is a large garden to the house which I want to ask the freeholder whether it could be split so that I could have sole access to half of it.

The freeholder is a family friend so I am confident he will be happy to do this. But from a legal perspective, obviously if I ever sold my flat the piece of garden I have been granted access to on a handshake is not going to be legally included on the contract and lease. So presumably if I want to legally lease the garden what financial cost will this have on the freeholder? I know I will have to get the land written into my contract and re-registered with the Land Registry (presumably) at a cost (does anyone know roughly how much this could be?), but would the freeholder also incur various costs to have this done? I don't want to put any extra/unnecessary cost on him if I can avoid it.

And just to make this even more complicated, one day I may be able to buy a share of the freehold which the freeholder was advised not to offer until he sold the other flat first. I guess it would be best to carve up the garden and make it legal on the lease now rather than wait for the freehold to come up?

Thank you!

propertyman

one day I may be able to buy a share of the freehold which the freeholder was advised not to offer until he sold the other flat first

Well you never will as there is no such thing....
He has been poorly advised. If he sells the freehold to you ( you still need a lease for your flat) now, with completion defrred until copmpltionof the sale of the flat below he need not go through the statutory right to first refusal process.

He might even be selling to a third party who is less than friendly so pursue this now.

As to the garden then yes your lease must be amended to include the garden by deed of variation or a supplemenatry lease, as the simplest methods, and he is entitled to a price to reflect the increase in value of your flat and legal costs to be agreed.

If he isnt asking for a price just costs ( @ £500 to £1500), pay them its a bargain.

1975

Thank you propertyman. Very much appreciated. Will get on the case!

Land_Registry

Adding an extra piece of land to your leasehold registration, is usually done by drawing up a Deed of Variation showing the additional area involved, we suggest you seek legal advice to draw this up after discussing it with your freeholder.

We treat these applications as a surrender of the existing lease and a re-grant so , we prepare a new leasehold title to include the garden ground. Our fee to register is based on Scale 1 of our fee order and depends on the new premium, if any, agreed by the parties. The minimum fee is £40.

The Leasehold Advisory Service would discuss further with you who is eligible to acquire the freehold of property.

G_M

Bear in mind of course, that as you increase the value of your flat. by including half the garden, so the value of the ground floor flat will be reduced (loss of half the garden).

If the freeholder (a friend) is not bothered by this, all well and good, but he would be justified in asking you to pay him to compensate this loss....

1975

Thank you to both the Land Registry Representative (very useful indeed), and to G_M - yes, a valid point indeed, and one that both the freeholder and l are keeping in mind with regards to this possible transaction. Thanks again. Much appreciated

thelem

Do you currently share the garden, or is the garden exclusively for the other flat? The responses above seem to assume that you currently have no access to the garden, hence the need to compensate the freeholder for the extra garden.

If you already have shared access and the freeholder agrees then maybe you don't even need to vary the lease. If you put up a fence, then worst case scenario would be a future leaseholder inisisting on returning to a shared garden and taking the fence down.